Melbourne’s historic unsolved crimes in pictures

UNDERWORLD deaths, destructive love triangles and unsolved murders — these are some of Melbourne’s first crime scene photos, now released to the public.

MELBOURNE’s underworld deaths, destructive love triangles and unsolved murders will be revisited tomorrow when a unique crime scene photographic exhibition opens.

Victoria Police will open its archives to the public for the Dark Room exhibition of crime scene photos taken between the 1920s, when crime scene photography was adopted, and the 1940s.

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A photo of a 1930s inner-city crime scene. The record says only: Pawnbroker shot through the heart. Credit: Victoria Police Museum

Many of the photos are the first crime scene images taken in Victoria after new

technology allowed photographers to attend crime scenes and document what they saw.

The exhibition will profiles six cases and examine the stories behind the crimes.

A street scene from Clifton Hill after a major street brawl. Pickets were wrenched off the fence and used as weapons. Credit: Victoria Police Museum

Another scene from the Clifton Hill brawl.

The photographs are linked to newspaper articles, criminal records and prison records to unravel the story behind each case.

Although details of many crimes behind the photographs were unknown at the time, recent research into gang crimes and other elements of Melbourne history has revealed more details of what happened.

The tour takes in the criminal record of notorious gangster Harry Stokes, a 1920s-1940s notebook of a constable detailing “hints on viewing a dead body”, and the record of conduct and service of Christopher Coe, who was wounded in the a crime labelled: “Shooting and Highett Station”.

A robbery scene at Darling Gardens, Hoddle St in the 1930s.

The Dark History tour is on Thursday October 11, at 11am and 12pm at the Victoria Police Museum, Mezzanine Level of World Trade Centre, Docklands.

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