SHIFTY-LOOKING COVES

When I was researching my family history recently, I ended up trawling some Daily Mirror archives. I came across this wonderful story, from September, 1909, about how Britain would "descend into a nation of criminal faces", and analysing the typical physiognomy of the criminal type.












Strangely enough, BoingBoing has this story, about how caricatures are more effective than accurate police sketches in identifying criminals (full post here), with a wonderful illustration (Dad, a Creative Commons Attribution licensed picture from PhylB's Flickr photostream):

Do you think these chaps are related? Forget historic DNA, I reckon the "bird and cow-like faces" test is a dead cert.

These newspaper archives are loads of fun. No wonder our parents are bonkers. Watch this space for more exciting happenings in the early 20th century!!!