Cardiff,South Wales - Cardiff's murderers, bigamists and other criminals from the early 20th century

The faces of Cardiff criminals from the early 20th century

• 12 JAN 2016
• BY NATHAN BEVAN

see-http://www.walesonline.co.uk/lifestyle/nostalgia/haunting-mugshots-show-cardiffs-murderers-9105928

From misfits to murderers, the Edwardian underbelly of the capital is revealed as we dive into police registers from the late 19th and early 20th centuries

They range from baby faced thieves to dead-eyed killers, cherubic young girls with tragic secrets to elderly pickpockets whose faces are as lined from hard living as their pockets were with stolen goods.

They are the disenfranchised, the destitute and the dissolute, both cold and calculating and victims of their own quick tempers and hot heads.

They are the ghosts of Cardiff's civil dead - the lost souls, amoral predators and architects of their own (as well as others') misfortune, who haunted the fringes of society in the Welsh capital more than a century ago.

Read more: This is how Cardiff looked 100 years ago

And, although long gone - such lives rarely reach their full three score years and 10 these days, let alone in tough Edwardian times - their ghosts still remain in the frozen faces which stare out from the late 19th/early 20th century police registers kept in the city's Glamorgan Archives.

1. Julian Corcoba

Corcoba was charged with murder in May 1904 and served 10 years in prison for manslaughter instead

2. Arthur Morley

Morley stole while working as a servant in March 1904. He was sentenced to six weeks hard labour.

3. Gustav Dickens

Dickens was a thief who, in March 1904, was sentenced to 14 days hard labour

4. Daniel Kinsey

Kinsey (AKA Charles H Phillips) got six months hard labour in 1904 for theft

5. James Cummins

James Cummins was convicted of theft in June 1906. Records show he was dead two years later

6. George Bennett

Bennett was cautioned for begging in April 1904

7. William Percival Williams

Williams was tried for attempted murder in April 1904. Given two terms of five years in jail to run concurrently

8. James Smith

Smith was done for indecent exposure and assaulting a policeman in April 1904. AKA Harry Hope, he was given one month hard labour for the assault

9. Owen Cohen

Cohen was given 18 months hard labour for having sex with a girl aged under 13 in April 1904

10. Florrie Sullivan

Sullivan got two months hard labour for 'shop breaking' in May 1904

11. John Williams

Williams was charged with aiding and abetting prostitutes in July 1904. He was made to pay 10 shillings plus costs or serve 14 days behind bars

12. Ali Sudan

Sudan got six months hard labour for unlawful wounding in December 1904

13. James Dick

James Dick was done for unlawful wounding in December 1904 and given six months hard labour

14. James Marks

Marks was charged with 'expressing his person with an intent to insult females' in October 1910. Received six weeks hard labour

15. Ling Kow

Ling Kow was found guilty of keeping a gaming house in January 1911 and given the choice between paying £100 in fines (plus costs) or three months hard labour and expulsion. He was last seen leaving for Hong Kong on April 30

16. Charlotte Olsen

Olsen was charged with attempted murder in January 1911. Did 10 months hard labour for GBH

17. Rose Ribenbach

Ribenbach got seven days hard labour for prostitution and was expelled to Warsaw

18. Fred Smart

Smart got three months hard labour for stealing horse hair. Received six months to run concurrently for also taking two railway carriage cushions in 1911

19. Ethel Norman

Norman was sentenced to 18 months in borstal for the murder of her baby, whose birth she concealed

20. Emily Hurley

Hurley stole a shirt in November 1911 and got 14 days hard labour

21. Alfred Owen

Owen was given six weeks hard labour in May 1912 for bigamy

22. Hugh McCann

McCann was sentenced to death for 'wilful murder' in March 1913. He was executed at Cardiff jail in August that same year

23. Richard Parr

Parr got 12 months hard labour fpr attempted suicide and obtaining goods by 'forged order'

24. Albert Parr and Archibald Biggs

Albert Parr and Archibald Biggs stole boots and chickens. They were given the option of paying 10 shillings or doing seven days hard labour for the boots, as well as being ordered to serve seven and 10 days hard labour respectively for the chicken theft

25. John James

A beggar given 14 days hard labour in December 1913

26. William Parkin

Parkin stole lead in August 1913 and was bound over for six months

27. Andrew Reid

Reid was a convicted rapist sentenced to three years in jail in July 1913

28. Maria Jones

Maria Jones was bound over for 'cutting and wounding' in March 1914

29. James Cousins

Cousins stole a piece of liver, for which he had to pay five shillings or commit to seven days hard labour

30. Isabella Wheeler

Isabella Wheeler was given one day for sacrilege in October 1912

31. Robert and Emily Walters, Thomas Roberts

They were sentenced to two, six and four months of hard labour respectively for 'obtaining a piano by deception'

Based in Leckwith, shelves of huge dusty tomes carry the criminal charge sheets, fingerprints and mugshots of those driven to desperate lengths to survive, keep their families warm and put food in their bellies. Along with those motivated to do wrong by far more selfish and base instincts.

It's a rogues' gallery that runs the gamut of offences, including everything from begging to bigamy, robbery to rape, prostitution to paedophilia and insulting behaviour to infanticide.

Read more: These pictures show the remarkable transformation of Cardiff Bay in the 20th century

Some seem as though butter wouldn't melt in their mouths, like the two young boys Albert Parr and Archibald Biggs who were charged with stealing boots and poultry in 1913.

Read more: These fascinating pictures show Cardiff life in the 1890s

Others, however, wear the look of those beaten down by life and forced into a corner until they had not choice but to retaliate.

But while it's impossible to know for sure what drove them to do what they did, it's clear from looking at some of the faces peering out from the aged pages that there's something dark lurking behind the eyes that no amount of morbid curiosity on behalf of the casual peruser would wish to disturb.

Stone-cold murderers, who would meet their end at the prison gallows, rub shoulders with rather more pitiful elements of the criminal fraternity, like the toothless old duffer done for shoplifting a piece of liver.

There's also the motley trio picked up for 'obtaining a piano by deception' - odd bedfellows, indeed, (or cellmates even) for the balding bigamist Alfred Owen, given six weeks hard labour for his domestic deceptions in May 1912, or the flasher who picked a fight with the copper who tried to arrest him.

Whichever way you look at it though, the photographs stand as a sobering caveat to the time-worn argument that things just aren't like they used to be.

In fact, after an afternoon spent trawling through the back rooms of the Glamorgan Archives, it's easy to start wondering if the good old days were quite so good at all.