Let's have a historical photographs thread!
Some ideas:
- Your favourite photographs from history
- Photos which say something particular about the period in which they were taken.
- Images which depict the history of your city/town/neighborhood
- Unique and interesting historical photographs others might not have seen before
This photograph was published in Sydney newspapers in 1933, apparently at the behest of the then Commissioner of Police to demonstrate to a sceptical press and public that police could in fact operate undercover.
This was apparently in answer to a suggestion that so distinctive was the build of the average detective, effective undercover work was out of the question.
The men seen here are a mix of detectives and civilians. The figure third from the right is believed to be Sergeant Frank Fahy, aka "The Shadow", the force's most effective undercover operative at the time.
From the Sydney Police & Justice Museum.
Demonstration of the techniques of pickpockets. Details unknown, but clearly a staged photograph, presumably made for police educational purposes.
Eugenia Falleni, alias Harry Crawford, 1920
When ‘Harry Leon Crawford’, hotel cleaner of Stanmore was arrested and charged with wife murder he was revealed to be in fact Eugeni Falleni, a woman and mother, who had been passing as a man since 1899.
In 1914, as ‘Harry Crawford’, Falleni had married the widow Annie Birkett.
Three years later, shortly after she announced to a relative that she had found out ‘something amazing about Harry’, Birkett disappeared.
Here is Falleni in her natural female form.
Walter Baldwin Spencer and Francis J Gillen - Baldwin Spencer seated with the Arrernte elders, Alice Springs, Central Australia, 1896.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taman_Shud_Case
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I wish I had something to contribute
Contributing with what I have, can't provide much background I'm afraid, but I hope they speak for themselves.
>>329577
German Mascott, WW1
>>329582
Sharpshooter killed at Gettysburg (IIRC)
Bomb disposal in Northern Ireland.
>>329590
>>329596
>>329599
The colourisation makes me feel like a fly on the wall.
>>329604
>>329608
I think this is a gold mine, during the gold rush.
>>328813
This has never failed to spook me.
I for one love these old photos, especially the black and white ones, because they tend to give an otherwordly air to otherwise perfectly normal scenes. I feel that once colour kicks in we can tell they're set in our world, not too far in time from us.
>>328738
>Three years later, shortly after she announced to a relative that she had found out ‘something amazing about Harry’
Do I want to know why it took her that long?
More historical lesbians
>>329776
Left bears an uncanny resemblance to a former uni classmate of mine.
;_;7
>>329750
