| Description | Many prisons started taking photographs of prisoners on entering the prison as a physical record of the prisoners' appearance in the 1870s. The first photographs for Reading Prison date from 1883 and show both male and female prisoners.
The photograph albums do not include all prisoners at Reading Prison. They include convicts sentenced to penal servitude (5 years and more) and some of the local prisoners who were sentenced to three months or more, particularly if they had a previous conviction. They include some prisoners who were transferred to Reading Prison from other prisons. Nearly all of the photographs show the prisoners wearing their own outdoor clothes and give the nominal register number, name and date of photograph. These register numbers match the numbers used in the nominal registers (P/RP1/1/1-8) and there is an index at the front of P/RP1/5/2 and P/RP1/5/3 which gives the volume and page number of the nominal register for each prisoner.
The albums also include some photographs of prisoners wearing prison uniform and are captioned with a register number which is different to those used in the nominal register. These appear to be convicts sentenced to penal servitude and the number which will start with a letter relates to their original register number. In the indexed albums their nominal register can be found in the index. The last two albums include photographs marked as 'A' and 'B'. 'A' photographs are the same as the normal photographs and show prisoners in their own clothes a couple weeks after conviction. 'B' photographs show the same prisoner in prison uniform and give their original register number with letters to show which years they have previously been convicted in. A couple of 'C' photographs also survive and these show the same prisoner in their own clothes shortly before release. Nearly all other photographs in the last two albums (1903-1914) are taken shortly after the prisoner's conviction. The photographs in the earlier album (1883-1902) are a mix of photographs taken shortly after conviction and shortly before release. From 1890 onwards all photographs are initialled by the prison governor to certify that the photograph is a true likeness of the prisoner. |