I’ve recently read several books about outlawry and crime during the first years of this century. In all the mug shots included in these books, the sides of the heads of the arrested are shaven about one inch above the ear, and there is a front shot and a side shot. Also, I remember being in a San Francisco bar several years ago that was decorated with mug shots and police files from the first three or four decades of this century. In those pictures, too (though I won’t swear for all of them), the sides of the heads of those pictured were shaven above the ear.
Question: why? My guess is that it has something to do with the Bertillon system of identification used by the cops way back when. According to that system, exact measurements of all of an arrested person’s visible body parts were taken in an attempt to be able to identify him in the future. IIRC, the Bertillon system antedated fingerprinting, and it stopped being used in the '30s and '40s when it was replaced by more modern techniques. A very important part of the Bertillon system was the ear–ear types were classified in many different ways and it was thought that the size and shape of the ear would identify a person. So my guess is that the hair above the ear was shaved in order to make the ear more visible in the mug shot.
On the other hand, was this the fashion at that time? (Contrary evidence: I’ve seen a lot of non-police photos from that time and haven’t noticed anyone with his hair shaven above the ear. On the other hand, I haven’t seen too many side-of-the-head shots of my relatives, and besides, they were all wearing hats. In addition, it does seem that it was the fashion then to wear the hair very short.)
Does anyone else know anything more about this? I don’t know where to look to find out more information.
Back then, a common pratice was to shave the head close above the ears during a hair cut. Sometimes a bowl was placed on the head and anything hanging out below the rim was cut off. (Moe Howard in the 3 stooges.) It was known as a sugar bowl hair cut.
It is kinda funny to see some pictures of these big old guys in bib overalls, tough, grim faces, tanned by a thousand days of hard work in the fields, standing there with their hair all at the top of their heads. Then the ears sticking out like car doors.
That’s correct, it used to be the haircut style of a certain class of man and probably originated in the military. There is an old (and very good) Australian movie called “Outback” starring a young Richard Chamberlain. During a somewhat surreal trip through Australian outback culture, Richard’s character stumbles into an Australian legion and sees the local veterans stand up and belt out the national anthem. These military veterans/farmers all seem to have that naked sides haircut.
MarkSerlin, seems lots of boys today have those sugar bowl hair cuts. Not all the way down to the scalp, but close. Boy, what a laugh riot one would have if you explained to them where its mug origin was :-0
What is even funnier is that all of today’s kids wearing those old haircuts don’t know that much of their current ‘stylish’ wardrobe is from back then also.
The baggy knee pants – see clips of the ‘Little Rascals’.
Baggy shirts and all are nothing more than taking after the old ‘hand-me-downs’ of years ago. We often went to school wearing our brothers grown out of jeans – which were still slightly too big for us. Plus baggy shirts, either handed down or bough big so we could grow into them. Clothing back then seems to have been tougher, lasting more than just a few months.
I get a real kick out of seeing these kids swaggering along, all baggy, ears sticking out like taxi cab doors from their 3 stooges haircuts, not knowing that it’s not only been done before but their style is modeled after ghetto hand-me-downs.
The BIG SNEAKER LOOK today? Well - sneakers got handed down also and were often still too big when we got them.
My fave is the crew cut with the straight-up bangs…Pee-Wee Herman anyone? Or TinTin even, if you really want to go back. I see kids with that haircut all the time these days.
Looking back at the photos from The Strange History of Bonnie and Clyde by John Treherne: In photo #10 Clyde, as a very young man, has his hair cut short but not shaven above the ear. In photo #15 Clyde’s brother, Buck, has a similar haircut. In photos #13 and #27, accomplice Raymond Hamilton has the side of his head shaven, as does Raymond’s brother Floyd in photo #27. Accomplices Henry Methvin and W.D. Jones also have their heads shaven above the ear, in photos #21 and 25. None of the lawmen are wearing this haircut.
Another comment. In photo #30 a Dallas deputy sheriff is standing over the dead body of Bonnie Parker. I have also seen photos of lawmen standing over the dead body of John Dillinger. Of course, we’ve all seen the photos of dead Old West criminals laid out, often with the people who killed them standing in the pictures. This practice of photographing the dead bodies of criminals seemed to die out after WWII. Any idea why?
WAG: Newspapers started trying to appear “respectable” and stopped publishing anything that might offend one’s maiden aunt. The same (self?)-censorship is found in the articles, themselves. A lot of “true crime” reporting was very lurid through the 1920’s.
(There may be a tie-in to the 1930 Hays Code for Motion Pictures that put a stop to some of the more lurid and racier films that had been shown in the 1920’s, but I don’t have any citations for that.)
Lawrence: Another comment. In photo #30 a Dallas deputy sheriff is standing over the dead body of Bonnie Parker. I have also seen photos of lawmen standing over the dead body of John Dillinger. Of course, we’ve all seen the photos of dead Old West criminals laid out, often with the people who killed them standing in the pictures. This practice of photographing the dead bodies of criminals seemed to die out after WWII. Any idea why?
WAG: On-the-run criminals were often wanted “dead or alive”. But once you (as a bounty/reward hunter) killed a wanted criminal, you’d need proof that it was you who felled him. Since it’s hardly a notary’s job to notorize a dead body, a picture sufficed in saying “live guy in this picture killed dead guy in this picture”. Plus, it was kinda a trophy of the kill. Even in the wild gangster days, stuffing & mounting a human was in bad taste.
