The hardest kind of criminal to be is someone who looks like a criminal. An effective criminal has to blend in. It makes you wonder, were these people doomed to take up a life of crime? They looked like criminals, everyone expected them to be criminals, so they became criminals? I could believe that, but how could we explain the extraordinarily good-looking criminals?

Regardless of whether they were doomed to take up a life of crime, it’s difficult to believe any of these people had an easy time of it. They look so suspicious, people must have always kept an eye on them.

Take John Moir. He might have been a really smooth talker for all we know, but a career criminal who wears an eye patch? Maybe he had a gold tooth as well.

John Moir, a goods checker at Leith Walk Goods Yard, stole some tea and was fined £3 or 10 days imprisonment in April 1920

This is James Robertson. Besides being a rather unusual looking character, the back of his mugshot notes he squints. If you squint so much it’s written in the record as one of your key characteristics, it’s pretty noticeable. That mustache isn’t doing him any favors either.

James Robertson. 5’4. brown hair and eyes. billiard maker, larceny, embezzlement shop and warehouse breaking

Another rather notable-looking fellow

James Boyd Potter 5’1 brown hair blue eyes. Associates with all classes of thieves Shop and warehouse-breaking

This is Mrs. H.C. Adams, age 21. Her occupation is prostitution; her crime, blackmail. I don’t know what it is about her, but she just looks like trouble to me.

Mrs. H.C. Adams 21. 5’1.  129 lbs. Complexion: sallow

There is a lot you could say about this guy’s looks. He might have had incredible charisma but everything else was fighting it! He was even known as Dick the Devil. He really didn’t have a fighting chance.

“Dick the Devil” was sentenced to 21 days of hard labor

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