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Rogues gallery |
A rogues gallery (or rogues' gallery) is a police collection of pictures or photographs of criminals and suspects kept for identification purposes. The term is also used figuratively by extension for any group of shady characters.
In 1850, Allan Pinkerton founded the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. Pinkerton devised the Rogues’ Gallerycitation needed — a compilation of descriptions, methods of operation, hiding places, and names of criminals and their associates.
Inspector Thomas Byrnes of the late-19th-century New York City Police Department popularized the term with his collection of photographs of known criminals, which was used for witness identification. Byrnes published some of these photos with details of the criminals in Professional Criminals of America (1886).1