The Winnipeg Police Museum recently began to digitize its vast collection of mug shots, which dates back to 1899 and extends to the mid-1960s.

Winnipeg Police use a camera mounted on a special arm to take a mug shot of a suspect in the 1950s. (Winnipeg Police Museum)

Here’s a sampling of the approximately 40,000 images on file at the museum, which is located on the main floor of the downtown police headquarters. The front and back of each card is presented.

The mug shots are in numerical order, a practice that continues today.

Current numbering for Winnipeg police mug shots is in the range of 300,000 to 350,000.