A newly digitised archive detailing the stories of nearly 50,000 prisoners incarcerated in New South Wales between 1870 and 1930 is the foundation of a new exhibition, and one that is hoped to stimulate more investigation.

Captured: Portraits of Crime is an exhibition and major project of State Archives and Records NSW, which has selected 37 of the prisoners to tell their stories in-depth.

Not only are the tales compelling and moving in themselves, but exhibition curator Dr Penny Stannard said they give people "a taste of how they might engage with these archives".

Arthur Astill, a 16-year-old labourer from Orange, charged with murder and photographed at Dubbo Gaol in 1893. ( Supplied: State Archives and Records NSW )

A massive archival project

The stories of these men, women and children are told through source material from the State Archives Collection of Gaol Photographic Description Books from 20 NSW prisons.

"It's a set of material which consists of 199 volumes and 46,000 prisoners which up until they were digitised in 2016 remained bound in leather tomes in the archives," Dr Stannard said.

The curator said she had to bring in extra resources to trawl through the "huge data set" and over nine months she and 17 other archivists analysed and then chose 37 prisoner stories to focus on.

She said the archivists were struck by different prisoners. For some they engaged with those from migrant backgrounds, for others they were drawn to incarcerated people who had faced a really tough life.

"One of the things for me that has been particularly affecting … is the number of boys that were convicted of offences and incarcerated in adult prisons," Dr Stannard said.

The prisoner stories for Captured: Portraits of Crime are told through photography, text, an online catalogue and short films with interviews from archivists.

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Personal stories told

There is a lot of personal background and detail in the stories told through the project.

Peter Sadeek, photographed in June 1907 in Broken Hill Gaol after he found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. ( Supplied: State Archives and Records NSW )

One of them was 16-year-old Arthur Astill, a labourer from Orange in the state's central west, who was incarcerated in Dubbo Gaol in 1893 while awaiting trial for the murder of a farmer's wife.

Dr Stannard explained that the "angelic" looking teenager was eventually acquitted and the trial judge noted he was 'a nice looking chap but preciously vicious sexually'.

Astill later became a blacksmith in the central west town of Narromine, had a large family and died in 1964.

Another story was that of Peter Sadeek, a 63-year-old man originally from India who was found guilty of murdering a local woman at White Cliffs.

He was sentenced to death in Broken Hill Circuit Court in 1907 and his case was at the centre of a race debate in the town, which at the time was one of the most culturally diverse places in NSW.

The records stated that as he faced the gallows, the Muslim-Christian — who was confident of going to heaven — said "I'm very glad to die".

One of the female stories was that of Margaret Higgins, a 45-year-old servant who was sentenced in Dubbo Gaol to life for the murder of her granddaughter near Coolah.

She and her unmarried daughter, Florence, were found to have drowned the baby. Florence died in police custody.

Margaret Higgins from Maitland photographed at Dubbo Gaol in October 1905 while serving a life sentence for murder. ( Supplied: State Archives and Records NSW )

The exhibition's photograph of Margaret Higgins was taken on the day in 1905 when her original sentence of death was commuted to life behind bars.

"The jury recommended mercy on the grounds of the surroundings of the case and the state of mind they believed Margaret to have been in at the time," Dr Stannard said.

She served less than two years of her sentence and was released into the care of her brother, a grazier at Coolah, where she died in 1950.

Prison records for Pier McDhoon who spent time in NSW gaols in the late 1800s and early 1900s for horse stealing. ( Supplied: State Archives and Records NSW )

NSW then and now

A significant proportion of the prisoner stories told in the archival project are from regional NSW.

Dr Stannard said that is because the state was much more decentralised then.

"What you see in the jail records reflects that, so you have populations around a regional centre that was a particular scale so you have major jails located there," Dr Stannard said.

Some of the major jails at the time were Bathurst and Goulburn, as well as the now closed Maitland, Dubbo and Darlinghurst facilities.

The project did not extend to comparing the makeup of the prison population in that time to today, but Dr Stannard said one thing that has not changed is that young men aged between 18 and 35 remain the single biggest cohort.

Opening up new family histories

The exhibition and the digitisation of the archives has opened up opportunities for families to search through the state's records to see if a relative was incarcerated.

Prisoner James Dwyer, photographed at Darlinghurst Gaol in 1899, convicted of forgery and uttering. ( Supplied: State Archives and Records NSW )

Dr Stannard said the photographic records are of particular interest, because until 1900 only the very rich had their picture taken.

The photographs of those in prison, most of whom were poor, are a treasure trove for family historians.

"It becomes a moment of revelation for them in terms of having the only photograph that might exist for their ancestor," she said.

Captured: Portraits of Crime is on display at the Western Sydney Records Centre and is touring regional NSW until April 2018.

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