From the Huntingdon County Gaol Records, unknown photographer, 1872.
(Cambridgeshire County Constabulary)
Invocations:
_____________Archer Robin, dead six sad centuries
_____________too early to help Julia, haunt
_____________the judge's ghost.
_____________Julia, let large loaves lie about you
_____________in Elysian Fields.
_____________The anonymous maker -
_____________let him stay so.
The surveilled subject cataloged
with current crimes
and heights and slightly
more. Frozen under form
type: "Photograph of Prisoner", folded
hands politely resting,
portrait of power-
lessness. Blanks betraying as much:
"Married or Single....[blank]
Trade or Occupation....[blank]
Hair....Lt. Brown, Eyes....Grey, Where Born...Nottingham,
Complexion....Fresh, Age (on discharge)....
11."
Foucault, Derrida, and Barthes said
something. I can't hear them now, only
Dickens and Hugo. How hungry, hounded,
had her family been on Christmas,
on New Year's Day?
"Address at time of apprehension....Grantham
Whether summarily disposed of or tried by a jury....summarily
Place and date of conviction....Huntingdon, 2nd of January 1872
Offence for which convicted....Stealing bread."
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