Original Texas prison record and wanted poster for Tom King, an African American man convicted of forgery in Hill County, sentenced to two years and received at the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville on July 14, 1912. The record includes two 3½" x 5" original silver gelatin mugshot photographs, showing both profile and frontal views, each bearing his inmate number 33557.

The detailed typed document lists physical description, scars, shoe size, and Bertillon measurements, noting his occupation as a farmer, limited education, and marital status (wife: Callie King, of Parney, Texas). The text also describes numerous visible scars on the upper body, shoulders, and wrists—potential evidence of prior labor or injury.

Importantly, the notice states that Tom King escaped from Ramsey State Farm, Otey, Texas, on June 10, 1913, making this part of Texas’ early 20th-century fugitive tracking system. These records were part of a broader racialized criminal justice system in the Jim Crow South, where African American prisoners were often sentenced to state-run labor farms such as Ramsey, which operated under brutal, exploitative conditions.

Documents combining early African American mugshots with detailed typed dossiers are rare survivals. This example is particularly significant due to the dual photo format, named spouse and location, and its stark representation of carceral practices in 1910s Texas. A sobering artifact of race, punishment, and policing in the early 20th-century American South.