Can anyone improve these?

[Mary from Italy]

I've just found a couple of Australian gaol photos of a relative of mine on Ancestry; they make him look pretty awful, but I've tried lightening them with Irfanview, and he looks a lot better. My effort was a bit primitive, though, so I wondered if somebody with a better program might like to have a go?

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5248/5249451309_62e075a71d.jpg http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5164/5249451329_c284b3169a.jpg

This is the link to the Ancestry page if it's better to work directly from that photo:

http://search.ancestry.co.uk/iexec?htx=View&r=5538&dbid=1783&iid=32098_223330-00110&fn=Arnold+H&ln=Mallett&st=d&ssrc=&pid=1865

[tenterfieldjulie]

Mary he looks like he's been starved and hasn't slept for weeks poor man.
I don't think the justice system, wanted people accused of crimes to look good..

[Mary from Italy]

I thought he looked rather scary when I first saw the pic, but when you lighten it, he does indeed look scared, hungry and sleep-deprived.

He was actually the son of a fairly well-off lace manufacturer in England; went out to Aus and worked as a clerk for Reuters (although he called himself a journalist on his marriage cert).

He got married in Sydney on 3/8/1895.
On 13/11/1895 a warrant was issued in Sydney for his arrest on 3 counts of embezzlement from Reuters. The following day, his wife died of appendicitis.
In December 1895 he was arrested at Port Adelaide, where he was about to board a ship for London.
On 14/1/1896 he was committed for trial, and the photo was taken the next day.
On 30/1/1896 he was sentenced to 9 months hard labour.

So when the photo was taken, he'd been on the run for a month and in prison for 2 weeks, and his wife had died after only 3 months of marriage.
I don't even know whether he was aware of her death when he went on the run, because a police officer was the informant of the death. She died at home, so perhaps the PC found her when he went looking for Arnold.

Funnily enough he completely turned his life around later - by 1900 he was working as a coffee expert in the Congo, and later became a respectable rubber planter in Singapore.

[Babel]

This is the link to the Ancestry page if it's better to work directly from that photo:

http://search.ancestry.co.uk/iexec?htx=View&r=5538&dbid=1783&iid=32098_223330-00110&fn=Arnold+H&ln=Mallett&st=d&ssrc=&pid=1865

Unfortunately, I don't have a subscription to ancestry at the moment, so I only have your uploaded pics to work from (and there's not a lot of leeway in their tonal range) but these are a little lighter.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v382/prydonian/1new.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v382/prydonian/2new.jpg

[Mary from Italy]

That looks good, Babel, thanks - much better than my effort :)