This English pocket photograph album, dating from around 1855-65, contains the identification portraits of eighteen known or suspected counterfeiters. 'Smashers', lettered in gilt on the front cover of the album, was a 19th century term, first recorded in 1811, for those who issued or passed counterfeit coinage or notes (Oxford English Dictionary).

The album, 90mm x 68mm in size, holds 18 albumen photograph vignette portraits, 14 of men, 4 of women, many in prison uniform. The first 11 portraits are sewn-in to the album as single images without backing and interleaved with blank paper; the final 7 portraits are cut and pasted on to blank bound-in pages at some period following binding. Although the final 7 photographs were added to the album after it was bound, and thus with the original 11 photographs already in place, stylistic evidence suggests they pre-date the images earlier in the album.