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The Forty Thieves gang, Buffalo Bill, designs chosen by sailors, convicts, lovers: Shahidha Bari looks at the history of tattoos with Matt Lodder, Zoe Alker and Tanya Buxton from the opening of the first commercial parlour in London\\u2019s West End in 1889 to the most popular images now and their use to enhance wellbeing.

Zoe Alker has studied over 75,000 tattoos seen on convicts between 1790-1925. She teaches in the criminology department at the University of Liverpool.\\nMatt Lodder is a Senior Lecturer in Art History and Theory, and Director of American Studies at the University of Essex. His research primarily concerns the application of art-historical methods to history of Western tattooing from the 17th century to the present day.\\nTanya Buxton is a tattoo artist based in Cheltenham, specialising in medical tattoos.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

We've a whole collection of programmes exploring The Way We Live Now gathered together on the Free Thinking programme website. They include a discussion about Perfecting the Body, Mental Health, Gloves and Hitchhiking https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p072637b