victorian crime scene photography

They say that crime scenes, when the Police first started to photograph them, were often captured from above, looking down, so that everything could be pictured in the same shot. This was to save on the expense of taking lots of pictures, like they're able to now because technology as moved on and crime fighting budgets are bigger. It's all in the detail, you see..... what those old black and white shots show is everything in clear detail, like some sort of freeze-frame bad dream. Does the reason they took the pictures the way they did add anything to them? I think so. God, am I tired or does this make sense to anyone else???