Here's an extract from some old stuff I still have on the
web, relating to the (now defunct) course, Watching the
Detectives [so much for
'education, education education' eh?] in which passing
reference is made to Vidocq. The rest of the document from
which the extract below is taken at http://www.ejmd.mcmail.com/detect.htm
And there's more stuff at http://www.ejmd.mcmail.com/wtdnotes.htm.
ED
*** There are many examples of individual operators before
the establishment of le Surete: various 'thief takers', hired
spies and other types were not in short supply. The
distinction between detective and criminal is constantly
blurred throughout the history of crime fiction, and indeed,
crime fiction is confusingly blurred with fact, from the
fictionalised exploits Eugene Vidocq, criminal turned
detective turned criminal, and the first director of le
Surete, to Arthur Conan Doyle's investigations of real cases
on the strength of Holmes reputation. Eugene Francois Vidocq,
criminal turned detective, was the first director of Le
Surete, or chief of detectives of the Parisian police
department, established in 1812. According to Vidocq's
memoirs
(ghostwritten and heavily fictionalised), pub. in four vols
1828-29, he was a brave adventurer with a flair for drama and
a master of disguise. Ian Ousby suggests that there is
nothing reassuring about Vidocq: while his memoirs boast of
rather than repent a criminal past, he remains 'a rapacious
and self-interested trickster' (Ousby, The Crime and Mystery
Book, p. 19). Vidocq left Le Surete under a cloud in 1827, to
set up his own private detective agency, Les Bureau des
Reseignements (Information Bureau) some 40 years before Alan
Pinkerton set up his detective agency in Chicago in 1850.
While the distinction between criminal and detective is
blurred by Vidocq, the distinction between fact and fiction
is blurred by Doyle's
'real' investigations, many of which are recounted by Peter
Costello in The Real World of Sherlock Holmes (Robinson;
London, 1991).
-- # To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to majordomo@icomm.ca. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 04 May 2000 EDT