|
The
Great Detectives: Vidocq
by Mike
Ashley
If you
were to go by either Edgar Allan Poe or Arthur
Conan Doyle you might think that François Eugène
Vidocq, the world’s first real life private
detective, was an irrelevance. "Vidocq," Poe wrote
in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," "was a good
guesser, and a persevering man. But, without
educated thought, he erred continually by the very
intensity of his investigations." Through the
voice of Sherlock Holmes in A Study in
Scarlet, Conan Doyle states of Lecoq (a
fictional detective created by Emile
Gaboriau—based largely on Vidocq), "Lecoq was a
miserable bungler. He had only one thing to
recommend him, and that was his energy." Yet,
despite their disparaging remarks about him, both
writers drew on Vidocq’s character and activities
in developing their own detectives. Vidocq, like
Holmes, was a master of disguise and used the
network of the underworld to seek out his clues.
As for Poe, Julian Symons went so far as to say,
"He had read Vidocq, and it is right to say that
if the Mémoires had never been published
Poe would never have created his amateur detective
[C. Auguste Dupin]."
It is not
only detective fiction that owes much to the work
of François Eugène Vidocq, but the world of
professional investigation as well. He was
instrumental in establishing the first detective
bureau in the world, the Brigade de la
Sûreté, in 1812, and opened the world’s first
private detective agency, Le Bureau des
Renseignements, in 1834. The success of these
agencies encouraged Britain’s Scotland Yard to
create the Criminal Investigation Department in
1842. It was not until 1850 that Alan Pinkerton
set up his private detective agency in
Chicago.
By 1841,
when Poe referred to him in "The Murders in the
Rue Morgue," Vidocq’s name was well known
throughout the English-speaking world. If he
lacked anything it was certainly not his gift for
self-promotion. He was almost a national hero in
France, where it was almost entirely due to his
efforts that the crime rate was reduced by 40%
between 1812 and 1820. Furthermore it is
impossible to assess the total number of crimes
that he solved.
Needless
to say the French police hated him. To him went
all the glory—to them all the blame. For almost
the entirety of Vidocq’s career the police
attempted to ruin him. In return he promoted
himself to greater glory.
In
looking back over Vidocq’s life what is the truth?
His own romanticized version of his life, or the
police’s vilifications? In fact, Vidocq’s life
rapidly became blurred with his legend, so it is
fair to say that he was both the world’s first
practicing private detective and the world’s first
fictional one! His life and books had an immense
influence on the more sensational literature of
the nineteenth century. So who was he?
In his
accounts of his exploits and in the plays based
upon them, Vidocq loved to suddenly unmask himself
at the end and reveal to all assembled, "I am
Vidocq!" So, let us remove the disguise, layer by
layer, to find the man beneath.
François
Eugène Vidocq was born in Arras in Northern France
on 24 July 1775, the son of a very popular local
baker. Although he was a good scholar, his
interests lay elsewhere and by his teens he had
become a dashing swordsman with a yen for travel,
as well as the local Don Juan—Vidocq and young
women were seldom apart for the rest of his life.
He was a keen observer of people (an invaluable
skill in the detective business), hence his
ability to disguise himself and his ability to
read body language (long before it was a science)
in order to identify criminals.
With the
onset of the French revolutionary wars it was
inevitable that Vidocq would be conscripted. He
fought with distinction, rising to the rank of
senior lieutenant. Unfortunately it was at this
time that his delight in disguise landed him in
trouble. In 1795, after a period at home on sick
leave, instead of rejoining his regiment he
disguised himself as a captain and became involved
with card sharks in Brussels. He was arrested,
and—fearing that his real identity would be
uncovered—escaped, becoming both a deserter and a
fugitive from the police. Although Vidocq found it
easy to change identities, he did not find it easy
to maintain a low profile. He had a very public
argument with a captain of engineers over a woman
and was arrested for breach of the
peace.
While in
prison he helped a peasant—who had been imprisoned
for six years for stealing grain for his starving
family—by forging a formal pardon for the man’s
release. It was later discovered that the pardon
was a forgery. Vidocq knew that if he was found
out the sentence would be serious so again he
escaped. For the next ten years he was frequently
captured but just as frequently escaped. At one
point, in 1798, he was held long enough to be
brought to trial for the forgery, and was
sentenced to eight years in what was known as "the
galleys" at Brest. This was a maximum-security
prison where the inmates wore leg and arm chains
at all times. Amazingly he escaped, disguised as a
sailor, and spent the better part of a year
serving on a privateer before being recognised the
following summer and returned to the galleys with
double the sentence. Yet again he escaped, this
time marching out of the town as part of a funeral
procession.
Vidocq
now had considerable status amongst the criminal
underworld as one who had escaped not once, but
twice, from the galleys. Yet he was not a criminal
by nature. He was more a victim of his own good
nature and, at times, hot-headedness. When he
refused to join a gang of robbers in Lyons they
betrayed him to the police. Arrested again, Vidocq
faced a bleak future. Fortunately the president of
the Lyons police, Jean-Pierre Dubois, was aware of
Vidocq’s abilities and felt they could be put to
good use. Dubois gave Vidocq the choice of either
going back to the galleys for what would probably
be the rest of his natural life or becoming a
police informer. Vidocq had little choice. He was
ideal as an informer, because the criminal
underworld accepted him as one of their own.
However, the occasion arose where Vidocq’s
testimony was required in open court and his
identity was revealed. Dubois gave Vidocq new
papers and provided him with a new identity, under
which he left Lyons for Paris.
Over the
next few years Vidocq’s life was itinerant as he
drifted from town to town, moving on whenever he
was recognized. Eventually, after being
blackmailed by some robbers, he decided to chance
his arm again. In 1809 he went to the criminal
division of the Parisian Police offering
information on the gang provided he was granted
immunity. According to one colorful tale, Vidocq
helped recover the Empress Josephine’s stolen
emerald necklace, thereby raising his profile with
Napoleon. Whatever the truth, Vidocq was employed
by the Parisian Police, not simply as an informer
but as a full-fledged spy.
Now
Vidocq’s energy and inventiveness began to shape
his destiny. He adopted different personalities to
blend into the underworld. He began to apply
deductive principles to his investigations. At one
burglary he noticed a bootprint in the garden and
arranged for a plaster cast to be made. Via his
underworld network he already had a clear idea of
the burglar’s identity, but when he was able to
match the plaster cast to the man’s boots the case
was sealed. Vidocq also started to keep files on
all known criminals, noting their preferred
methods as well as their betraying details. He
even established a set of rules for the
investigation of a crime and what to do in the
event that a cover is blown. He was, in fact,
starting to employ scientific methods and
reasoning in his investigations—establishing the
science of criminology.
Vidocq
had long argued that crimes were best investigated
by officers in plain clothes, not uniform, and
that a special division of the police should be
established. He at last got his way in October
1812. Napoleon had denuded Paris of young men for
his advance on Russia and the police found their
resources stretched. The crime rate soared. Yet
again, Vidocq petitioned the Ministry of Police to
establish a plain-clothes bureau, and this time it
worked. He was allowed to employ eight men (all of
whom turned out to be former criminals) and
establish a formal office. The Brigade de la
Sûreté‚ was created.
Thereafter Vidocq went from strength to
strength. Napoleon gave the Sûreté‚ his blessing
the following year and it became La Sûreté
Nationale. Vidocq opened branches in Arras,
Brest, Lyons, and Toulouse, establishing a
significant network of informants. During these
early years the claims of Poe and Doyle may have
been justified. Vidocq did not operate with much
finesse. He hardly needed to. His underworld
contacts were usually only too ready to inform.
The police were convinced that Vidocq was taking
bribes and sometimes creating and "solving" his
own crimes merely to seem all the more impressive.
But, for all that the police despised Vidocq, they
could never prove anything against him. Instead
his stature rose with the authorities and, in
1817, he was even able to obtain a provisional
pardon of the long outstanding forgery
charge.
By the
1820’s Vidocq was employing many more scientific
skills. In 1822 he was one of the first
investigators to have a bullet retrieved from a
body in order to compare it with those in a
suspect pistol. In 1825 he used bloodstains to
trap a murderer and by 1826 he was exploring the
use of fingerprints—though he never could find a
suitable ink. He did invent his own indelible ink
as well as a special form of paper which was
difficult to forge—this same paper was later the
basis for French bank notes. Vidocq acquired a
sizable income from selling his special paper and
ink as well as from other legal but borderline
activities, such as taking money from army
conscripts and sending others in their place. The
police were constantly trying to trap him and, in
the end, Vidocq became tired of the endless
confrontations. On 20 June 1827, he resigned after
the new Prefect of Police made it clear that he
had no time for him. Vidocq had plenty to keep him
busy, amongst other things settling down to write
his Mémoires, which were to immortalize his
name.
The
police soon found they could not operate without
him and during the revolution of 1830 Vidocq was
reinstated, this time as Deputy Prefect. However,
he resigned again in November 1833, unable to work
within the police hierarchy and on 3 January 1834
he set up his own private detective agency, Le
Bureau des Renseignements—the first in the
world.
This
infuriated the police even more. Although what
Vidocq had done was not illegal—provided he did
not masquerade as a policeman—the police were
convinced that he was exploiting them. Eventually,
in 1842, probably as a result of a police set-up,
Vidocq was arrested for posing as a policeman.
Although the trial made it clear he had done no
such thing, he was nevertheless found guilty and
was only released on appeal, after spending ten
months in prison.
Vidocq
was now nearly seventy, and his incarceration in
one of the worst prisons in Paris (the
Conciergerie) had not improved his health.
However, he continued to operate his
Bureau, and the police continued to use his
services. By now they realized that they could
never better him and that, considering his age and
health, he would soon cease to be a problem. His
fame had, of course, spread. In 1843, Scotland
Yard sought his advice on the newly established
Criminal Investigation Department, and he visited
London in 1845. He eventually retired in 1849, but
even then ensured that he would have the last
laugh. He pleaded poverty, dressed as a beggar,
and implored for an increased police pension,
which he was granted. Vidocq was anything but
poor—he had amassed a fair fortune during his
lifetime, much of which he had invested in
paintings, business, and property. He was so
convincing, however, that it was generally
believed that he died in poverty.
On the
day he died, 1 May 1857, the police confiscated
all his files. He was buried at the Church of
Saint-Denis in Paris. Throughout his career Vidocq
had been close friends with the major writers of
the day—Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Theophile
Gautier, Eugène Sue, Honoré de Balzac. All of
these writers drew upon Vidocq’s experiences for
their fiction.
In his
novel, Le Père Goriot (1834-5), Balzac
introduces the dubious character of Vautrin, one
of the many disguises of arch-criminal Jacques
Collin. Vautrin is arrested before he can
encourage the main character, Rastignac, to become
involved in a murder plot. But that’s not the last
we see of Vautrin. He reappears in other novels by
Balzac—all part of the author’s vast Comédie
Humaine tapestry—and eventually forsakes
crime. By Le Député d’Arcis (1847) he has
become a minister responsible for police and
public health in an Italian principality.
Throughout the various books, Vautrin’s
machinations mirror many of the episodes Vidocq
loved to boast about.
The
characters of Rodolphe in Eugène Sue’s Les
Mystéres de Paris (1843) and Jean Valjean in
Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables (1862) also
share many of Vidocq’s attributes. Sue’s Les
Mystéres de Paris (Mysteries of Paris)
was so popular that in 1844 Vidocq produced his
own Les Vraie Mystéres de Paris (The
True Mysteries of Paris). Vidocq may not have
personally written the book—it is known that his
author friends often worked alongside him when he
was writing. Of special significance is Les
Voleurs (1836),which was probably drafted by
Vidocq and polished by Alfred Lucas, a former
police officer who had worked at Vidocq’s agency.
The book is a series of stories about individual
master criminals who are eventually beaten by a
master detective. What is important about Les
Voleurs (or The Thieves), apart from
its being one of the first books about a
detective, is that, in it, Vidocq considers
criminals to be victims of a society that has
ceased to care about the poor or the
unfortunate.
It is
hardly surprising, given Vidocq’s prominence in
the field, that Poe chose Paris as the setting for
"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (Graham’s
Magazine, April 1841). Although the character
of Dupin is not based specifically on Vidocq, he
was very clearly developed from the world that
Vidocq had created. But it was in France that the
detective novel proper began to emerge, still
hanging onto Vidocq’s coat-tails. Fascinated by
the work of both Poe and Vidocq, Emile Gaboriau
brought those threads together with the
publication of L’Affaire Lerouge (or The
Widow Lerouge) in 1866. It introduced a
private detective called Tabaret (based on Dupin)
who uses deduction to solve the mystery of a
corpse found in a cottage. Tabaret works alongside
a police official, Lecoq, who is clearly fashioned
after Vidocq. Not only are their names similar,
but Lecoq is also a reformed criminal who enters
the police force. By Gaboriau’s next novel, Le
Crime d’Orcival (1867), Lecoq is an
established police detective using the
ratiocinative principles employed by Tabaret.
Lecoq remains the hero of all the later novels.
Les Esclaves de Paris (1868)—also known as
Caught in the Net or The Champdoce
Mystery—shows further Vidocqian connections as
it pits Lecoq against the master criminal Mascarot
(shades of Moriarty).
The
underworld described by Vidocq and elaborated upon
by Balzac, Hugo, and Sue heavily influenced
Victorian English literature. You can see elements
of it time and again in the work of Bulwer-Lytton,
Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Thomas Hardy, and many
more. The shade of Vidocq continued to haunt crime
fiction for decades. In essence he was the
forerunner of the villain-turned-hero supporter of
the underdog who uses nefarious and
borderline-legal means to solve crimes that baffle
the police. You can see traces of him in LeBlanc’s
Arsène Lupin, Hornung’s Raffles, Charteris’ Simon
Templar, and even such pulp heroes as Lamont
Cranston (The Shadow).
As with
so many originals, Vidocq’s life has become so
overshadowed and masked, not only by those he
inspired, but by his own legend as well, that
today, if he is mentioned at all, it is to dismiss
his achievements as fiction. But he was real, and
he was a true living legend.
THE
END
Subscribe!
One year sub:
$19.95
Two year sub:
$34.95
|
|
