biography
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Portrait of Georges Simenon as Chief Inspector Maigret. Harcourt Studio, Paris, 1952. Wikimedia Commons: Médiathèque du patrimoine et de la photographie (MPP). At midnight on February 20, 1931, a bal anthropométrique “gala for criminal recidivists” got underway at La Boule Blanche nightclub in Montparnasse. The event was sponsored by Parisian publisher Arthème Fayard to launch…
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Commemorative postage stamp for criminologist Edmond Locard. Engraving by Claude Andréotto. Communiqué de Presse, February 2016: La Poste. Dr. Edmond Locard is the most renowned French criminologist of twentieth century. He founded the police forensics laboratory in Lyon and was a prolific author of true crime books. In the nineteenth century, retired Paris Police Prefects…
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Sample portrait parlé (“talking portrait”) anthropometric identity card with Alphonse Bertillon’s self-portrait photo, May 14, 1891. Wikipedia Commons: Criminocorpus.org. While Émile Gaboriau enhanced the image of the Paris police by creating the upright fictional Sûreté Detective Monsieur Lecoq, Alphonse Bertillon set out to reform actual practices at the Paris Prefecture of Police. Applying statistics to…
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Caricature of Paul Féval by André Gill. La Lune, September 16, 1866. Wikimedia Commons: Public Domain. In 1866, popular novelist Paul Féval lamented, “For several years now, the crime industry just hasn’t been delivering the goods.”[1] By his calculation, there were upwards of two million upright and intelligent French readers who were dying for crime…
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Engraving by Louis Dupré, “Mr. Fualdès” (1817). Private Collection: Ciminocorpus. The morning of March 20, 1817, the corpse of retired prosecutor Antoine Bernadin Fualdès was discovered with a slashed jugular vein along the banks of the Aveyron River, outside the city of Rodez in Southern France. Over the next two years, an entirely fabricated and…
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Publicity poster for Vidocq, grand film en 10 épisodes, starring René Navarre (1923). Gallica: Bibliothèque nationale de France. When considering Vidocq’s legacy, it is important to keep in mind he was not a Sûreté detective. The reason is simple: the Sûreté was only created in 1853, shortly before Vidocq’s death in 1857, long after his…
Shady Detectives, Elegant Criminals & Dark Avengers 