crime
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“Murder in the Cheval-Rouge Passageway” (detail). Causes Célèbres no. 7 (1859). Collection: Bibliothèque des littératures policiers, Paris. When Pierre-François Lacenaire was arrested in January 1835, he was simply a criminal miscreant, yet another thief soon to go on trial for murder. That November, however, courtroom coverage by multiple Parisian newspapers transformed him into a media
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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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Frontispiece portrait of Lacenaire by Levilly in Mémoires, révélations et poésies de Lacenaire écrits par lui-même, à la Conciergerie, 2 vols. (Paris: Chez les Marchands de Nouveautés, 1836). Gallica: Bibliothèque nationale de Paris. In the month before his execution in January 1836, convicted thief and murderer Pierre-François Lacenaire spent his final days in the Conciergerie
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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
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Dustjacket Cover of Vidocq: The Personal Memoirs of the First Great Detective, trans. Edwin Gile Rich (Cambridge, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 1935). Author’s Collection. The primary value of Vidocq’s Mémoires lay in its formulation of the detective as a heroic character. As French historian Dominique Kalifa has convincingly shown, nineteenth-century published accounts of the Parisian bas-fonds
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“Portrait of Eugène Vidocq, Adventurer and Security Police Chief,” by Achille Devéria, c. 1828. Wikipedia Commons: Musée Carnavalet, Paris. Note the caricature embellishments. In June 1827, Vidocq resigned from his position as security squad chief, ostensibly because he disagreed with how the Paris Prefecture of Police was being run. Others from within the Prefecture were concerned
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Serialized novel cover for Vidocq, King of Thieves–King of Detectives (Paris: Fayard, 1882). Public Domain. Historian Paul Metzner argues that the social and political instability of the restored Bourbon Monarchy in the early nineteenth century, following French Revolution and the collapse of Napoleon’s Empire, was particularly favorable to opportunistic virtuosos, self-centered individuals who excelled at
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Jules Beaujoint (pseudonym), Cartouche, King of the Bandits, 25 issues (Paris: Arthème Fayard, 1907). Author’s collection. Vidocq’s self-reference to the eighteenth-century bandit Cartouche in the preface to the Mémoires was on the mark. His narrative parallels the life and exploits of Cartouche: the child who first steals at home, runs away from his family, learns
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Frontispiece portrait by Marie Gabrielle Coignet, in Mémoires de Vidocq, chef de la police de sûreté, jusqu’en 1827, vol. 1 (Paris: Tenon, 1828). Wikipedia Commons: Musée Carnavalet, Paris. In both fact and fiction, Eugène-François Vidocq is often called the first modern detective. His life and exploits are recounted in the Mémoires (1828-1829), a sprawling four-volume collection
Shady Detectives, Elegant Criminals & Dark Avengers 