Gill Harvey - True Stories of Crime and Detection: Usborne True Stories

Crime is as old as human beings. Every society has rules about how to behave, and there are always some people who decide to break them. As a result, there have been police forces, courtrooms and judges since the days of ancient civilizations. But, strange as it may seem, there havent always been detectives. No one thought of using specialist skills for tracking down criminals until early in the 19th century. Then, it took just one extraordinary French criminal to change everything. His name was Jean-Franois Vidocq.

Vidocq was never a bad man. He wasnt the sort to rob unsuspecting people, or murder innocent men. But when he was young he was full of high spirits, and this often got him into trouble. He loved the high life: fencing, gambling, and fighting with other men over women. He adopted daring disguises and, for a while, he even claimed (falsely) to be a captain in the army. Sooner or later, he was bound to get arrested and sure enough, after one particular brawl, that is exactly what happened.

Vidocq was sent to jail for three months. It was just a local jail, and he would have been fine if he had minded his own business. But that wasnt Vidocqs way. He felt sorry for a peasant who had been wrongly convicted, and helped some other prisoners to forge a letter of release, granting the peasant his freedom.

The trick worked at first. The peasant was released, but it didnt take long for the authorities to work out what had happened. Forgery was a serious crime, and this time, in 1798, Vidocq was sent to the galleys.

The galleys were terrible places, designed to punish the most hardened criminals. Prisoners were kept in squalid conditions, chained together, and were forced to do backbreaking physical work on a diet of slops. If they didnt obey, they were beaten viciously. Many didnt survive the experience, and, with a sentence of eight years, Vidocq knew he had a simple choice: escape or die.

Escaping the galleys was no easy task, however. In fact, it was almost impossible. But Vidocq was clever and determined. Gradually, he smuggled in parts of a sailors uniform, and used a file to cut through his chains. Then, one day, as the chained men marched through the town, Vidocq slipped away to freedom.

But his freedom didnt last for long. He had no papers, and a year later he was recognized as an escapee from the galleys. So, in 1799, he was sent back this time for sixteen years. He felt desperate, but set to work on a plan for escape once again. It wasnt long before he managed to get hold of another sailors disguise, and bribed a guard to give him removable chains. He awaited his chance, and took it boldly just as hed done the last time. Leaving the town wasnt easy without papers, but Vidocqs craftiness came to the rescue. He pretended to join a funeral, and marched solemnly with the other mourners to the cemetery outside the city gates. Then, he walked free again.

So, at the age of only twenty-three, Vidocq was famous among criminals. It was impressive to escape the galleys once but twice! This was almost beyond belief, and his fellow criminals regarded him as a hero. But this didnt make his life any easier. The authorities were still hunting for him, and it was difficult to survive without falling deeper into a life of crime.

Sure enough, trouble wasnt far off. He joined up with a group of violent robbers for protection, but when he refused to work with them, they betrayed him. To his dismay, he was soon back in the hands of the authorities in the French town of Lyons.

But this time, something changed. The chief of police, a man named Monsieur Dubois, could see that Vidocq was made of unusual stuff. He offered him a choice.

You can go back to the galleys, he told Vidocq. Or you can give me the names of some of your criminal friends.

For Vidocq, the choice was easy. He had no great love of being a criminal he had never done anything badly wrong. And he certainly didnt want to go back to the galleys. He gave M. Dubois the information he wanted.

Technically, though, Vidocq was still a criminal. M. Dubois might have released him for now, but he still had the conviction for forgery hanging over him. And he was constantly meeting fellow criminals who wanted to involve him in their activities. Vidocq was fed up with the whole situation, and so he devised a plan. If he wanted to make a fresh start, he would need a pardon for his previous crime so that he was no longer a wanted man. And so, in exchange for a full pardon for the forgery, and protection from the police, he moved to Paris and became a secret informer on a regular basis.

Being an informer was an ideal role for Vidocq. He hadnt lost his knack for disguises, and the criminal underworld trusted him. After all, he was one of them, wasnt he? Before long, he was giving the police more information than they could have dreamed possible and the criminals themselves had no idea how the police knew so much. Vidocq was enjoying himself. He was free at last, and hed found a career.

Whatever he did, Vidocq did with passion, commitment and ingenuity. It wasnt enough for him to pass on casually what he knew; before long, he was actually using his genius to hunt down criminals. The informer became a detective the first the world had ever seen.

On a personal level, Vidocq was not only the first, but probably the greatest, detective too. He continued to use disguises throughout his life the same ones, for years and years; but no one ever saw through them. He sometimes went around as an old man called Jean-Louis, a Breton who dealt in stolen goods. At other times, he was Jules, a bearded war veteran with a limp. When he adopted these disguises, he changed everything: the way he spoke, the way he looked, even the way he ate. He understood one of the most important principles of detective work attention to detail.

By 1811, his work was so successful that he was employing other agents to help him. They were all ex-criminals like himself, because Vidocq claimed that only they had enough knowledge to infiltrate the underworld; and besides, it was only them that he fully trusted. And he pestered the police to give him his own special department, which would be responsible for tracking down crime across the entire city of Paris. In 1812, he got his way at last. He established the Sret, the worlds first secret security service.