The first private detective agency was run by a former criminal
The world's first known private detective agency opened in Paris in 1833, founded by Eugene Francois Vidocq, a soldier, privateer and one-time criminal who staffed it with ex-convicts. The police hated the competition, and in 1842 they arrested him right after he cracked an embezzlement case.
Vidocq's business, grandly named the Office of Universal Information for Commerce and Industry, set the pattern for early private detection: doing police-style work in cases clients felt the official force could not or would not handle. Officials repeatedly tried to close it, and the 1842 arrest was on suspicion of unlawful imprisonment and obtaining money under false pretences.
Britain's pioneer came from the other side of the law. Charles Frederick Field opened an enquiry office after retiring from the Metropolitan Police in 1852 and became a friend of Charles Dickens, who wrote about him. In 1862 Field's employee Ignatius Paul Pollaky, a Hungarian, left to set up a rival firm, and he grew famous enough to be named in the 1881 comic opera Patience as Paddington Pollaky, praised for his keen penetration.
In America, Allan Pinkerton founded his National Detective Agency in 1850, and he made his name by foiling a plot against President-elect Abraham Lincoln in 1861. In 1856 he hired Kate Warne, the first woman private detective in the country. His agents chased Jesse James, the Reno brothers and Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch, and at the agency's peak its active and reserve staff rivalled the US Army in number. Industrialists also used them to infiltrate unions and guard factories, and after the Homestead clash of 1892 several states restricted the practice, followed by a federal Anti-Pinkerton Act in 1893.
Modern investigators rarely resemble fiction. Many serve legal papers, trace debtors who have vanished, sweep boardrooms for bugs or vet investment schemes for fraud. Most hold no police powers, having the same authority as any other citizen, though many places require them to be licensed.
Source: Private investigator
