Dubbed the father of crime detection, and the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes, French criminal-turned-thief-taker, Eugène-François Vidocq established the world’s first police detective department in Paris, in 1812. He is alleged to have pioneered many investigative techniques, such as record-keeping and ballistics, as well as footprint analysis. However, given that his memoirs are notoriously unreliable and accounts of his life vary, first you have to examine the myth in order to piece together the truth of Vidocq’s legacy.
As a young man, Eugène-François Vidocq enjoyed a life of adventure, which frequently got him into trouble. Born on 23 July 1775, in Arras, northern France, allegedly during a thunderstorm, his father was the local baker. He had at least six siblings, not all of whom survived infancy. Vidocq’s first brush with the law took place when he was a teenager – he stole and then pawned some of his family’s crockery, for which he spent ten days in the local lock-up, having been shopped by his father. This was the most serious of a number of petty thefts from his home, from which he stole money and provisions on a regular basis. It was also rumoured that he had killed a fencing master during a duel, when he was just 14 years old. Soon after his temporary incarceration, Vidocq left home and took to the road, ending up initially in Ostend. He then joined a travelling circus and eventually the military.
In 1791, Vidocq enlisted in the Bourbon Regiment where, apparently in the first six months, he fought at least 15 duels, killing some of his opponents. He deserted after being summoned to a court martial for assaulting a sergeant-major, and then moved around from place to place, using different names to join several regiments and before absconding again. During a return to Arras, he challenged the lover of a woman he was seeing to a duel and was promptly arrested and imprisoned. This pattern of committing thefts, assaults, and public disturbances, followed by periods of imprisonment formed the pattern of his life for most of the following decade. During his spells in prison, he attempted to escape many times, with some success, but it was never long before he was back behind bars again.
In the mid 1790s, Vidocq was sentenced to eight years in the infamous galleys for forgery. After several attempts to escape on the way to Brest from the holding prison, Bicêtre, near Paris, he finally succeeded after he reaching his destination. It was whilst he was on the run from the police, that he developed his skills in disguise, often dressing as a woman. He was eventually tracked down in 1799, and returned to Bicêtre Prison. He escaped once again and gave the police the slip for the next year or so, until the law caught up with him in Douai. Following a daring jump from a window, he was free again and settled in Paris. Vidocq soon became implicated in a series of robberies in the city, for which he was accused of receiving stolen goods. As the net began to close again, he took the drastic step of requesting an interview with Monsieur Henry, the head of the criminal division of the Paris police, who agreed to take him on as an informer, on his return to prison. Soon after, he was transferred to La Force Prison, in the Marais district of Paris, where he led a double life of ‘hero of the prison’ and police spy. He was released unofficially from the prison in 1811, after which he continued working for Henry as a thief-taker. It was during this time that Vidocq secured the evidence for the conviction of a former police agent for a theft of a significant quantity of lead, by matching the suspects’ boots with prints found at the crime scene.
The Préfecture de Police, in Paris (La ‘PP’), dates from 1800, when Napoléon Bonaparte reinstated the capital’s police force, following the French Revolution. The city was divided into districts, each with a ‘commissaire de police’. These were assisted by ‘officiers de paix’, who were technically responsible for monitoring criminal activities. However, there was no central office to investigate and trace suspected criminals, and communication was weak between the various branches of the police. This lack of cooperation and efficiency prompted Vidocq to propose that he form a special unit, whose sole duty was the detection of crime and the pursuit of offenders. Permission was granted and the Brigade de Sûreté (‘sûrété’ means ‘security’) was established in 1812, with a team of four men. It was later increased to 12, in 1817. Vidocq remained in charge for the next 20 years.
Despite tensions and conflicts with other members of the police force, during his time as head of the Sûreté, Eugène Vidocq developed many skills and techniques for the detection of crime. Vidocq often carried out his own investigations, using his ability to disguise himself – he would don clothing that denoted a specific occupation, and he could change his manner and behaviour to assume a role. On one occasion, he transformed himself into an ex-convict by blistering his feet and tracing the marks of the fetters on his wrists. He stained his skin with walnut juice and grew a beard, and even applied gum and coffee grounds to his nostrils to change his voice, and acquired some lice to infect his gallerian’s uniform. (Apparently in his house, he had a room for his disguises). He regularly visited the chain gang at Bicêtre Prison, where he was once incarcerated, to memorise the faces of possible habitual offenders. It was alleged that he became so experienced and had such a formidable memory that he could identify the likely perpetrator of a burglary from the description of a crime.
Whilst in charge of detective policing in Paris, Vidocq created a centralised card index with details of offenders (almost 70 years before Alphonse Bertillon developed his anthropometric system) which, according to Douglas Starr, amounted to three million documents relating to tens of thousands of criminals. He also undertook some basic ballistics work, by comparing bullets to the size of firearms, and he developed the ability to analyse crime scenes in detail, and to spot incriminating clues, which he would then use his encyclopaedic knowledge of offenders and their modus operandi to pinpoint a prime suspect. According to biographer Philip Stead, in 1817 alone, the Sûreté was responsible for 811 arrests, including 15 for murder, 341 for theft and 38 receivers of stolen property. By the 1820s, Eugène Vidocq was a household name and a police hero.
In 1827, Vidocq resigned as head of the Sûreté. He was 52 years old. A very wealthy man, he had moved out to Saint-Mandé, an eastern suburb of Paris near the Château de Vincennes, where he built a paper-making factory, in which he employed former convicts. When he was finally pardoned from his prison sentence (from which he had been unofficially released 17 years earlier) in 1828, after which he published his ghost-written memoirs, which were soon translated into English. Such was the interest in his adventures, that his memoirs were transformed into a stage play, first produced in Surrey. Back home, Vidocq spent his time, managing his business affairs, writing and inventing crime-prevention equipment, such as forgery-proof paper, indelible ink and a burglar-proof door. In 1832, he returned to the Sûreté and assumed his former position, this time with 28 agents. However, he didn’t stay long and resigned again later that year.
Eugène-François Vidocq’s final two decades were spent running a private detective agency and publishing more books (he knew many writers, such as Honoré de Balzac). In 1843, he was arrested on charges of fraud, obtaining money on false pretences and illegal arrest. He was convicted and sentenced to five years at the Conciergerie Prison (close to where he had worked as a police officer). He appealed and was acquitted after 11 months. In 1845, Vidocq arrived in England and opened an exhibition in London, which included various crime-related objects. He also testified at the Old Bailey in a fraud case. On a subsequent visit, he made tours of Newgate, Millbank and Pentonville Prisons.
When Vidocq’s third wife, Fleuride, died in 1847, he moved back to Paris. By this time, his business had declined but he kept afloat by undertaking commissions from the prosecutor-general. He contracted cholera in 1854, and died on 11 May 1857. He is believed to have been buried in Saint-Mandé cemetery.
Almost 250 years after his birth, Eugène-François Vidocq’s legacy endures. As the first universally-acknowledged detective police officer, and due to his criminal background, he is said to have inspired the emergence of detective fiction, beginning with Edgar Allen Poe’s detective, C. Auguste Dupin who, in The Murders of the rue Morgue, described Vidocq as ‘a good guesser and a persevering man’. The figure of the forensic detective, instigated with Dupin, later inspired many other writers, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.