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The Defictionalization of American Private Detection
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2009
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- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983
References
1 Wilson, Edmund, “Why Do People Read Detective Stories?,” The New Yorker, 14 10 1944, pp. 78–84Google Scholar;Winks, Robin W., Introduction to Winks, , ed., Detective Fiction: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1980), p. 1Google Scholar.
2 See Whitley, John S., “Stirring Things Up: Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op,” JAS, 14 (1980), 443–55Google Scholar, and Glover, David, “Comment: The Frontier of Genre: Further to John S. Whitley's ‘Stirring Things Up…,’,” JAS, 15 (1981), 249–52Google Scholar.
3 Kakalik, James S. and Wildhorn, Sorrel, The Private Police: Security and Danger (New York: Crane Russak, 1977), pp. 5, 71Google Scholar.
4 Morn does not cite Gutman, 's Work, Culture and Society in Industrializing America (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1977)Google Scholar.
5 Ousby, Ian, Bloodhounds of Heaven: The Detective in English Fiction from Godwin to Doyle (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976), pp. 3–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 Attributed to a report by Allan Pinkerton to General McClellan, George B., in Rowan, Richard W., The Story of Secret Service (London: John Miles, 1938), p. 290Google Scholar.
7 Gutman, Herbert G., “Five Letters of Immigrant Workers from Scotland to the United States”, Labor History, 9 (1968), 384–408, at 388–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 Gutman, “Five Letters,” p. 388.
9 Disappointed with his pay as a spy, Richmond took revenge against his employers by publishing an exposure, the Narrative of the Conditions of the Manufacturing Population and the Proceedings of Government which Led to the Stale Trials in Scotland (1824). My account is also drawn from Peter Mackenzie, 's Exposure of the Spy System Pursued in Glasgow during the Years 1861–820 (1833)Google Scholar. According to the Member of Parliament Thomas Johnston (ILP) Finlay admitted his role through the columns of the Glasgow Evening Post (28 Sept. 1833):The History of the Working Classes in Scotland, 2nd edn. (Glasgow: Forward Publishing Co., 1929), p. 238 nGoogle Scholar.
10 Rowan, p. 125.
11 Neal, Harry E., The Story of the Secret Service (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1971), pp. 111–12Google Scholar; Jeffreys-Jones, Rhodri, “The United States Secret Service,” in Whitnah, Donald R., ed., Government Agencies (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, scheduled for publication in 09 1983)Google Scholar, The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Institutions, No. 7.
12 Monkkonen, Eric H., Police in Urban America, 1860–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 66, 85CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “A Disorderly People? Urban Order in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” The Journal of American History, 68 (1981), 553Google Scholar; Lane, Roger, “Crime and Criminal Statistics in Nineteenth-Century Massachusetts,” Journal of Social History, 2 (Winter 1968), 156–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 Monkkonen, , Police, p. 155Google Scholar.
14 On the continuation of labour work in periods of professed abstinence, see the chapter on “Labor Spies” in Jeffreys-Jones, Rhodri, Violence and Reform in American History (New York: New Viewpoints, 1978), pp. 100–14 at 103–4Google Scholar, in which it is shown that though the Pinkerton Agency gave up providing armed guards in industrial disputes after the Homestead debacle of 1892, it continued with labour espionage until April 1937. On Pinkerton international espionage see Jeffreys-Jones, , American Espionage: From Secret Service to CIA (New York: Free Press, 1977) pp. 20, 55Google Scholar.
15 Chandler, Raymond, The Lady in the Lake (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971) [1944], p. 10Google Scholar.
16 Elizabeth Suttell, Senior Editor at Harvard University Press, suggested the legal formula, in a conversation on 13 Feb. 1980. But on 27 July 1979 I had already circulated an enquiry to a representative sample of American private detective agencies, as well as the World Association of Detectives (Cincinnati) and Council of lnternational Investigators (Miami), asking, among other things, access to records which “I could consult without inconvenience to yourself or offense to your past clients.” I received only two replies. George F. O'Neill of Pinkerton's Inc. wrote, “There is very little data in our Archives for the period 1920's, 1930's, 1940's” (16 Aug. 1979). Arnold M. Jones of the New Jersey agency bearing his name said he could not help, “due to the fact that we are extremely busy and time is of the essence” (13 Aug. 1979).
17 The files of certain corporation law firms contain extensive information on the labor work of private detective agencies. Researching for Violence and Reform, I found extensive information in the Marc Eidlitz Papers (New York Public Library) and Walter Drew Papers (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor). Legal documents held in the Coxe Mining Papers contain Pinkerton reports for the 1902 anthracite strike (casting still further doubt on Morn's and the Pinkerton's disclaimers for the period 1895–1905), these being held in the Manuscripts Department of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia: information on the Coxe Papers supplied by Richard G. Healey (Department of Geography, University of Edinburgh): Healey to R. J.-J., 26 Aug. 1980. In Great Expectations: Marriage and Divorce in Post-Victorian America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980)Google Scholar, Elaine Tyler May demonstrates the utility of law-firm records for the study of marital expectations and divorce up to the 1920s, and it seems unlikely that nothing could be gleaned from such records about detective work.
18 In addition to May, see, for example, O'Neill, William L., Divorce in the Progressive Era (New York: New Viewpoints, 1967)Google Scholar, and Norton, Arthur J. and Glick, Paul C., “Marital Instability: Past, Present, and Future,” Journal of Social Issues, 32 (1976), 5–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
19 O'Neill, pp. 6–7, 24–25. For a critique of O'Neill and other exponents of the view, see May, pp. 6–7, 184 n. 14.
20 Ryan, Mary P., “The Explosion of Family History,” Reviews in American History, 10 (special decennial issue, 1982), 190CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
21 William Zumach and Daniel O'Regan investigated private detective agencies on behalf of the Research Division of the U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations in 1913 and 1914, and found they were concentrated in Manhattan: Jeffreys-Jones, , Violence and Reform, pp. 81, 95Google Scholar. See also Manhattan Yellow Pages (1979), pp. 987–90 and Los Angeles Yellow Pages (1976), pp. 1088–1092.
22 See Allen, Jeanne T., “The Decay of the Motion Picture Patents Company,” in Balio, Tino, ed., The American Film Industry (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976), p. 129Google Scholar, Lisca, Peter, “The Grapes of Wrath,” in Davis, Robert M., ed., Twentieth Century Views of John Steinbeck (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1972), p. 80Google Scholar, and the characterization of Film Noir by Willets, Ralph, “The Nation in Crisis: Hollywood's Response to the 1940s,” in Davies, Philip and Neve, Brian, eds., Cinema, Politics and Society in America (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1981), pp. 66, 68Google Scholar.
23 See Willett, p. 68.
24 Eleven out of thirty-five display advertisements in Manhattan publicized “matrimonial” services, but only nine out of thirty-nine in Los Angeles offered “domestic” ones. Apparently, one's spouse is marginally more likely to have one shadowed than is one's non-marital sexual cohabitant.