Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 July 1883 — The French Detective. [ARTICLE]

The French Detective.

During the empire, between the years 1855 and 1868, there lived in Pans an “Englishman who moved in good society, was a member of more than one firstf class dub, and who, until after his death, was not known to belong to the secret police of Paris. Apparently he was a middle-aged gentleman with good private means, living alone and dining every day at Bignon’s or the Case Anglais. Yet this individual was the means of bringing more scoundrels of a certain class to justice than perhaps any other detective! in the French capitol. All the secret agents of the Paris force have their special line of business—their speciqj beat, so to speak, where they hunt up the particular game they are told to look after. This Englishman had in his day been a great gambler, ands even long after he had g'ven up rogue et noir and baccarat, ved a little ecart with not very low points, mid could hardly exist without his rubber of whist every evening. His speciality with the police was to spot down men who cheated, or were proprietors of gambling hells. On one occasion, which must be remembered by many members of the French Jockey Club, he was the means of having arrested a person who had been introduced into that club, and who played certain tricks with money and with checks that threw discredit on all the members until the affair was. cleared up. And yet this gentleman lived more than, a dozen years in Paris without anyone suspecting his employment, ana even after his death the truth only came out by accident. Of men employed in the same manner as was this Englishmen—each man having his own beat in the hunting ground of crime—there are at least three or four dozen in Paris. a matter of course, their lives would not be worth a week’s purchase if the dangerous classes could identify them. It is only by keeping their names and appearances strictly secret that they carry on their work, which they certainly do in as efficient a manner as any body of public servants in the world.— Nineteenth Century.