The Osceola times., 1882-09-16
FEMALE DETECTIVES.
The Opinion Of an Old Expert as to Their
Usefulness-The Best One he Ever Saw.
New York Sun.

The Opinion Of an Old Expert as to Their
Usefulness-The Best One he Ever Saw.
New York Sun.
Looking over the paper this morning,
meditatively remarked an old detective,
one hot afternoon last week, while he
pushed the mint aside to spear with his
straw big strawberry at the bottom of
his glass / read an advertisement that
caught my eye, the offer of a highly edu-
eated widow to engage as detective, and
I've been wondering to myself if it can
be the same widow / knew of once in a
certain western city who put up a job that
l had TO look into professionally. She
claimed to be detective, and woman
who wanted divorce from her husband
engaged her to find the evidence reqli-
site. Her way TO find it was to manufac-
ture it, by entrapping the man into what
seemed to be very compromising situa-
ton with her, and having him surprised
by witnesses ready at a signal from her.
l was engaged to expose and beat the lit
tie game, and did so. Perhaps this isn't
the same woman. Probably she isn't,
for that was 10 years ago, not long after
the war, and that woman was 80 then.
l don't regard women as good for
straight detective work at all. In the
course of working up a case circumstan-
ces may occasionally arise in which, to
get at some one particular little detail or
item of fact, woman may be employed
to advantage, and every detective knows
women that lac can get and use for such
an occasion, but their casual utilization
in that way does not make them detec-
tives. If should send a boy into place
and tell him to notice if there was in
there a person answering a certain de-
scription, that wouldn't make him a de-
tective, would it? Well, that gives you
little idea of what mean.
Women are often employed as dctcc-
tives by divorce lawyers, and are occa-
sionally, by business houses, put on to
work up some young employe that they
suspect is living too fast, perhaps, on
their money. For those things a smart
woman, especially if she is pretty and
has no squeamishness about the sort of
society she goes into, or what she does,
has advantages over man. But i have
never known or heard of woman doing
any leading or prominent detective work
in the unraveling of criminal mystery
or the ferreting out of the perpetrators of
a crime such as murder, robbery, or a
forgery. The women who have the men
tai force and power of concentrationto 10
do that class Of work are few, if indeed
they exist at ALL and do not seem to go
into the business.
Another thing; a woman who obtains
the personal knowledge of and familiari-
ty among the criminal circles that are in
dispensable for good detective, almost
inevitably ends by joining them herself
If, indeed, she has not actually COM
menced there and is much more liable
to be their accomplice than their betray-
er to justice. And that consideration
leads me to mention another peculiar
field of usefulness for the so-called female
detectives-viz: as go-betweens or nego-
tiators between thieves and their victims
for the restoration of stolen property. 1t
is not at all common dodge for women
employed in that capacity to play them
selves as detectives. But, after all, the
best place for the female detective is in
novel or play, and Lotta was the best
one ever saw.