Paddington' Pollaky, private detective
Subtitle: the mysterious life and times of the real Sherlock Holmes
By: Bryan Kesselman
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2015
Place of publication: Gloucestershire
Language: eng
Number of pages: 394
ISBN-13: 9780750963312
Subjects: Private investigators; History; Cases; Detectives; Biography
Description: Who was the Victorian super-sleuth 'Paddington' Pollaky? In reality, he was a contradiction: a man of mystery who tried to keep out of the limelight, while at times he craved recognition and publicity. He was a busybody, a meddler, yet someone whose heart was ultimately in the right place. Newspaper accounts detail his work as a private detective in London, his association with The Society for the Protection of Young Females, his foiling of those involved in sex-trafficking, and of his tracking down of abducted children. Themes that remain relevant in the twenty-first century. What was his involvement in the American Civil War? Why did he place cryptic messages in the agony column of The Times? And why were the newspapers so interested in this Hungarian detective and adventurer while the police thoroughly disapproved of him? In this first biography of this complex character, author Bryan Kesselman answers these questions, and examines whether it was Pollaky who provided inspiration for the literary greats Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
Table of contents: title: Cover; Title; Dedication; Acknowledgements; Contents; Introduction; 1 In Hungary; 2 Arrival in England; 3 'Inspector Bucket', Lord Lytton, Lord Derby, Lord Palmerston, the Road House Murder and Whicher; 4 Marriage One; 5 Pollaky Alone; 6 Confederate Correspondence; 7 Marriage Two; 8 Sir Richard Mayne; 9 1862 Naturalisation Application; title: 'It would be monstrous'; 10 The Casebook of Ignatius Pollaky; 11 An Interview with Pollaky; 12 Dickens, Lewis Carroll, W.S. Gilbert, and Others; 13 Retirement; 14 Naturalisation; 15 Death; I 'Small-Beer Chronicles' (Dickens); II 'The Agony Column'; title: III 'Polly Perkins of Paddington Green'IV The Colonel's Song etc. (Gilbert and Sullivan); Bibliography and Sources; Plates; Copyright.