Original printed promotional stationery for his ‘universal information” service. 13 Galerie Vivienne [a Paris arcade], 1841. 1 page, with no written message, but posted on verso to the lawyer Blondel in Mortagne, France. (Coincidentally, the name Blondel was one that Vidocq himself used as an alias while a young criminal dodging arrest during the French revolution.)
This printed stationery – mailed, but curiously without any written message, is Vidocq’s advertisement for the world’s first private detective agency, which he had formed a decade before, when resigning as head of the Surete, the first criminal investigative detective bureau of the French Police.
The printed French text extols and enumerates Vidocq’s capabilities. Honored by the King for his Police service, he had working professionally for more than 20 years with “uncontested success”. For 20 francs a year he guaranteed to supply information about any commercial swindle, “exposing plotters of all ranks”, and proceeding with civil and criminal prosecutions. He worked in the interest of both businesses and families, obtaining, “under the seal of the most inviolable secrecy”, the “most delicate” information about the background, morality, solvency, habits and frequent contacts of employees and private individuals – information that would be useful before “contracting a marriage, forming an association, loaning money, or buying or selling a business.
Vidocq has been acclaimed the first private detective and “the father of modern criminology”. A legendary figure in his own lifetime, he inspired literary characters of Balzac, Dumas, Victor Hugo (in Les Miserables) and Edgar Allen Poe, and was mentioned in Melville’s Moby Dick and Dickens’ Great Expectations.
Condition:
Fair. Printed on very fragile paper; several tears, some tape-repaired, one, from seal opening, affecting three lines of type.