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In fiction, female detectives have been around nearly as long as male detectives have. As detective novels grew in popularity, there became an increase in authors writing about women, and woman detectives especially. Among these authors was Andrew
Forrester, who wrote about the mysterious "Miss G."
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Agatha
Christie is one of the most prominent authors of the 1900s. Her mystery novels are still read and referenced today and inspired many other mystery books. Though it wasn’t unusual for women to write in Christie’s time, it wasn’t common for them to be published. Christie’s contribution to the
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There were other female authors who wrote novels. Unfortunately, many of these women were lost to time. There is one story, written by a woman from the
Victorian ages, which centers around a “Detective Maidservant.” In it, the maidservant conducts an investigation, not too different from the ones
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was released almost instantaneously as
Forrester's. The two men are credited as being the first authors of detective novels which had female narrators. Ruth Trail was the very first woman in literature to be shown doing detective work. "Ruth the Betrayer" was written by Edward Ellis and published
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was a female detective who owned her own business in the 1920s. She is often regarded as the first
British female detective and is known mostly for her undercover jobs. She dealt mostly with adultery cases, but there were also accounts of her work spying on suffragettes in London. There has been
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With the exception of these novels, there were hardly any books written with female narrators. It wasn’t until the mid-late 1900s that heroine novels really picked up steam. In the 1900s, the desire for more female detectives/heroines grew, and many more books were published for the public. Some
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These female detectives were the beginning of women’s acceptance into the police force. However, it wasn’t for another 150 years that women were employed by law enforcement agencies. In
Britain, police forces did not allow women to become officers until after World War 1.
90:. This consisted of a group of seven men who investigated a robbery gone wrong. They got their name from the Bow Street magistrate’s office, the place where the men all worked. They had been trained to do this kind of work by their boss, John Fielding.
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Kuczynski (Ursula
Hamburger). She was also known by her undercover name: Agent Sonya. Ursula lived in the mid 1900s and was a triple agent, spying on both the Allies and the Axel in World War II, for communist Russia. Other
173:. Forrester's Miss G., as she is often referred to, is a mysterious narrator. The audience knows almost nothing about her and are left to discover her character on their own. The book focuses on several of Miss G.'s cases.
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The detective stories popular in today's society owe their origins to excerpts written by actual detectives at the beginning of the profession. These stories are what prompted the mystery genre.
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Mrs. Paschal, conceived at the same time as Miss G., is another prominent female detective. She was written to be intuitive and perceptive. Her character is quite the opposite of Miss G’s.
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Miss G. is often viewed as the first fictional female detective, although some would argue that the first female detective was Mrs. Paschal written by
Stephens W. Hayward. His novel
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Women have been doing detective work for centuries, even though there has been little-to-no documentation on them. Accounts from the mid 1800s reveal the work of female detectives.
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Other organizations followed the Bow Street
Runners. There were small forces all across Europe that maintained order as best they could until a unified police force was created.
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Bredesen, Dagni A., "Conformist
Subversion: The Ambivalent Agency in Revelations of a Lady Detective" (2006). Faculty Research & Creative Activity. 1. Pg 24 :
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Bredesen, Dagni A., "On the Trail of the First Professional Female Detectives in British Fiction" (2010). Faculty Research & Creative Activity. 3.
502:(London, , 1863). The full work has been published in a single volume by Valancourt Books, in 2019, edited and with an introduction by Dagni Bredesen.
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over the course of the year 1862. Its last installment was in 1863. Ruth was a spy for the London police and lived a double life.
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Silent Voices: Forgotten Novels by Victorian Women Writers, “The Detective Maidservant.” pp.57-66. United Kingdom: Praeger, 2003.
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Women did detective work on their own, mostly without recognition. They covered a wide range of cases, from robberies to murder.
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that are written about today, and eventually solves the problem. This was highly unusual for the time period it was written in.
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There are many accounts of women doing spy work in the 19th and 20th centuries. One such account is of a woman named
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Beattie, J. M.. The First English Detectives: The Bow Street Runners and the Policing of London, 1750-1840, page 1.
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Stapleton, Sussanah. “The Adventures of Maud West, Lady Detective: Secrets and Lies in the Golden Age of Crime.”
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Klein, Kathleen Gregory. The woman detective: gender & genre. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995.
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Along with performing the work of spies, women held many other vital positions during wartime:
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The Spectator; "The rollicking adventures of a real-life female sleuth;" 15 Jun 2019 .
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The first records of a detective organization in London began in 1767, with the
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Forrester, Andrew. The Female Detective. United States: Sourcebooks, 2016.
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speculation that Maud’s accounts of her cases were largely exaggerated.
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Published the year after "Ruth the Betrayer" was Andrew Forrester’s
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Hardboiled and High Heeled: The Woman Detective in Popular Culture.
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https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/one-female-sleuth-after-another
536:"The golden age of murder: Agatha Christie and the Detection Club"
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402:"Women detectives: meet the Victorian female super sleuths"
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History Extra Podcast: Female Spies of the Civil War Era
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62:Learn how and when to remove this message
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599:History of women in the United Kingdom
439:http://thekeep.eiu.edu/women_faculty/1
427:http://thekeep.eiu.edu/women_faculty/3
589:Law enforcement in the United Kingdom
500:Ruth the Betrayer; or, The Female Spy
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359:List of female detective characters
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524:N.p.: Taylor & Francis, 2004.
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487:Revelations of a Lady Detective.
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342:Women's roles in the World Wars
163:Revelations of a Lady Detective
153:Female detectives in literature
400:Darby, Nell (September 2020).
272:Other roles performed by women
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126:History of female detectives
264:mystery genre was immense.
182:female detective characters
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120:Dublin Metropolitan Police
184:in literature/on screen:
80:Bow Street police station
594:Women in law enforcement
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105:Abingdon Borough Police
485:Hayward, W. Stephens.
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115:City of Glasgow Police
110:Banbury Borough Police
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171:The Female Detective
520:Mizejewski, Linda.
378:"Wikimedia Commons"
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38:Please help
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31:lead section
545:13 December
411:13 December
189:Irene Adler
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584:Detectives
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365:References
200:Nancy Drew
195:Lara Croft
180:prominent
146:Maud West
141:Maud West
52:June 2022
348:See also
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193:Lady
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