Meet History’s Trailblazing Female Detectives
If you love Miss Scarlet and The Duke and admire Eliza Scarlet’s unconventional career as a private detective, you’ll be amazed at history’s real female trailblazers! Turns out that while few in number, women private eyes worked on both sides of the Atlantic in the early 19th century.
To learn more about these investigators who unearthed evidence of adultery as the UK loosened its divorce laws, and who gained intelligence for both sides in the American Civil War, we turned to Nell Darby, crime historian and author of Sister Sleuths: Female Detectives in Britain. Meet some of the pioneering ladies who capitalized on their unique ability to gain feminine confidences, defied convention, and deserve to be more celebrated than they are.
- 1.
Kate Warne Foiled an Assassination Plot
Portrait of Union soldier alleged to be detective Kate Warne in disguise. In 1856, a self-possessed Kate Warne strode into Allan Pinkerton’s Chicago detective agency asking to be hired. “She was a widowed 23-year-old, needed to earn a living, and obviously wanted something different from the norm to keep her occupied,” says Darby. Pinkerton gave her a chance and “she’s the first recorded female detective in the U.S. [whom] we know anything about.”
Warne’s career-defining case came in February 1861, when “she infiltrated various social gatherings and learned of a plan to kill Abraham Lincoln” as he changed trains in Maryland, en route to his inauguration. “She arranged for the president-elect to be on a different overnight train [into Baltimore],” says Darby. Then, “in disguise as her invalid brother,” Lincoln joined Warne on a private train headed directly to D.C. It’s alleged that Pinkerton chose “We Never Sleep” for his agency slogan, “arguably from the fact that Warne famously stayed awake all night to ensure nothing happened to Lincoln.” Warne and other Pinkerton agents went on to spy for the Union side throughout the Civil War.
- 2.
Hattie Lawton Spied on Confederates
Hattie Lawson with fellow Union Pinkerton agent, Timothy Webster, before his execution in Richmond, VA for wartime espionage. Hattie Lawton was hired into Pinkerton’s newly formed Female Detective Bureau in 1860 and reported to Kate Warne herself! “Very little is known about Lawton,” says Darby, but “it’s believed she was mixed race. … She could pass as white and had the advantage of playing a variety of roles according to what was needed of her.” In 1862, Lawton and another Pinkerton agent, Timothy Webster, posed as a married couple in Richmond, Virginia to gather intelligence about Rebel troop movements. “Both were caught and convicted. Timothy ended up being executed and Hattie was sentenced to a year in jail. It’s believed she was exchanged for a female Confederate spy.”
- 3.
Cora Strayer’s Superpower was Self-Promotion
Ad published by Chicago Directory Company, 1905. (Digital source Fold3.com) This shrewd Chicago businesswoman started advertising her services in 1902 but claimed to have been established 12 years earlier. “It’s not clear whether she really started that early or whether she was just very good at positioning herself as experienced,” says Darby. Cora Strayer started her own agency after she divorced and “as she got more work in, she employed other individuals, including men.” Local press was intrigued by her status as boss; Strayer was frequently interviewed and occasionally submitted her own stories to the newspapers.
- 4.
Antonia Moser was Trained by a Police Detective
Ad from Votes for Women, London, 23 July, 1909. (Newspaper image © The British Library Board. All rights reserved. With thanks to The British Newspaper Archive.) Unhappily married off to a first cousin, Antonia (Williamson) Moser’s answer to a dull life was securing a job at a London PI agency run by former police detective Maurice Moser. “He taught her everything she needed to know,” says Darby. “And they soon started an affair.” The sweethearts moved in together and she began using his name, but “they had quite an up and down relationship. They split up and became competitors, with Antonia opening her own agency.” Once more a separated woman working for herself, “she got this growing awareness about how unfair women’s lives were,” adds Darby. She became a devoted suffragist, writing regularly to suffragette newspapers to argue for women’s rights and “her agency shifted from detective work to start offering financial and legal advice for women.”
- 5.
Maud West Made Headlines Worldwide
Maud West posing as a Salvation Army worker, c 1920. Maud West understood the power of the press and took it to the next level, achieving international renown. “She was very keen to sell her exploits to the papers, to dramatize how exciting her job was. She’d emphasize her more unusual cases and that she carried a revolver with her,” says Darby. According to West’s own anecdotes, she thwarted jewel thieves, tracked down runaway heiresses, and was once cornered in a Brazilian cocaine factory. And she apparently loved dressing up to do her undercover work. “You got a sense she really enjoyed that aspect of the job. She was photographed in newspapers posing as these different characters. She talked of disguising herself as hotel chambermaid, nurse, shabby old scrub woman, fortune teller, and even as a man.”
- 6.
Kate Easton Started on Stage
Advertisement from The Daily Telegraph, September 17, 1907. Kate Easton was an actress and singer on the London stage before making a career of detective work in 1903. “She switched presumably for a bit more security. Parts may’ve started drying up when she got beyond the first blush of youth,” says Darby. “But Easton used those [theater] skills. … She was adept at adopting different personae and changing her voice, appearance and mannerisms to pretend to be different characters.”
In her 28 years of professional sleuthing, Easton took cases including blackmail and chasing debtors, but divorce was her bread and butter. She never married and devoted her life to investigation. “She seems to have been in the same office for her entire working life, which was unusual. A lot of private detectives—male and female—went through ebbs and flows; they earned less money and had to move locations. But she had this work address and stayed there for the whole of her long career.”
- 7.
Matilda Mitchell: Sleuthing Shopgirl?
Selfridges London 1909. Matilda Mitchell is unique in that she started as a private detective in London but was then hired as superintendent of the Selfridges department store’s detective squad. “Initially, the big luxury stores would get counter staff to look out for anyone thieving,” says Darby. “Then they gradually started employing standalone detectives to identify shoplifters. This was what Matilda did. She was particularly proud of one incident where a Frenchman stole a bronze ornament that he’d hidden under his waistcoat. Matilda managed to catch hold of him despite his large size. There were no other staff members to help her, yet she was able to retain him until assistance eventually came.”
