A short and mysterious life

One Dubliner eludes the researcher, and highlights the problems with investigating private detectives

Sometimes, however hard you try, you can't flesh out the bones of a long-gone private detective - certainly not through desk-based research. This is the case with Frank Ridgway. The only reason I know he was a private detective is because this is how he described himself in the 1911 census; there is no online evidence of this career anywhere else.

In fact, much of Frank's younger days are unknown to me, mainly because he was from Ireland, and many records from his time there have not survived.  He was born in Dublin in 1872. I know that he had emigrated to England by 1901, and that before becoming an inquiry agent, he was a commercial traveller for a stationer. In 1901, he was visiting Blackpool, perhaps for work. Five years later, he was living in Sowerby Bridge, Yorkshire, but in June 1906, he married Penelope Ellen Rimmer in Everton, Liverpool, and would stay in that city the rest of his life.

Frank’s adopted city of Liverpool

Frank and Penelope had two daughters - Florence, born 1907, and Emmeline Mary, two years later. In 1909, they were living at Spencer Street in Everton, and two years later, at Prescot Street, West Derby. Their married life was short: Frank died in West Derby in early 1913, aged only 41. His widow would remarry the following year, and again in 1921 after her second husband died.

That is all I know of Frank. He does not appear to have advertised in the Liverpool press; nor does he appear in any court records, as some detectives did. I do know that Liverpool was home to a couple of very successful private detectives, who had long careers, and a history of policemen transferring their skills in later life to private inquiry work.

How did Frank compete with them? Why did he decide to give up his work as a commercial traveller, and why did he think private detective work would be more suitable for a married man? So much is left unknown - but at least I do know that, at least for a while, this Dubliner made his home in Liverpool and decided to try his hand at a different line of work.