Briefly, a detective

One Hull police officer tried his hand at being a private eye - but his attempt didn't last long

A short article today, which is appropriate given its subject. One of Yorkshire's private detectives in the 19th century was the ambitious Christopher Hunter. However, like many men at the time, his ambition did not translate into a long-term, successful career in sleuthing; in fact, his career trajectory was not a simple upward one, and detective work was only a brief part of it.

Christopher was born in 1849 in Melton, a village eight miles from Hull in East Yorkshire. He was the sixth child of William Hunter, an agricultural labourer and one-time gamekeeper. His was a rural area where many children would leave school and become labourers like their fathers; but Christopher was different. Instead of agricultural work, he joined the police.

He also married young; at 17, he married 16-year-old Eliza Dean in Sculcoates, Hull. The couple, who did not have any children, settled initially at Florence Terrace in Hull, with Christopher working as a police constable. The couple took on a couple of boarders to help pay the bills - something they would do for many years.

Although Christopher had joined the police by 1871, he had left by 1875, when he decided to start a new career as a private detective. He worked from home to save costs, but did spend on advertising his services in the York Herald, highlighting his police experience ('late detective officer, Hull'). Unfortunately, a reputation in the police did not necessarily equate to success as a private inquiry agent. Christopher's career was shortlived, and by 1877, he had changed career again, establishing himself as a grocer on the Fountain Road in Sculcoates.

A grocer’s shop window

This was a more successful business (apart from a traumatic incident at one point that saw him nearly lose his shop in a fire). It was one that he kept up until 1898, when he gave up his business and moved to Skipton Hill to take up farming. The farming, like the police work and the detective work, did not last too long: and Christopher's final career, as noted in the 1911 census, was as a jobbing gardener.

If it hadn't been for his 1875 press adverts, nothing would have been known of this Yorkshireman's attempt to establish himself as a private detective; more is known about his later life and moves.