None of their business

In the 1860s, there was dislike of the burgeoning private detective industry - and the newspapers made sure they expressed their concerns

After the Matrimonial Causes Act was passed in 1857, the private detective started to grow - due to the need to find evidence of adultery to use in divorce cases. It didn't take long for this growth to be spotted by the press, and disapproved of. It was felt that a lot of private detectives' business involved spying on the private domestic life of individuals, and this was rather un-British. It also involved staid but respectable police detectives realising that they could find a successful second career as private eyes, and this also met with opprobrium. In 1862, the Newport Gazette bemoaned the work of private detectives. This was the result of a newspaper advertisement requesting information about a missing woman. The woman was married, and her husband had employed a private detective to track her down. It turned out that the lady was located at the house of her lover - so one would think that the private detective would be commended for finding her.

Not so. The Gazette was cross: although she would now have to explain herself to her husband without the police having been involved, the private detective was himself a former policeman. Did he have "any right to puff off his business in the papers" by publicising the names of individuals in his adverts who "should never have been brought before the public"? The clear suggestion here was that this was a private, personal matter, and that the parties involved should have been left to deal with their affairs on their own. That the private detective had paid for an advert to be published highlighting the fact that this woman had gone 'missing' had made it a public affair, and this was unacceptable. It was not the British way of doing things.

Caernarfon (formerly Caernarvon) wanted private detectives to be banned from pestering the police with enquiries

Two years later, in 1864, another Welsh newspaper looked at other concerns. One of the main tasks of private detectives was to make enquiries, and these were normally by letter. They produced, in fact, a huge number of letters. The North Wales Chronicle noted that the result of this was that provincial police forces were being inundated with requests for information from private detection agencies. They were often asking about local small traders, but also about clergymen and professional men, wanting accounts of their character, respectability and monetary worth.

This had reached a peak locally in 1862, at which point, the police in Caernarfon were forbidden from replying to any enquiries of this kind from the private detective agencies that had been formed solely to make such requests. The Chronicle expressed its dissatisfaction that 'this system of espionage' had become so widespread. Concerns were similarly widespread; in Lincolnshire, a report on the work of private detectives there was submitted to the Home Secretary with a request that the government should make it illegal for police to have to answer these onerous queries.

Ultimately, the industry would continue to grow, but concerns about private detectives and the nature of their work would continue to be bemoaned in the press at regular intervals.