Shadowing young clerks in 1860s New York

In the 1860s, one Manchester newspaper reported concerns about private detectives' activities in New York

In July 1869, the Manchester Courier reported on concerns about private detectives across the pond in New York, highlighting fears that detective agencies abused their position to try and trap innocent people. This followed a feature in the New York Times on the subject.

The Courier stated that there were several detective agencies, as well as individual detectives working for themselves, in New York, and that several - as a business tactic - shadowed the young male clerks who worked for many respectable businesses in the city.

These were men in responsible positions, who aimed to have successful careers. However, private detectives would shadow them in the hope of finding them engaged in suspicious or irresponsible behaviour - and they would then report the clerks to their employers.

The private detective would first identify a potential target - known as getting a ‘spot’ on them. They would then take up a position standing near the clerk’s place of business shortly before closing-up time. The clerk would come out after his day’s work, and be ‘shadowed’ all evening, or until he went back to his home for the night.

It was assumed that a proportion of these young men, in search of entertainment, would not go home straight away, but would instead go to a local billiard-room or a restaurant (or somewhere more illicit). The private detective would see it as his ‘duty’ to follow the clerk in - if he could do so without being ‘dropped-on’ (ie, spotted by the clerk) - to see how much money he was spending.

The aim was to establish whether a clerk was spending too much money, or spending it on people who were not fellow clerks. Although not spelled out in the sometimes prudish Victorian press, it was clear that the hope of private detectives was that the clerk would be paying for prostitutes or the like - ‘disreputable and dangerous associates of either sex’.

If a clerk did so, and did not notice the detective watching his every move, he would regret it; the detective might report him to his employer or, more likely, the unscrupulous private eye might simply resort to blackmail. It was hoped by them that the clerk would be so keen to maintain both his employment and his reputation that he would pay to make the detective go away.

(Story taken from the Manchester Courier of 1 July 1869; image by Fallaner and used under Creative Commons)