Twenty Years a Detective in the Wickedest City in the World

"I joined a circus that was moving toward my home town in Western Iowa, intending to leave it there and quit being a tramp. I was then down in Eastern Pennsylvania. I was a canv...

In the ordinary coin-paying slot machine, the dial shows alternate reds and blacks, interspersed here and there with quarters, halves and, perhaps, $1. The player wins 5 cents o...

The records will show that they have been nolle prossed. The Detrich case will show dismissal for want of prosecution, but it was really on account of settlement having been mad...

How she came into the studio on the day Webster was shot, asserting that she had "told that old slob everything" (meaning her husband), and said she was going to New York; how W...

More striking than the beautiful imageries and the wealth of quotation from ancient and modern authors with which the Colonel embellished his speech was his strong play upon "th...

It was a rhetorical and sensational sentence in which a recent speaker in this city declared that the worst grafter is the man who does not vote. But there is much more than a k...

There is no telling how much money these individuals took away from the unsuspecting public, but it is estimated at over $1,000,000. Of this, 20 per cent went to the police, 40...

Replying to your application to write letters for us at your home during spare time, we beg to say that your writing is satisfactory, and we have decided to offer you the appoin...

The arrest of Beverly and Mrs. Dixon was made on a warrant signed by Miss Miller, who had entered into correspondence with them from her home in Portland, Ore. The fee in Chicag...

National Fire Proofing Company, New York and Chicago. Federal Trust Company, New York and Chicago. Keystone Structure Cleaning Company, Philadelphia. McGuire, Johnston & Co., Ne...

The problem is to understand vagrancy so well that we can deal with it on a large enough scale both to restore the vagrant to the working world or to keep him in custody, and to...

One of the most famous of fortune tellers, a woman, died suddenly. She had been reading cards in the same house for forty years, and on the day of her funeral her house was crow...

Every little while a banker somewhere goes wrong with funds that are intrusted to him, and in the telling of the story the "Chicago Board of Trade" is the secret of his undoing.

Chicago has its quota of doctors who "cure" the morphine habit, but always in the way that "Dr." C---- did. Most of them are "fiends" themselves who eke out a living selling the...

If peace officers throughout the country would secure finger prints of all criminals passing through their hands and forward them to a central bureau it would facilitate the app...

His method is to forge an order on some big business house and get certain goods. One day he got a lot of belting from a well-known firm on a forged order. He sold this later an...

A conductor and brakeman had alighted and run forward on the sudden stop of the train as they thought some accident had happened, inquired of Wooldridge what was the trouble. He...

75 girls under age rescued from a house of ill fame and a life of shame, and returned to their parents or guardians, or sent to the Juvenile School or the House of Good Shepherd.

Some of our citizens are paying a high price for education in art and book swindles. People, generally, are becoming experts in detecting small frauds and attacks upon their poc...

There is also the case of an important Indian army officer who went broke. The authorities gave him first-class passage to Calcutta, and $250 expense money. He had lost several...

This bureau will ascertain the record of each man from the date he has, and if one not yet given trial proves to be an habitual criminal, this fact will be made known to the pro...

At the present time in all parts of the United States the lower strata of men and women are deprived of the results of their labor except in quantities barely sufficient to reta...

In the petty sessions at Tinahely, Ireland, Justice O'Gorman in May, 1905, is reported in the Wicklow People, a newspaper which has a wide circulation in the South of Ireland, a...

Another more recent artifice is the telephone; the confederate of the "sneak" at an appointed minute "calls up" the bank and requests that the paying teller be sent to the 'phon...

"It is the press of the country that has got the farmer down on the tramp. You may drive for fifty miles and interview each farmer as you come to him and you won't find five to...

A slip, or what is known in a printing office as a "proof," is then printed, and armed with this the blackmailer pays a visit to the person he intends to fleece. He represents h...

But Bertha escaped from the asylum, which has for its safeguards the lock and the steel bar. Locks and bars are nothing to "Fainting Bertha"! She was recaptured and returned, on...

The other day, in the country near by, a man with his hands in his pockets stepped up to a wagon standing in front of his door and said to the driver: "You made an insulting rem...

The disaster was brought about by the appointment of a committee by the Missouri legislature to investigate the "get-rich-quick" situation. St. Louis had become the haven of eve...

In Sullivan's office the detectives found great quantities of advertising matter. This matter was thoroughly gone over in the search for evidence against the grain and stock bro...

Some of these sayings will strike you as very old and lacking in novelty. But, old as these rules are, human beings have not yet learned to follow them. And they won't learn for...

Detective Wooldridge, who has examined many of these concerns, desires to place special emphasis upon the crafty use which these companies make of the names and services of repu...

The work-at-home scheme is operated in a variety of ways, but the underlying principle is the same in all cases. Sometimes the work to be done consists in embroidering doilies o...

The sad experiences of people who have been victimized by gay deceivers, male or female, perhaps contain a lesson to persons who carelessly contemplate matrimony. When a strange...

May 28, 1905, perhaps, his appearance in the role of a ragpicker, which led to the arrest and conviction of two negro highwaymen, Henry Reed and Ed Lane, was his most daring and...

"It is sixteen years since I have talked to a newspaper reporter," said Mrs. Mary Noonan McDonald. "Again and again have I been besought to tell my story, but long ago I determi...

He is not, however, on very friendly terms with other specialists. A few years ago when some adverse legislation was threatened at Springfield it was necessary to raise a fund t...

"What is the explanation? We observe that the normal woman is naturally less sensitive to pain than a man, and compassion is the offspring of sensitiveness. If the one be wantin...

After twenty years of heroic warfare and scores of hair-breadth escapes, in his unceasing battle with the devil and the grafter, Mr. Wooldridge tells in a graphic manner how Wil...

I am not making you this proposition on the spur of the moment, for I have spent much time and thought before deciding to write you, and all I ask is that, AS AN EVIDENCE OF YOU...