The Detective of the Present -- Finn and Jourdan
Editors’ note: Following is an editorial burlesque from the Brooklyn Eagle of May 4, 1874. It takes the shape of an Abbot and Costello-like cross-talk act that ridicules the inefficiency of the police under the administration of Major General James Jourdan (1832-1910), one of the Republican appointees to the new Brooklyn Police Commission. It centers on the failed investigation into the 1872 murder of Music Professor John B. Panormo and the arrest of an innocent man.
Most important for us, however, is that by 1874 detective literature seems to have formed a separate, recognizable genre with its own canon.
Time was when a detective was a man who detected things. A detective is still that in some European countries; and he still detects things—in novels. There's Buckett in “Bleak House” who detects Lady Dedlook, and there's that detective in Collin’s story of the “Moon Stone,” quite a detector. New York used to have Old Hayes, who could detect a thing or two; Paris has had Vidocq, and Bow street has had Forster.* But the race has died out entirely in America, and is dying out in England.
Commissioner Jourdan, of Brooklyn, has been making an effort to raise up a detective or two and has actually produced Corr and Bill. Corr and Bill were raised to the Vidocquian task of tracing a mystic murder. Finnan is a hatter; and Finnan has been in States Prison. That ought to be enough for any detective such as Corr to concluded that Finnan did the deed. Edgar A. Poe could not reason out a conclusion clearer than that. So Corr went to where Finnan was making hats.
Is Finnan here? Yes—want to see him?