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Web Site Showcases
American Detective Fiction

Posting all Detective Fiction
Prior to Conan Doyle

Fully Searchable

The mission of the Westminster Detective Library to catalog and make available online all the short fiction dealing with detectives and detection published in the United States before Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “A Scandal in Bohemia” (1891).

This site grew out of research for the anthology Early American Detective Stories (McFarland 2008) that I edited with my mentor and colleague LeRoy Lad Panek (1943-2021), winner of two Edgar awards for his contributions to the scholarly field of detective criticism. We uncovered a treasure-trove of forgotten and previously unavailable detective stories, many more than could be included in a single anthology. And so this on-going project was born.

The site includes a working bibliography; full-text copy of entries are added as they are prepared. A few stories that were published in Britain but which appear to have been previously published in America have also been included and are indicated by an asterisk in the bibliography. I welcome comments and solicit both additional bibliographical entries and texts.

Mary M. Bendel-Simso, editor

Select Story

The Manhattan Well Murder

(DECEMBER 22, 1799)

by Edward Sherman Gould

OUR forefathers firmly believed certain adages, and among others, “Murder will out,” for general experience proved its truth. But in later days the rule seems to be reversed, and the city of New York has furnished its quota of practical contradictions of the old saying. The Nathan murder, the Rogers murder, the Burdell murder, are comparatively recent as well as conspicuous instances. The disappearance of Chief Justice Lansing was prominent in a preceding generation; and still further back the murder of Miss Gulielma Sands, better known, perhaps, as the Manhattan Well Murder, yet remains an unsolved mystery. The story is remarkable, and the trial of the suspected criminal was not less so.

Elias and Catherine Ring, Quakers, lived in Greenwich Street, near Franklin Street. Their family consisted of Hope Sands, Mrs. Ring’s sister; Gulielma Elmore Sands, her cousin; two young men, Russell and Lacy, boarders; Levi Weekes and his apprentice, also boarders; and some other boarders. Weekes was a brother of Ezra Weekes, a respectable and wealthy citizen, who was originally a carpenter. He was the builder and the principal owner of the City Hotel, formerly in Broadway, extending from Thames Street to Cedar Street.

It appeared by the testimony that Weekes was very intimate with Gulielma—called “Elma” by the witnesses—and Elma had confidentially informed… Read More

Miscellany

The Detective of the Present -- Finn and Jourdan

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?