Daisy Sainsbury, nel suo articolo Eugène-François Vidocq e la nascita del detective, pubblicato su The Public Domani Review, parla della figura di colui che, a ben vedere, possiamo definire il primo detective privato della storia.

According to his memoirs, Eugène-François Vidocq escaped from more than twenty prisons (sometimes dressed as a nun). Working on the other side of the law, he apprehended some 4000 criminals with a team of plainclothes agents. He founded the first criminal investigation bureau — staffed mainly with convicts — and, when he was later fired, the first private detective agency. He was one the fathers of modern criminology and had a rap sheet longer than his very tall tales. Who was Vidocq? Daisy Sainsbury investigates.

Eugène-François Vidocq è stato molte cose: membro di un circo itinerante, rissoso attaccabrighe, truffatore, criminale, fuggiasco, evaso da molte prigioni, ma anche fondatore, nel 1812, della Brigade de Sûreté di Parigi, il primo nucleo di quella polizia investigativa con agenti sotto copertura che diventerà il modello per Scotland Yard, fondata nel 1829, e per l’FBI, fondata nel 1908.

Vidocq, nel gestire la Brigade de Sûreté, utilizzava metodi che agli occhi di un moderno sembrano ovvi, ma che erano rivoluzionari per l’epoca: l’uso di registri con riportate le descrizioni fisiche, le condanne precedenti, gli pseudonimi e il modus operandi dei criminali. Ma anche una rudimentale applicazione di quelle che, nel futuro, sarebbero diventate le scienze forensi:

Vidocq also lays claim to being one of the earliest proponents of forensics. At crime scenes, he would jot down seemingly irrelevant details that might later prove useful. He preserved footprints with plaster of Paris and, while unable to find an ink that dried slowly enough to take a proper impression, he recognised the forensic potential of fingerprinting long before it became a mainstay of modern policing. He compared forged notes with handwriting samples, and in a rudimentary form of ballistics (an as-yet undeveloped science), unmasked a murderer by matching bullet to gun barrel.

Dopo aver lasciato la Sûreté fu anche il fondatore della prima, secondo alcuni, agenzia investigativa privata conosciuta: il Bureau de Renseignements. Quest’agenzia operava su due principali fronti:

On the one hand, it dealt in corporate intelligence, offering debt collecting and due diligence services. Via a subscription model, companies could pay to access a database derived from the elaborate filing system Vidocq had created while at the Sûreté, allowing them to conduct background checks on prospective collaborators and clients. In tandem, the agency also dealt in what it called “intimate” or “confidential” matters. This covered everything from spying on spouses suspected of having affairs (the poet Alfred de Vigny was one such client); hunting down missing loved ones (usually daughters of respectable families who’d eloped with disreputable suitors); and recovering personal possessions (jewellery, watches, Dr Coreff’s pet cockatoo, the Mayor of Rouen’s racehorse. . .)

Vidocq fu anche scrittore: le sue memorie, 4 volumi in cui rievocava la sua vita (romanzandola un po’ troppo, secondo i suoi detrattori), lo fecero diventare richiesto fra i grandi scrittori francesi del XIX secolo: Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac, Alexandre Dumas père, Théophile Gautier, i quali attinsero a piene mani dai suoi racconti, apparentemente infiniti, sulla malavita e sulle ingegnose imprese investigative che la superavano.

Vidocq’s memoirs anticipate both the emergence of the detective novel in the decades that followed and the true crime genre that continues to captivate audiences today. This double heritage is particularly apt as, in their fast-paced romp from misspent youth to later reformation, his memoirs are an audacious amalgamation of fact and fiction.

Attualmente la memoria di Vidocq è molto controversa, contestata da alcuni e osannata da altri. I suoi detrattori lo dipingono come un criminale che seppe sfruttare il caos del periodo in cui visse per soli scopi personali, ma per i suoi ammiratori egli fu il padre dell’investigazione moderna.

L’articolo non fornisce una risposta definitiva su chi realmente fu Eugène-François Vidocq, ma suggerisce una riflessione:

For a man known in his lifetime as a master of disguise, capable of appearing several inches taller or shorter than he really was, it is fitting that today Vidocq lives on in a hundred different iterations, each a projection of what the beholder wishes to see. Hero, antihero, showman, shapeshifter: in the absence of independently verifiable truth, Eugène-François Vidocq will be whatever you want him to be.