Wooldridge, Clifton R.:

$850 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

VAMPIRES EXPOSED; OR FERRETING OUT THE WOMAN GRAFTERS.... A very rare piece of not-quite-non-fiction by Clifton Wooldridge, "The Sherlock Holmes of Chicago," focusing on the grafts and swindles run by women he encountered during his long and conflicted career in the Chicago police force. Wooldridge (1854-1933) was something of a local celebrity of his own making: a Kentucky native who came to the Windy City after failing to strike it rich in Colorado, he joined the police force in 1888. By his own account, during his twenty-five years on the force he made 19,500 arrests, was shot at forty-four times, recovered over $200,000 in stolen property, saved over 100 women from prostitution, and broke up hundreds of criminal grifts. The Chicago Tribune was often on his side, running articles about his grand feats of derring-do and dubbing him the "Sherlock Holmes of Chicago." He was also famous for the multifarious disguises he used to fool criminals, including bizarre caricatures such as "Heck" Houston, a stock raiser from Laramie who sported an oversized fur coat and enormous, bushy fake beard.This text focuses on grifts run by "the gentler sex." Wooldridge writes: "When the subtle intellect of a woman is behind a scheme to defraud invariably is it found that the proposition is a deep one...directed with an attention to detail more likely to deceive persons of intelligence than the coarse conspiracies of men. Contrary to popular impression the woman swindler does not defraud by wile

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