Twenty Years a Detective
in the Wickedest City in the World.
Twenty Years a Detective
IN THE WICKEDEST CITY IN THE WORLD.
20,000 ARRESTS MADE
12,900 CONVICTIONS ON STATE AND CITY LAWS
200 PENITENTIARY CONVICTIONS
The Devil and the Grafter
AND
HOW THEY WORK TOGETHER TO DECEIVE,
SWINDLE AND DESTROY MANKIND
AN ARMY OF 600,000 CRIMINALS AT WAR WITH
SOCIETY AND RELIGION
By CLIFTON R. WOOLDRIDGE
The World-Famous Criminologist and Detective
"The Incorruptible Sherlock Holmes of America"
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 Wildcat Insurance,
Fake Mines and Oil Wells, Turf Swindlers, Home Buying Swindlers,
Fake Bond and Investment Companies, Bucket Shops, Blind
Pools in Grain and Stocks, Pool Rooms and Hand Books, Fake
Mail Order Houses, ordinary Gambling Houses, Panel Houses,
Matrimonial Bureaus, Fake Underwriting, Fake Banks, Collecting
Agencies, Fake Medicine Companies, Clairvoyants, Fortune Tellers,
Palmists and other criminals of all classes operate, and how their
organizations have been broken up and destroyed by hundreds.
THE WORK ALSO CONTAINS
Detective Clifton R. Wooldridge's "Never-Fail" System
For Detecting and Outwitting All Classes of
Grafters and Swindlers
Copyright, 1908,
BY
CLIFTON R. WOOLDRIDGE.
Chicago Publishing Co.,
83-91 Plymouth Place,
Chicago.
PREFACE.
In presenting this work to the public the author has noapologies to make nor favors to ask. It is a simple history ofhis connection with the Police Department of Chicago, compiledfrom his own memoranda, the newspapers, and the officialrecords. The matter herein contained differs from those recordsonly in details, as many facts are given in the book which havenever been made public. The author has no disposition tomalign any one, and names are used only in cases in which thefacts are supported by the archives of the Police Departmentand of the criminal court. In the conscientious discharge ofhis duties as an officer of the law, the author has in all casesstudied the mode of legal procedure. His aim has been solelyto protect society and the taxpayer, and to punish the guilty.The evidences of his sincerity accompany the book in the formof letters from the highest officers in the city government, fromthe mayor down to the precinct captain, and furnish overwhelmingtestimony as to his endeavors to serve the public faithfullyand honestly. No effort has been made to bestow self-praise,and where this occurs, it is only a reproduction, perhapsin different language, of the comments indulged in bythe newspapers of Chicago and other c