Eugène François Vidocq
French criminal and criminalist · France · Writers · Lived 1775 to 1857 · aged 81
Eugène François Vidocq is read about 512 times a day, in 40 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 16 September 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 361 days, one point a day.
Something wrong?He ran from the law, then built it. Vidocq went from French criminal to founder of the Sûreté Nationale - the country's first detective bureau - and later opened what's believed to be the world's first private eye shop.
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About this person
Born 24 July 1775, Eugène-François Vidocq spent his early years on the wrong side of French law before an improbable reversal made him its architect. He founded and directed the Sûreté Nationale, France's first criminal investigative agency, applying a convict's fluency in the underworld to the work of catching it. After that he opened the first known private detective agency. The pivot from outlaw to investigator gave Victor Hugo, Edgar Allan Poe, and Honoré de Balzac raw material for fiction, and gave France the template for its national police force. He died 11 May 1857; his birthday is now observed as National-International Private Investigators Day.
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