For those that sought their providers, there have been {many professional} feminine detectives in Britain within the Eighteen Eighties and Nineties, and never simply in London – you could possibly discover them in Bristol, in Cardiff and in Glasgow, too. By January 1875 The Instances was promoting, back-to-back, the providers of the ‘Confidential Company’ of Leslie and Graham in Holborn, assisted by ‘males of 20 years’ expertise, and feminine detectives’, and Arthur Cleveland Montagu in Cornhill, which provided ‘a big employees of skilled detectives, female and male’. Girls personal detectives had been working for a while and their providers added worth to the corporations that might boast them.
What sorts of instances had been these feminine detectives working? Once more, newspaper adverts supply important clues. In 1881 Bristol’s Western Every day Mercury provided a ‘Personal Inquiry Workplace for the West of England’, with:
MALE AND FEMALE DETECTIVES, Divorce, Libel and all Personal Issues rigorously investigated. Elections Watched. Expenses Reasonable.
