Australian Police Detective Fiction "Detectives' Story by Matthew Vinton" published in The Herald of the Union, Vol. 1, No. 7, newspaper.
Wilmington, NC: The Herald of the Union, March 7, 1865. Newspaper. "I am a detective in the Victoria police, and have been one for some years; I was formerly one in Paris and I was employed as such in the Hyde Park Exhibition of 1851..." he goes on, saying he has settled in Australia. This detective fiction occupies a half page, and presents itself under the guise of a police memoir. Entitled "Detective's Story, " it recounts how Policeman Vinton brought a double murderer to justice: "... my evidence hung Stevens, who... confessed not only to this murder, but the murder of a mate in the bush some years back with whom he was working on a station, making a stake and rail fence."
Saunders p139 - "In December 1864 a story titled "An Australian Detective's Story" [An Australian Detective's Story; or, Murder Will Out] appeared in "Once a Week", which commented directly on police memoirs' contemporary popularity and suggested that 'detective literature' was designed to illustrate the 'science of crime discovery', or in other words, 'detection'. As the genre was contemporarily viewed (at least by some) as an emergent form of 'detective fiction', the police memoir became extremely important to the development of detective fiction." (1) This story also appeared as "Story of an Australian Detective," in Harper's Weekly (1865) and as late as 1877, as "Murder Will Out; A Gold Digger's Adventure". (2)
Published in an early issue of pro-Union Civil war newspaper published in occupied Wilmington, North Carolina. This issue also contains local and national news of the war including 2 articles reprinted from the Richmond Examiner, General Orders from HQ of Dept of North Carolina (Army of the Ohio), and content on President Lincoln's Amnesty Proclamation. 1/4 page ad for Sutlers stores and Yankee Notions from merchants Cutter & French.
36 column inches, 4pp, 12 x 18", edges slt ruffled, original folds, small hole center of p1 at fold mark. Otherwise clean and readable.
(1) See Saunders, The Police and the Periodical: Policing and Detection in Victorian Journalism and the Rise of Detective Fiction, c. 1840-1900 p.333; and (2) An Australian Detective's Story; Or, Murder Will Out: Westminster Detective Library accessed online. Good + overall. Item #27111
Price: $375.00