Sherlock Holmes in Real Life
From The Chicago Tribune of November 25, 1906.
“Chicago may be surprised to learn that it has a Sherlock Holmes of its own, but it has; and before his actual experiences in crime-hunting, the fictional experiences through which Poe, Doyle, and Nick Carter put their detectives pale into insignificance. His name is Clifton R. Wooldridge.
“Truth is stranger even than detective fiction, and in the number of his adventures of mystery, danger and excitement he has all the detective heroes of fiction and reality beaten easily.
“He has personally arrested 19,500 people, 200 of them were sent to the penitentiary; 3,000 to the house of correction; 6,000 paid fines; 100 girls under age were rescued from lives of shame; $100,000 worth of property was recovered; 100 panel houses were closed; 100 matrimonial bureaus were broken up.
“Wooldridge has refused perhaps 500 bribes of from $500 to $5,000 each. He has been under fire forty-four times. He has been wounded dozens of times. He has impersonated almost every kind of character. He has, in his crime hunting, associated with members of the ‘400’ and fraternized with hobos. He has dined with the elite and smoked in opium dens. He has done everything that one expects the detective of fiction to do and which the real detective seldom does.
“When occasion requires he ceases to appear as Wooldridge. He can make a disguise so quickly and effectively that even an actor would be astonished. Gilded youth, negro gambler, honest farmer or lodging house ‘bum,’ it requires but a few minutes to ‘make-up,’ to run to earth elusive wrong-doers.”
The pictures which appear here are actual photographs taken from life in the garb and disguises worn by the author in several famous cases.