By Abby Dorland
During the late Victorian era, the female detective and domestic servant shared similar qualities: they were expected to yield to a male superior, be shrewd about their business, disappear into the shadows, and yet appear at the right time to solve problems. With the rise of female detectives in literature in the 1860’s and twenty years later in real life,1 the new occupation echoed the traditional role of servanthood for working-class women. In Catherine Louisa Pirkis's short story “The Black Bag Left on a Doorstep,” the shared gender expectations associated with the female detective and domestic servants sheds light on existing power structures in Victorian society, helps unravel the mystery within the narrative, and demonstrates the overlapping social roles of working women during this time.
As the first episode in the Loveday Brooke serial,2 “The Black Bag Left on a Doorstep” illuminates the power structures in place both in the domestic household and the detective profession in late nineteenth century Britain. There was a twenty-year gap between the first female detectives in fiction and the first female guards for prisoners of the Metropolitan Police in 1883.3 It took nearly four more decades for women gain full status as police officers.4 But working-class women were no stranger to getting paid for detective work in some capacity as early as 1855.5 In an 1855 adultery case, Inspector Charles Frederick Field “employed several women to infiltrate the house that Mrs. Evans and her lover frequented.”6 The women being employed as domestics for undercover detective work implies that servants were known for eavesdropping and could easily seek out information to solve a case. By 1888, Henry Slater’s Detective Offices was advertising in the The Era Almanack for “Experienced Female Detectives.”7 Consequently, as private investigators, women found their way into detective work at least thirty years before they were first employed as police officers. Why did it take so long for women to follow their fictional counterparts into the detective business? The patriarchal power structures in place during the Victorian era held women back from working in the police force, but women subverted the rules by participating first as domestics with hidden duties and later as private detectives in similar roles.
In “The Black Bag Left on a Doorstep,” power structures work against the chief suspect, a maid named Stephanie Delcroix. Her assumed guilt is informed by three factors: her foreignness (French), her age (young), and her job as a maid. Brooke’s employer Mr. Dyer suspects her,8 as well as the detective Mr. Bates.9 Bates’s hypothesis as to why the maid would steal her employer’s jewelry rests on the assumption that a pretty French maid is bound to have multiple lovers, and where lovers abound, there is sure to be a criminal.10 Once Delcroix has gone missing, Bates tells Brooke that according to his theory, the maid had dressed her lady as usual and then had two hours to herself in which “her absence from the house [wouldn’t] be noticed.”11 Here, Bates demonstrates a general Victorian attitude toward domestic servants, particularly those lower in the hierarchy: that they are desperate and thus more likely to commit (or help commit) a crime. Delcroix’s role as a lady’s maid is lower than a housekeeper in the power structure of an English household, so her absence is not noticed as quickly. Therefore, the blame is easily laid upon the lowly maid because she fits into the criminal narrative Bates has created for her. The power structures presented in this short story do a lot of work in a small space to hint at the underlying xenophobic, ageist, classist, and sexist attitudes present in many Victorian upper-class households in the 1890s.
As a female detective, Loveday Brooke is able to interact with suspects, witnesses, and informants in a different way than her male counterparts, particularly if the other characters are women. When Brooke interviews Mrs. Williams, the Cathrow housekeeper, she easily “elicited from her the whole history of the events of the day of the robbery.”12 Communicating woman-to-woman over a cup of tea, Brooke gains crucial information for her investigation. Put Mrs. Williams in a different setting with a male detective and that same information would come more hesitatingly and with a stiffer delivery.
Later in the same conversation, Brooke pulls an investigative thread when the banter turns to the servants’ festivities around Christmas time, and Mrs. Williams mentions a footman by the name of Harry Emmett whose theatrical abilities are fit for the stage.13 Mrs. Williams assumes Brooke will want to return to a discussion of the robbery, but Brooke responds by expressing continued interest in the servants’ festivities.14 Brooke’s determination to follow her gut and continue learning about Emmett later helps her solve the mystery. As a fellow working woman, Brooke’s ability to enter domestic space and read the mood of a room was a key advantage. By interviewing Mrs. Williams in her own room, with tea and easygoing conversation, Brooke promotes the free flow of critical information, which gives her a leg up on the male detective on the case, Mr. Bates.
Another part of the mystery where Brooke’s intuition as a working woman proved correct was when Stephanie Delcroix went missing. Mr. Bates assumed she ran off with a lover, but Brooke thinks she went to a nearby river to commit suicide.15 After learning about the intense pressure and suspicion against the maid for being the last person to see the jewels before the robbery, Brooke understands, both as a woman and “lady” detective, the dangerous effects of sexist assumptions on a young woman’s mind. Brooke herself “drudged away patiently in the lower walks of her profession” for five or six years16 and no doubt experienced and witnessed sexism firsthand. Brooke recognizes the maid’s seemingly powerless position and extrapolates her intentions based on her own lived experience as a working woman.
Within the power structures of the period, there were overlapping societal expectations for female detectives and domestic servants. When anyone questions Brooke’s qualifications, Mr. Dyer says, “She has the faculty—so rare among women—of carrying out orders to the very letter.”17 He goes on to extol her “clear, shrewd brain” and common sense.18 While Dyer thinks he is giving Brooke a compliment, his belief about most women not following orders demonstrates his casual sexism toward working women. Dyer’s list of qualities for the ideal female detective also aligns with features of the ideal female domestic worker, who was expected to be quiet, honest, and hardworking. Elizabeth Carolyn Miller points out that C. L. Pirkis’s stories “thematize a cultural anxiety about dishonest female servants.”19 Whether undercover as a maid or actively employed as one, female detectives and domestics were both held to restrictive social expectations that shaped how they performed their duties as working women.
Sexist social expectations of working women were so entrenched in Victorian society that women themselves sometimes adopted sexist perspectives. As Mrs. Williams watches Brooke study the dressing room where the robbery occurred, she is disappointed by her quick investigation: “Her opinion of Miss Brooke’s professional capabilities suffered considerable diminution. ‘The gentleman detectives,’ she said, ‘spent over an hour in this room.’”20 Mrs. Williams assumes a female detective would follow the same methods as a male detective, but Brooke subverts her expectations. When Brooke does so, she falls from her previous high standing with the housekeeper, but by then, Brooke doesn’t need any more information from Mrs. Williams. Brooke knows when to capitalize on her identity as a working woman sharing pleasantries with the housekeeper and when to become a curt and no-nonsense detective who needs to solve the mystery. Brooke’s detective stance separates her from the domestic aspects of the case, leading to a division between the women. Mrs. Williams’s surprise and slight dislike of Brooke from this point onward shows how deeply sexist social expectations could alienate working women from each other.
- L. Pirkis’s “The Black Bag Left on a Doorstep” not only subverts stereotypes about women detectives but also illuminates the power structures that subjugate domestic workers. Ultimately, the story highlights similarities between these two classes of working women. Perhaps Pirkis’s aim was to show readers the advantages of women working as detectives while also demonstrating the challenges they faced along with other working-class women—overt and internalized sexist discrimination. Fictional representations of smart, capable female detectives like Loveday Brooke may have inspired real Victorian women to enter the workforce as undercover investigators. The Experiences of Loveday Brooke highlights such vocational opportunities for working women while reminding readers of the lingering sexism and classism in Victorian society.
Notes
1 Joseph A. Kestner, Sherlock’s Sisters: The British Female Detective, 1864–1913 (London: Routledge, 2017), 6.
2 Michele Slung, introduction to The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective (New York: Dover, 2020), xviii.
3 Kestner, Sherlock’s Sisters, 6.
4 Ibid., 5.
5 Dagni Bredesen, introduction to The First Female Detectives: The Female Detective (1864) and Revelations of a Lady Detective (1864) (Ann Arbor: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 2010), v.
6 Ibid.
7 “Advertisement for Slater’s Detective Agency.” The Era Almanack, January 1888, 110.
8 Catherine Louisa Pirkis, The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective (New York: Dover, 2020), 3.
9 Ibid., 10.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid., 19.
12 Ibid., 13.
13 Ibid., 14.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid., 19.
16 Ibid., 4.
17 Ibid., 5.
18 Ibid.
19 Elizabeth Carolyn Miller, “Trouble with She-Dicks: Private Eyes and Public Women in The Adventures of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective,” Victorian Literature and Culture 33, no. 1 (2005): 57.
20 Pirkis, The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, 16.
