The adventures of Detective Dew

The man who caught Dr Crippen

I am an avid collector of detective memoirs and one of my most prized possessions is an original copy of Detective Walter Dew’s autobiography. After serving in the Metropolitan Police for 30 years, he said:

…the real detective is by no means like the detective of fiction, who is always successful – in the end. Hard thinking is necessary. But with hard thinking must go hard graft as well.

Despite the challenges of his work, Dew described his long and illustrious career as ‘a life of thrills and adventure’. This included his capture of Dr Crippen, which was the first time that a murderer was caught by wireless technology, and the investigation into the murders ascribed to the unknown killer, ‘Jack the Ripper’ as, in 1888, when the body of Mary Jane Kelly, the fifth canonical victim, was discovered, Detective Dew was one of the first officers on the scene…