Criminals and detectives

[morozow]

And let's talk about bandits and thieves, terrible crimes, sushi and the police. Well, probably a little bit about the literature on this topic.

I'll start.

Forty years among robbers and murderers

"Forty Years among Robbers and Murderers" is an autobiographical book by I. D. Putilin, co—authored with Mikhail Shevlyakov. (in reality, the authorship of the book is a confusing question)

The book is a memoir of the first chief of the St. Petersburg Detective Police Ivan Dmitrievich Putilin (1830-1893), who at one time was a man of legend. The book consists of twenty short stories.

Putilin became famous in 1867 after the high-profile case of the "Pugovkin Brothers Counterfeiters", who sold about half a million fakes in a year. In order to get on the trail of the criminals, Putilin had to change his image and change clothes five times. After the capture, the accused hired the best lawyers, but still lost the case and were sent to hard labor.

Putilin's favorite image for reincarnation was a laborer. It was he who used it in order to study the mores of the criminal world[1]. However, in his arsenal there were also such images as a tramp, a priest and a merchant. Putilin had hundreds of solved cases on his account. I have never used physical violence against suspects.

In total, over the years of service, he was awarded eleven orders.

One of the memories of contemporary Putilin:

The head of the St. Petersburg detective police, Ivan Dmitrievich Putilin, was one of those gifted personalities whom the old St. Petersburg mayor, F. F. Trepov, was able to skillfully choose and, nevertheless, skillfully hold in his hands. By nature, Putilin was extremely gifted and, as it were, created for his position. Unusually subtle attention and extreme observation, in which there was some special flair that forced him to peer into what everyone was passing by indifferently, were combined in him with calm restraint, great humor and a kind of sly good-nature. In St. Petersburg in the first half of the 70s, there was not a single large and complex criminal case in which Putilin would not have invested his labor. I clearly had to familiarize myself with his amazing abilities to investigate crimes in January 1873, when the murder of Hieromonk Hilarion was discovered in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra... Late in the evening, on the same day, I was informed that the murderer had been arrested

In the stories of Putilin, the spirit of the era is felt, those little things that are lost are washed away by time. Dark doorways, dirty inns, janitors and coachmen...

Putilin simply describes individual cases from practice, without bringing any theory under them. But the hair begins to move quietly from the content of small stories. Because there are many details of a criminal nature, various kinds of injuries that led to death. And the price of human life is 3 rubles 15 kopecks.

a very colorful portrait of the era of the second half of the 19th century in St. Petersburg. And, what is valuable, the wrong side of life is described, and not the ceremonial face of the brilliant capital of the empire.

Unfortunately, I do not know if there is a translation of this book into other languages

[morozow]

In 1913, in the mountain resort of Pyatigorsk, a capsule with radium was stolen from a German professor R., who came to Pyatigorsk to be treated with sulfur baths.

The police had a suspect, but there was no evidence.

The stolen radium was offered to buy Kharkiv University for 80,000 rubles. That's a lot of money. A suspect was identified in the ring.

But the case did not go to court.

After the abduction, the thief carried radium in his vest pocket all the time. And he got a tumor. He underwent three operations. But two weeks after the police visit, he died.

The case is described in the memoirs of Arkady Koshko, head of the Moscow Detective Police,

[mizzarrogh]

Thank You for the tip!
That's definitely on my list for the winter nights reading!

I guess Radium was really expensive in 1913 especially seen to how labor intense it was to extract just one single gram of purified Radium with the methods available at the time.