author
Clifton R. (Clifton Rodman) Wooldridge
1854–1933
A hard-driving Chicago detective turned his years chasing swindlers, gamblers, and corrupt operators into vivid crime writing. His books promise a rough, first-hand look at urban vice and reform in the early 1900s.
1 Audiobook
Twenty Years a Detective in the Wickedest City in the World
by Clifton R. (Clifton Rodman) Wooldridge
About the author
Born in Kentucky in 1854, Clifton Rodman Wooldridge lived an unusually varied life before becoming known as a Chicago detective. Accounts of his career describe work as a shipping clerk, railroad employee, gold prospector, land surveyor, and newspaper publisher before he joined the Chicago police force in the late 1880s.
Wooldridge became especially associated with campaigns against gambling, fraud, and organized vice in Chicago. Contemporary and later sources portray him as a forceful, controversial investigator whose work made him well known in the city during the Progressive Era.
He also brought those experiences into print. His books, including The Grafters of America, The Devil and the Grafter, and Twenty Years a Detective in the Wickedest City in the World, mix exposé, memoir, and moral warning, offering readers a colorful window into crime, corruption, and policing in turn-of-the-century Chicago. He died in 1933.