The first private detective agency was opened in Paris in 1833 by Eugène François Vidocq. He called it Le Bureau des Renseignements, the Office of Information. It took private clients. That is the detail that separates it from the police unit he had already built.
Who founded it
Vidocq was born in 1775 and died in 1857. His early life included prison and military service. In 1811 he joined the Paris police and built the Brigade de Sûreté, a unit he led for years and staffed in part with former prisoners. His line for that unit was that only someone who knew crime could fight it. That was a 19th-century police experiment. It is not a hiring rule for a licensed firm now.
After he left the Sûreté, he opened the Bureau in 1833. Early accounts describe a small office: detectives, clerks, and a secretary, working for business owners and private clients on fraud, swindles, and dishonest bankruptcies. He is also credited with pushing record-keeping, and with later work on inks and paper that were harder to alter. Historians argue over how much of the legend he wrote himself. The 1833 office is still the date people use for the first private detective agency.
What changed by the time you hire someone in Ontario
A modern Ontario file is not a private police force, and it is not staffed by recruiting people for a criminal past. Investigators are provincially licensed. The product is a report a client, an insurer, or a lawyer can read. Illegal access, trespass, and impersonating police are refused because they destroy the file.
If you want that kind of scoped work, call Investigation Hotline at (416) 205-9114.
To learn more, contact Investigation Hotline at
