ABSTRACT
The image of the detective was transformed over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth century from the concept of detection as a practice of individual prowess and cunning to a bureaucratically embedded notion of the detective as depersonalised technician applying procedure and forensic technique to criminal investigation. The notion of the detective as individual sleuth was personified in the self-promoting career of John Christie, whose use of disguises and unorthodox procedures to solve cases captured the imagination of the Melbourne public. The imagery of detective work was thus partially severed from earlier notions of individual cunning and intelligence and fused with bureaucratic notions of a modern, scientific and efficient police force. Nevertheless, the image of the detective as cunning sleuth persisted, coexisting uneasily with emerging conceptions of the detective as procedural technician. In colonial Victoria, despite similar emphasis upon prevention rather than detection in the policing of cities and towns, the birth of detective policing was less problematic.
