William Blackstone Wildman:
A Biographical Note
William Blackstone Wildman's early career, before he
took up the profession of private investigator, was a
chequered one. A North Country boy (from Cockermouth,
Cumberland, birthplace of William Wordsworth and
Fletcher Christian) with no great prospects owing to his
upbringing and social class, he nevertheless managed
with good luck and extraordinary industry to obtain a
liberal arts education at one of the minor universities,
Durham, I think it was, from there proceeding to London
University and ultimately Lincoln's Inn. However, he
did not complete his studies for the Bar -- unfortunate
political sympathies, which he later outgrew, and a
sudden falling off of interest in legal administration.
For a few months he slaved as a Grub Street writer of
ephemeral reviews and melodramatic serial novels. Finally,
in disgust, he quit London for several years and worked
his way willy-nilly round the world, engaging himself
in a great variety of short-lived occupations. His first
case of detection took place in southern Algeria in the
year 1893 -- a problem concerning the persecution of
one Habib al Muhammed, a Tuareg chieftain, by a gang of
rival camel thieves ('Case of the Shrieking Sheikh').
After a haphazard series of wanderings in Egypt, India,
Tibet, China, Siberia, Japan, Alaska, and Labrador, Wildman
eventually found himself back in London. Penniless,
still without prospects, he worked for a while as an
agent for a private enquiry firm. In this he soon found
his vocation, and left off kowtowing to the whims of the
adulterous and vengeful clients of his employers to set
up a one-man business of his own. He opened his office
in Frith Street, Soho, on the third of January, 1896;
he was then only twenty-five years old. He had an important
patron at this time with the name of Guichardo Marshmount.*
[* Who has appeared on other pages in the Grobius web
network. What a coincidence, eh? --GS]
That summer, after barely making his way and building up
only a modest reputation, Wildman had the great good
fortune to become involved in the investigation of a
White Slavery ring. This led him ultimately to Peru, and
when he had finally and successfully terminated the case,
he found himself at the height of fame and notoriety
('The Lima Beanstalk Affair').
After his return to London (where he moved his office to Fetter
Lane), the terrible Halfsister brothers took council and
determined to eliminate Wildman as a dangerous nuisance,
a gadfly on the flank of their great trek to the heartland
of the criminal underworld. They did not succeed,
as you will hear on some other occasion; on the contrary,
the gadfly was their bane. But there will be recurring
references to Nero and Caligula Halfsister, as they were
major background players during the heyday of WBW's
career ('Deus ex Machina', 'The Homeless Halfsister', etc.).
Inspector Julius Aphid and Constable Reynolds of
Scotland Yard were early acquaintances, subsequently
friends, of Wildman, and also play significant roles in his
cases. Wildman married his childhood sweetheart, Minerva
Minniver, in 1899, and she appears in at least one of his cases
('The Gaggle of Geese'); unfortunately, she died in an influenza
epidemic in 1910. I regret to say that my duties at the Crickleswade
Lunatic Asylum have left me little time formally to compile the
Case Book of William Blackstone Wildman -- although
the amount of information I have on tape and informal notes
is vast.
I have taken advantage of the reader's patience to put
in a few facts about the early life of W.B. Wildman. It
is merely biographical background, with little relevance
to the cases I have explicated on occasion (often
transcribed from tape-recorded sessions with the Great
Man when he was in his 90's). From time to time, these
will appear on the Internet for those who are interested.
I regret to say that William Blackstone Wildman died in 1969,
on the same day Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon.
Cotton Mather Winston, Crickleswade 19--