Eugène François Vidocq

Eugène François Vidocq lived a long life from 1775 to 1857. For many of those years, he was a criminal. He had no excuse for committing crime as his parents were rich and kind, but Vidocq was a very wild teenager and stole money from them twice before he ran away from home at the age of 14. He worked in a circus, as a soldier and in many other jobs. By the time he was 16, he had killed two men in duels. He went to prison time and again for his crimes. In 1809, Vidocq changed his ways and became a spy for the police. After a couple of years of this work, he opened the first private detective agency and became rich and famous, although he continued to get into trouble all his life. The famous French writers, Honoré de Balzac and Émile Zola wrote stories about him and he even wrote his own. He died at the age of 82, a very independent and remarkable man.