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This week’s publication of Understated focuses on the life of Alice Clement, the first woman detective in the history of the Chicago PD, possibly even the United States. You’ll notice a theme in this week’s issue, and to be frank, we do not know very much about Alice Clement beyond the following: She was known as the “female Sherlock Holmes” and is most famous for how she solved The Dulcimer Murder. But more on that later.

Alice Clement was born Alice Bush in Milwaukee, WI in 1878. While little is known about her childhood or even her early adulthood, we know that she was married to a man named Leonard Clement in 1895, and joined the Chicago Police Force in 1909.

Alice originally started her career in the Chicago PD walking a beat around several department stores downtown on the hunt for pickpockets. She was so good at her job, that she was promoted to detective in 1913, the first woman to earn the honor in Chicago PD history. In fact, out of the 100 detectives promoted that year, she was the only woman.

Bejeweled and dressed to the nines, Clement commanded the attention of newspapers and crowds alike. Described by the press as a combination of “fur, heels, and jujitsu”, Clement would regularly take down larger opponents when making arrests, and was seldom seen without a pistol. She even told reporters that she slept with it under her pillow at night.

Shortly after making detective, she divorced her husband Leonard on the grounds of “abandonment and intemperance” in a time where Prohibition was about to become the 18th Amendment of the US Constitution.

Alice Clement’s career defining case was the Dulcimer Murder, a plot so curious, it seemed like something straight out of an Agatha Christie novel.

Chicago PD found the body of a woman in a tenement apartment and called Clement and her partner to the scene. The beat officer who discovered the body, and Clement’s partner, figured out that the woman had died of typhoid. Their conclusion was this; the woman, likely a prostitute, had succumbed to a disease that was a result of her lifestyle.

As Clement worked her way through the apartment, she noticed a dulcimer in the corner. Clement noticed the strings felt “rusty”, but looked to be in fine shape. When she took out her magnifying glass, she saw white granules along the strings and had a sample sent off to the Chicago PD microscopic team.

An interview with the janitor allowed Clement to learn that the deceased woman had an older woman who would visit with her. After talking with the woman, Clement learned that older woman was actually the deceased woman’s aunt! During questioning, Clement discovered the following:

The niece owned a tract of land in Colorado after her father had died, but didn’t know about it (because it was 1914) so the aunt was notified about it. Shortly after this happened, gold was discovered on the land, and the aunt started making a lot of money. She felt bad for making so much, but wasn’t going to give the land back to her niece, so she decided to befriend her niece and get her gifts (i.e. the dulcimer).
Eventually, though, the niece learned of the land, and wanted to sell it. Since she was the rightful owner, she could have sold the land but the aunt didn’t want to let her.
The aunt resolved then and there to murder her niece.
The aunt was visiting people in the hospital and discovered a concentrated bottle of the typhoid bacteria. She stole it and the next time she visited her niece, she applied the typhoid to the dulcimer strings.
At this point, big whoop right? It’s not dangerous through the skin. The bacteria that causes typhoid is most lethal when it’s ingested.
This is where the strings of the dulcimer came into play. When her niece would play the dulcimer for her aunt, she’d lick her fingers so she could turn the pages of her sheet music. When her fingers came into contact with the typhoid bacteria on the strings and then went into her mouth, it was a death sentence. The aunt sank back into her niece’s lone chair with relief, and her niece died almost two weeks later.

When she finished her story, the aunt asked for a glass of water and Clement obliged. The aunt drank her water, and as she put the cup down, she would evade justice by taking out a pen knife from her dress and self-inflicting a mortal wound in her neck. She died shortly after.

In solving the case, Clement became a household name in Chicago, and the newspapers couldn’t seem to get enough of her.

In 1918, Alice Clement got remarried to a barber named Albert Faubel. The marriage was officiated by a woman pastor, a nod to Clement’s progressive, feminist beliefs.

The next year, she wrote, produced, and directed a movie called Dregs of the City, a tale about a small town girl moving to Chicago and being saved from the underbelly of the city by Clement’s character as a lady detective. The movie was played all over the country, except for, ironically, Chicago. Clement’s depiction of the city as a seedy den for criminals had angered city officials who banned the movie from being played in city limits. No copies survive today, but the movie was well received.

Finally, Clement was snubbed and demoted from her role as detective after complications from diabetes resulted in her needing a wheelchair. I was unable to determine if Clement’s complications resulted from Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes, but being that insulin wasn’t discovered until 1921/1922 (with the type of long-acting insulin in use today not being available until the 1940s), it would be difficult to leave either untreated and expect a prolonged high quality of life.

Clement would die in 1926, at the age of 49. The Chicago PD places a star on the gravestones of all of its officers and detectives, but in one final snub, the department did not put one on Clement’s headstone after she passed. Many people would attribute this to the rocky relationship she had with Chicago PD’s Chief of Police at the time, Charles Fitzmorris, who lamented his star detective’s flamboyance.

Clement faded into obscurity after her death, but her legacy as a crime buster and female detective paved the way for women today in law enforcement. She remains one of the truly forgotten people of history, earning her the spotlight of this week’s issue of Understated.

Alice Clement Wikipedia
Alice Clement of Chicago
The Detective Wore Pearls
The Dulcimer Murder
History of Diabetes

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