Isabella Goodwin (née Loghry) was an American police officer and the first female
detective
A detective is an investigator, usually a member of a law enforcement agency. They often collect information to solve crimes by talking to witnesses and informants, collecting physical evidence, or searching records in databases. This leads th ...
in New York City.
Biography
Isabella Loghry was born in
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...
,
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
in 1865
to James Harvey Loghry and Anna J. Monteith, who ran a restaurant and hotel on Canal St. Around 1885, aged 19, she married John W. Goodwin, a police officer. The couple had six children, of which four survived.
Goodwin was widowed in 1896, when she was 30 years old.
The New York City police department had only started hiring women (“police matrons") to look after female and child prisoners in 1881. When Goodwin applied for a job after her husband died, she had to pass an exam then was hired as a jail matron by then police commissioner
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. ( ; October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919), often referred to as Teddy or by his initials, T. R., was an American politician, statesman, soldier, conservationist, naturalist, historian, and writer who served as the 26t ...
, who later became the president of the United States.
It was a low paid position, making only $1000/year, and she only had one day off each month.
She served in this position for 15 years. During this time, she began going undercover to investigate crimes, and her mother watched her children.
In 1912, there was a case involving a midday robbery where "taxi bandits" beat up two clerks and stole $25,000 in downtown Manhattan. Even with 60 detectives assigned to the case, no one could solve the robbery.
The story was followed nationally, according to a ''
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' article at the time. After going undercover, Goodwin cracked the case.
As a result, she was appointed as New York's first female detective and given the rank of 1st grade lieutenant.
Her salary was raised from $1000 to $2,250/year.
During her career, she specialized in exposing fortune tellers and swindlers.
In 1921, she married a man who was thirty years younger than her. She continued working after her marriage, which was not common at the time for a woman.
When she retired, she had worked for the NYC police department for thirty years.
In popular media
* The book
The Fearless Mrs. Goodwin' by Elizabeth Mitchell was based on Goodwin's life.
* In the television
period drama
A historical drama (also period drama, costume drama, and period piece) is a work set in a past time period, usually used in the context of film and television. Historical drama includes historical fiction and romance film, romances, adventure f ...
series ''
The Alienist
''The Alienist'' is a crime novel by Caleb Carr first published in 1994 and is the first book in the Kreizler series. It takes place in New York City in 1896, and includes appearances by many famous figures of New York society in that era, inc ...
'',
Dakota Fanning
Hannah Dakota Fanning (born February 23, 1994) is an American actress. She rose to prominence at the age of seven for her performance as Lucy Dawson in the drama film ''I Am Sam'' (2001), for which she received a Screen Actors Guild Award nomin ...
's character, Sara Howard, is also based on Goodwin's life.
See also
*
Mary Shanley
Mary Agnes Shanley (March 14, 1896 – July 3, 1989)''Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014''. Social Security Administration. was an American police officer and detective in the New York Police Department. She joined the department in 1931 and ...
- another woman NYPD detective
*
Mary A. Sullivan - another woman NYPD detective who was head of the Policewomen's Bureau as well
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Goodwin, Isabella
1865 births
New York City Police Department officers
American police detectives
1943 deaths