It is a pleasure to welcome Ashley Bowden to The Bottle Street Gazette. He has been reading and collecting Victorian and Edwardian detective stories for almost forty years. He has spent much of the last decade researching and writing about this area of crime fiction. This account of Maggie Macfee comes from an unpublished book Female Detectives in Early Crime Fiction:1841 – 1920.
In the decade before the First World War Margery’s father, Herbert Allingham (1867-1936), wrote many serials and short stories for a group of cheap weekly comic and story papers, published by the Amalgamated Press, including The Butterfly, Chips, Comic Cuts, The Jester and Puck. These periodicals were aimed at adolescents, both female and male, and there was scope for stories with strong leading characters of either sex.
In 1909 Herbert created a young female sleuth whose adventures were recounted in “Miss Maggie Macfee – The Girl Detective”.
Two of his earlier works are of interest and relevance in the development of this story. In 1901, before he became a stalwart of the Amalgamated Press, Herbert wrote “The Achievements of Michael Power” for Pearson’s Weekly. This was a series of six short stories appearing in consecutive issues between 5th January and 9th February. Michael Power was an investigative journalist and the series carried the subtitle ‘Being Episodes in the Professional Career of a Newspaper Man’. In this role he was effectively a detective and was resurrected as such eight years later.
The first significant narrative that Herbert wrote for the Amalgamated Press featured a lively young woman. “Plucky Polly Perkins” was serialised in The Butterfly over the course of a few months beginning in December 1908. Polly is not a detective but is portrayed as an indomitable figure who acts with determination and character when navigating life’s vicissitudes. Such was the story’s impact and popularity that the next serial Herbert wrote, also featuring a spirited female protagonist, carried the by-line: By the author of “Plucky Polly Perkins”. The Amalgamated Press rarely missed an opportunity for cross promotion and its story papers regularly advertised other titles in the group and their principal works of fiction.
The new story was “Miss Maggie Macfee – The Girl Detective” which appeared in Puck, a sister paper of The Butterfly. Puck cost one penny, comprised twelve pages and had the distinction of a full colour front cover. The story was told in twenty-three weekly parts between 10th April and 11th September 1909 (Vol 10, No 246 – Vol 11, No 268). Each ran to about 4,000 words resulting in a substantial tale of some 90,000 words. Like the vast majority of Herbert’s work for periodicals the story was never published in book form.
The weekly instalments are headed “Something Entirely New, Fascinating and Enthralling” and “A Story of Mystery, Fun and Adventure”. In structure the tale is an episodic novel: there are distinct cases but each is spread over a number of issues and the individual instalments in Puck only carry the serial’s main title.
Maggie Macfee arrives in London from her home village in Scotland and gets work as a typist. Initially she is employed by a firm in the City but they have to cut staff so she sets up on a freelance basis working in an office previously used by a private investigator. The former occupant is none other than Michael Power, now a fully-fledged detective. No mention is made of his previous career as a journalist.
Maggie struggles to make enough to live on and is on the point of returning to Scotland when a man arrives at her office, assuming that she works for the detective. Without giving her a chance to clarify the situation he tells her of threats to kidnap his grandson and asks her to take on the case. Deciding that she has nothing to lose, Maggie agrees and embarks upon a career as a detective.
Maggie sifts some clues
Michael Power eventually finds out what has happened but he is sufficiently impressed with her ability to overlook the fact that she has usurped his case and offers her a position as his assistant.
With Michael acting as a mentor Maggie serves her apprenticeship and develops into a capable detective. She is competent, thorough and intelligent although not infallible: some of her best results follow an initial setback. She is far from flamboyant and her naturally unassuming character enables her to investigate cases incognito.
There is a romantic subplot – Michael becomes increasingly attracted to Maggie although her feelings towards him are less obvious. As the story draws to its conclusion this strand comes to the fore when Maggie, working on her own, takes up a case for a friend. Michael advises her against this, cautioning that, as an unprotected female, she is running too great a risk. The case does involve significant danger so she decides that it will be her last and after bringing it to a satisfactory conclusion she gives up detective work.
There is not however a simple happy ending. They go their separate ways with Maggie leaving London to live quietly with a female friend in Devon. Michael, undeterred, becomes a frequent visitor to their house and does not give up hope that Maggie will one day reward his devotion to her.
For an author who may want the option to reuse characters in the future there is perhaps little to be gained and potentially much to be lost by marrying off one’s main protagonists. Presumably with this in mind Herbert was content to leave the couple’s future unresolved although Maggie remained in permanent retirement and did not feature in any further stories.
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