Cora Holben, Chicago's "lady detective," run to ground

Paul Reda was taken with the above 1908 ad for Miss Cora Strayer's Private Detective Agency, which was posted to the most excellent Vintage Ads LiveJournal group. A Chicago history buff, he decided to delve into the life and times of Cora Strayer, and has fleshed out a fascinating, and often tragic, timeline of her extraordinary adventures.

1898 - Miss Cora Strayer is living at 3819 Wabash in Chicago. She lists her job as "Clerk."

1902 - The first ad for her detective agency appears! It's at 5453 W Lake - a 4-room apartment with $18 a month rent. The apartment is above a tavern that was consistently being raided by the cops for its illegal poker room and bookmaking operations.

Aug 1903 - Cora is profiled in the Chicago Tribune under the matter-of-fact headline "Woman Directs A Detective Bureau". In it she claims that she originally studied law and practiced as an attorney for several years.

1905 - The first big ad in the Chicago city directory, complete with photo! Cora has moved to 3104 Cottage Grove, and a George S. Holben is named as the "Supt. of the Criminal Dept." In 1903 Holben was involved in a robbery where his landlady accused him of drugging her and stealing $750 worth of diamonds. Several weeks later, the diamonds were still missing, but Holben was not prosecuted. I don't know if Holben was working for Cora yet when this all went down.

Apr 12, 1906 - Mahala Strayer dies at age 60. Her address is on Cottage Grove not far from Cora, so I assume her and Frank moved to Chicago at some point.

1907 - Cora is hired by a Mrs. Campbell who believes that a Mrs. Harris is writing fake letters in order to make it look like she is having an affair with Dr. Harris and so she may blackmail her. Cora takes Mrs. Harris on a trip to Milwaukee, gets her drunk on $150 of fine wines, and steals the letters when she is passed out. Turns out Mrs. Campbell and Dr. Harris actually were having an affair and he performed an abortion on her. Mr. Campbell eventually killed Dr. Harris.

Miss Cora Strayer's Private Detective Agency (Thanks, Dean Keyton!)

• [KBert]

  “Frank?”

  • [C.J. Hayes]

    In the early 1900s, if you were a man you were named either Frank or John.  Pretty much 50/50.

  • [Labbit]

    Had a cat named Frank once.  His twin sister was Francine.

• [blueelm]

  Woah. So, every single man that ever lived with her including her father died after moving in with her. That’s… um… some kind of…  luck.

• [aaronbrown310]

  What’s up with the agressive access restrictions on that site? No cookies == a warning that you’re computer is infected with computer plague PLUS some other hoops you have to jump through?
   
  No thanks, I’ll read other things.

  • [Marykesh]

     It’s running CloudFlare. It has nothing to with your cookies. It’s based solely on your IP address, which has been flagged by Project Honeypot or something similar as nefarious.

• [Brie]

  This would make a great mini series!!!  Cora tries to empower women and yet has some dark secrets/issues.  Is Cora good or bad?  Only the last episode will tell, or will it?

• [gijoel]

  But it is 1890′s and I am but a woman.

  (Bonus points if you get the reference)

• [Halloween Jack]

  Holy shit–she founded her own cavalry regiment, did high-speed chases down Lake Shore Drive, and took up with a 24-year-old dude when she was 42, making her the original cougar. I want to travel 100 years into the past and become her devoted manservant.

• [penguinchris]

  Sounds like an excellent opportunity for an exciting TV series.

  By the way such detective agencies still exist; in Bangkok there’s one run by a Thai woman – with a whole slew of lady detectives in her employ – so foreigners can check up on their Thai wives (whom if they still live in Thailand while the husband lives elsewhere, most likely are actually cheating, unfortunately).

• [chgoliz]

  The detail that sticks out for me is her first ad listing her address at 5453 W Lake.  All the other addresses are in the same neighborhood, on the south side of the city….this is on the far west side.  That was not an easy commute in the early 1900′s.  (Still isn’t.)

  Makes me wonder why.  All the rest of it, pretty standard stuff: she was obviously a con artist, probably a sociopath.

• [Heyref]

   I’m pretty sure that Cleopatra VIII get a bit of prior art credit in the cougar department. 

• [mofembot]

  I actually have a couple of PDFs for the Milwaukee Railroad Employee’s newsletter — a publication of astonishing size and frequency — with at least one ad from Miss Strayer’s agency in it. (I downloaded the PDFs because they contained passing references to my paternal grandmother, who worked for the railroad in the early 1920s.) Very fun to see this here.