This is Mary Grace Quackenbos, a.k.a. “Mrs. Sherlock Holmes,” and she was a good apple. Born in 1869, she came into a large estate in her youth and enrolled in law school. She used her fortune to help the poor and powerless, starting up “The People’s Law Firm”in 1905. When a young Italian immigrant headed for the death penalty sought Mary’s assistance, the lawyer worked for free, “as woman for woman,” and was able to prove the defendant had shot her assailant in self defense. Quackenbos also undertook extensive undercover work to expose a horrific system of peonage in the American South, in which hundreds of Italian immigrant workers were being forced into slave conditions on turpentine plantations. The press and the American public bestowed the nickname “Mrs. Sherlock Holmes” on Mary after she successfully solved a cold-case mystery involving the murder of a young woman named Ruth Cruger. It turns out the NYPD had messed up their investigations so badly in this case that the department came under investigation for turning a blind eye to people with mob connections. Dying in 1948, Mary Grace Quackenbos was a leader in the Progressive Era’s gains for social equity of the less powerful in society.
Source(s): See Brad Ricca’s book, _Mrs. Sherlock Holmes: The True Story of New York City’s Greatest Female Detective . . . .” (St. Martins Press, 2017); Wikipedia “Mary Grace Quackenbos;” the recent episode of the podcast “Criminal” on Mary Grace Quackenbos; and crimereads.com, August 28, 2019, Olivia Rutigliano, “Remembering the Guilded Age’s Long-Lost Lady Detectives.”
