In 1888, the year of the Jack the Ripper murders, the possibilities of how cameras might be used in criminal and legal cases were being explored.
The Sheffield Evening Telegraph, in its edition of Monday the 24th of September, 1888, gave details of a new used from them from America:-
WITH A DETECTIVE CAMERA.
PHOTOGRAPHING A FAITHLESS WIFE.
MIDNIGHT HUNT FOR DIVORCE
Three men from New York arrived at Landlord Boyes Hotel at Margaretville, Delaware county, late the other night, says a New York paper.
They woke up Mr. Boyes and told him their errand. Then they went up stairs noiselessly.
In one of the rooms, the door of which they opened, a dim light was burning.
One of the explorers lighted a silent match, and in another moment there was a brilliant flash. A shout from within the room answered it.
In the dim light after the flash, one of the three intruders ran forward and struck out twice, savagely, with his cane.
A man’s yell of pain followed the blows.
A SUMMONS IN A SUIT
The party of three retired, went down to the village, woke up Squire Ives, and came back in half an hour to Landlord Boyes house, where they served on Mrs. Annie Cook a summons in a suit for divorce, and on Gottfried Landsmann, an examiner of sugars in the Appraiser’s stores, in this city, a summons in a suit by Augustus Cook for 10,000 dollars damages.
Mrs. Cook was sitting with Landsmann, her face in her hands.
Cook, a friend of his named Edward Benedict, and an attorney named Isaac N. Falk were the invaders of Mr. Boys’ house.
A BORROWED DETECTIVE CAMERA
Falk is a brother of the photographer of that name, and had dabbled in photography himself.
He had borrowed for the excursion a detective camera and quantity of magnesium powder, with which the flash light is made, and for the first time, it is said, the work of the detective camera will figure in a divorce suit.
THEY HAD BEEN FRIENDS
Cook was the man who rushed forward with his cane and struck Landsmann after the flash light had been fired.
He and Landsmann were friends when both were bachelors. They used to board together at 219, East Eleventh street.
Cook, who is an artist, was married in 1886 to pretty girl of 20.
Landsmann was a welcome visitor at the Cooks.
THEY WENT ON VACATION
Mrs. Cook went to Margaretville in August, and Landsmann told Cook a little later that he was going Griffin’s Corners on his own vacation, and would drive over and see Mrs. Cook.
Afterward, Mrs. Cook wrote that Landsmann had decided to come over to Margaretville to the house where she was living.
COOK’S SUSPICIONS AROUSED
On September 1st Mr. Cook went up there to give his wife a surprise, and heard things that led him to accuse her of infidelity.
She denied it, he came back to New York disbelieving her, and hired Mr. Falk to begin a divorce suit.
MR. LANDMANN’S SIDE OF THE STORY
Mr. Landsmann told his side the story yesterday.
He said that he and Mrs. Cook had long been good friends, and that he took an interest in her because when she and her husband were living together they did not get along well.
He said that Mrs. Cook was afraid of her husband, who always kept his trunks packed ready to leave his wife, as he threatened often to do.
UNJUST AND UNFOUNDED SUSPICIONS
Landsmann says that the suspicions of Mr. Cook on his arrival at Margaretville were unjust and unfounded.
After Mr. Cook had returned to New York, he told his father-in-law of his conviction of Mrs. Cook’s guilt.
Thereupon the girl’s father wrote her that when her visit in the Catskills was over she could not expect to be admitted to her father’s house.
A MORAL OBLIGATION
Her husband had also told her that she couldn’t come to him again.
She told these things to Landsmann, and he says he felt a moral obligation to care for her.