He runs the thief
and forger down

IT WAS SEPTEMBER 1917, AND THOUGH THE WAR’S shadow stretched across the globe, the change of season brought bright days to Melbourne’s streets. With the arrival of spring, Piggott took to wearing a white rose in his buttonhole.

For Piggott, commendation followed commendation. The mid-August conviction of Sefton’s lover, Jean Williams, for attempting to pervert the course of justice, occurred almost simultaneously with the detective’s prosecution of Georgina Frew, whom he had arrested ‘on a charge of having in her possession forty-two spurious coins with intent to utter and put off’. She was sentenced to two years’ jail. ‘This detective has displayed singular ability’, wrote Superintendent Davidson.

Reflecting on the detective’s character, ex-inspector George Newton who, as a young constable worked under Piggott, remembered him as having ‘a sophisticated personality’ and being always ‘well groomed, well dressed … like one of those stock exchange men that you’d see walking with a walking stick—in that period anyway—with gloves on and all the rest of it, in Collins Street…’.

An unnamed newspaper humourist had a similar impression:

A dandy ‘D’ is Piggott
When he’s out upon a case
He makes the tales of Sherlock Holmes
Seem tame and commonplace.

He runs the thief and forger down,
He corrals up the crook;
And many a daring criminal
Has Piggott brought to book.

But Piggott had scarcely time to catch his breath before the next mystery assailed him.