[Business Papers of a Retail Auditor and Interregator]

Various, including Oklahoma, Texas, and Detroit, (ca. 1932-1965). An administrative archive consisting of about a dozen pieces of marketing and administrative forms and ephemera along with more than 200 pieces of typed, hand-written, or photo-duplicated correspondence. Materials chronologically sorted and all neatly placed into an approximately 13" x 10" x 2"h archival cloth clamshell box. Original (empty) leather binder included.

A rich archive of paperwork and correspondence compiled by an Alfons. A. Jay (aka Alphonso A. Jurkiewicz, aka A.A. Jay) during his work as an agent and interrogator with a few different retail auditing firms active in Oklahoma and Texas, but primarily Detroit, from the 1930's into the 1960's.

Ancestral records tell us Jay was born to Polish parents in Detroit in 1918 and that he died in 1971 (also in Detroit) at the age of 53. In between he seems to have pursued a career with various firms, most lasting the Business Surveys System of Detroit, as an agent and interrogator. His work seems to have consisted of courting firms with the promise of an undercover loss prevention auditing of the sales staff of mostly automotive dealership parts counters and hardware stores. Jay seems to have had a preternatural aptitude for finding workers skimming from sales or outright stealing merchandise and would coerce written confessions from employees with promises of restitution (of which included paperwork suggests Jay would typically be entitled to half).

From a November 24, 1964 letter penned by an Alex Sourchi of Detroit:

“Mr. Tom Taylor,

In the term of my employment with your company , which has been the past 15 months, I as a parts man have taken, stolen money from cash sales across the counter to the amount I believe to be not more than 300.00 Three hundred. This money I take for my own personal use and without the knowledge of my employer and fellow employees, for this I am sorry and I, Alex Sourchi, promise to make restitution as soon as possible. I am making this statement of my own free will without duress. I promise that this will never happen again.

P.S. I am sorry for what I have done and I appreciate your kind understanding. I will never let you down again so help me god..“

Amid business forms and professional corresponodence here are about 100 original letters, either manuscript or photostatic duplications, of such confessions providing a massively intriguing primary glimpse at a sweaty, Mamet-esque world of private investigation and loss prevention work from the 1930’s into the 1960’s.