Ernst Wilfred Puttkammer was born in Chicago, educated by tutors and at Princeton, graduated cum laude from the University of Chicago Law School, and was send to France as a private in the American Expeditionary Force. He served as a front-line observer of enemy gun positions and troop movements. On returning to Chicago, he became a professor of criminal law at the University of Chicago Law School. He wrote The Administration of Criminal Law, a major text on the subject. To learn how the criminal law really worked, Wilfred went through and Police Academy as if a recruit. Then he wrote an effective handbook advising police about their rights and the rights of their suspects. Wilfred joined The Chicago Literary Club in 1923 and delivered 19 papers of which at least three were published by the Club. He traveled widely and often. In late 1977 Wilfred and his family toured Germany and France, and then, early in 1978, he and his wife went on a long cruise, during which he died on a ship in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

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