What classic mystery novels and stories led to "the butler did it" becoming a cliché?

Question

"The butler did it" is a common trope indicating a hackneyed solution to a mystery. I have read several classic mysteries from the 1920s and earlier (Poe, Conan Doyle, Christie, Sayers, etc.) but do not recall a single instance of the butler's actually being the criminal mastermind, let alone enough such stories to justify the phrase's use as a cliché. The one example I can think of, Agatha Christie's 1925 short story "The Listerdale Mystery," plays with the trope rather than using it straightforwardly.

TV Tropes claims that the idea of the butler as perp was already clichéd by 1928. But the page gives no little evidence for this. The page discusses two origins for the phrase, both dubious:

• It is often attributed to Mary Roberts Rinehardt's The Door (1930). But the page also says that the phrase does not actually occur in the book.
• It is part of rule #20 in S. S. Van Dine's 1928 essay "Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories." But criminal butlers are not mentioned in that rule, nor anywhere else in the essay as far as I can see.

In any case, TV Tropes treats the idea of "the butler did it" as cliché rather than discussing what led to its being seen as a cliché in the first place. Google Ngrams shows that the phrase was practically unknown before the 1920s and then jumped in usage:

But what led to this increase in the phrase's use? What mystery books or stories from the early days of the genre had the butler as the perpetrator of the crime, leading to this plot device becoming a cliché?

Note: this is not off-topic as asking for a list, because I'm not asking for recommendations. This is more along the lines of the many "What is the earliest example of X?" questions asked on this site before. The only difference is that I'm asking for a series of early examples rather than just one, because the sheer number of examples evidently led to this becoming an undesirable way to structure a mystery plot.

Answer 1

TL;DR: The criminal butler was not a cliché of detective stories, but of silent films!

Below I’ve listed ten silent films with criminal butlers, and another six where an apparently guilty butler is a significant suspect. I found these by searching the AFI catalog and IMDb for mysteries with “butler” in the synopsis.

Silent films with criminal butlers

Year	Title	AFI synopsis excerpt
1915	The Silent Command	After finding a button belonging to the doctor’s butler, the lawyer places the servant under hypnosis and learns thereby that the doctor sent him to murder the old man.
1915	The Green Cloak	Duncan, who had married and then deserted Ruth, double-crossed the gang, and the butler and maid were sent to kill him.
1917	The Mystic Hour	Clavering’s butler sees the painting of his dead master, and is so horror stricken that he confesses to murdering Clavering for his money.
1918	Just for Tonight	Lady Roxenham agrees to participate in the deception, but later Ted spies her breaking into the major’s safe. After he alerts the household, she and the butler are revealed as notorious thieves.
1918	The Voice of Destiny	Following John’s arrest, the detectives guarding Marie’s house recognize Briggs, the butler, as a wanted criminal, and when he attempts to escape, they shoot him. Marie, in playing with her uncle’s Dictaphone, discovers that his murderer’s voice was captured on the recording. Played at the dying butler’s bedside, the recording leads to Briggs’s confession and John’s release from prison.
1919	The Trembling Hour	Ralph is accused of the crime, but George arrives and forces a confession from Mrs. Byrnie’s butler.
1920	A Manhattan Knight	By this time, the family butler, who is a member of an underworld gang, has tipped off his friends, who then steal the Fenton jewels.
1920	The Bromley Case	Finally, all three are cleared when Tex discovers that the butler did it while attempting to abscond with the contents of the safe.
1924	The Great Diamond Mystery	In the climax, the butler is shot and makes a dying confession to Graves’s murder.
1925	The Verdict	Ronsard’s butler comes forward and informs the jury that he killed Ronsard in self-defense when Ronsard attacked him.

Silent films with butlers as significant suspects

Year	Title	AFI synopsis excerpt
1915	The Alster Case	Linda is arguing with Keith, the butler, who is attempting to blackmail her.
1917	The Bride’s Silence	Nathan’s sister Sylvia hides the knife, and when the butler Bobbins—whose hatred of Nathan was well-known—is arrested, Sylvia remains silent.
1920	Luring Shadows	J. H. Wareing, the treasurer of a New York bank, is found murdered in his library one morning; missing are securities and a necklace he had shown to the butler, Jason, the night before. Also present that night was the family physician, Dr. Barton. Suspicion points to the butler.
1920	Circumstantial Evidence	Determining to solve Nelson’s murder, Tex searches for the butler but discovers him to be innocent.
1921	Nobody	When financier John Rossmore is found murdered in his library, suspicion points to Hedges, his butler, who was instrumental in obtaining his divorce.
1922	Finger Prints	Although the criminologist places the blame on Wareing’s butler, a reformed burglar, the killer is finally revealed to be Barton himself.

Detective stories with criminal butlers

I could find no evidence for criminal butlers being a cliché in detective stories until after silent films had already run the trope into the ground. The question was considered by Mike Grost, who noted that

The solution of Mary Roberts Rinehart’s The Door (1930) is notable for being one of only a few real-life examples known to me of an allegedly popular mystery cliché.

_{Mike Grost. ‘A famous mystery cliché’. mikegrost.com.}

Grost was able to discover only two examples prior to Rinehart, both short stories by writers who are now obscure:

Year	Author	Title	In the collection
1914	Hugh C. Weir	‘The Man with Nine Lives’	Miss Madelyn Mack, Detective
1921	Herbert Jenkins	‘The Strange Case of Mr. Challoner’	Malcolm Sage, Detective

Evidence that criminal butlers were a cliché by the mid-1920s

From a review in Life magazine of Owen Davis’ play The Donovan Affair (1926), later made into a film directed by Frank Capra (1929), which features a murderous butler:

The other straight mystery play so far is “The Donovan Affair,” and if it did not have to stand comparison with “The Ghost Train,” it might seem more exciting. But we are getting to the point now where, after fifteen or twenty guests have been grilled and suspected of murder in turn, we not only don’t know who did it, but don’t care. We have a system now whereby we automatically suspect the butler right at the start and then pay no more attention.

_{Robert Benchley (23 September 1926). ‘Cuteness and Crime’. In Life, volume 88, issue 2290, p. 21.}

Criminal servants in general were deprecated by S. S. Van Dine in one of his famous rules:

11. A servant must not be chosen by the author as the culprit. This is begging a noble question. It is a too easy solution. The culprit must be a decidedly worth-while person—one that wouldn’t ordinarily come under suspicion.

_{S. S. Van Dine (1928). ‘Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories’. In The American Magazine, September 1928. Reprinted in Howard Haycroft, ed. (1946). The Art of the Mystery Story, p. 191. New York: Grosset & Dunlap.}

By 1930, the phrase “the butler did it” was a well-known reference to the cliché, as in this joke about plot spoilers in Judge magazine.

“Oh, you have just started to read it? Isn’t it a swell book? It fooled is right up to the last chapter. Of course the butler did it. Mabel thought the old nurse did it. No, they kill her, too. Still I don’t want to spoil it for you. It’s a good book tho’. So full of surprises.”

_{Anon (10 May 1930). ‘The End of a Beautiful Friendship’. In Judge, volume 98, number 2532, p. 15.}

Or as in this cartoon by Norman Mansbridge in Punch magazine for 14 September 1938.