Oh I know this one actually!
So media is always a window into like… culture. They’re these little time capsules full of double meaning, allegory, coding, applicability, etc. and detective fiction is a pretty intense one.
The trope wasn’t really written into novels or scripts or what have you. They were serialized, most commonly in radio shows (which were not recorded) or these little magazines made from cheap wood pulp. This is literally where the term “pulp” comes from in reference to fiction. They were literally printed on pulp and mass produced, designed to appeal to a broad audience. Detective stories (especially whodunnits) were massively popular.
The reason this wood pulp was so cheap, however, was because it was insanely acidic and would uh. basically melt after a little while. Most didn’t survive for more than a few years unless they were being well maintained by someone who knew what they’re doing. I once had a professor who had a copy of a pulp magazine from 1945 and he literally refused to take it out of the plastic cover because it would break apart like a dry leave.
Also this trope was a bit of a cultural thing rather than just in media. Because, and I’m paraphrasing an essay about detective fiction here, before “the butler did it” was a trope of mysteries, it was a very real fear.
And this has everything to do with the fact that these pulp magazines and radio shows were popularized during the Industrial Revolution. You see, the classes had been very clearly separated previously. The lower classes had no chance to interact with the upper classes because literal space decided them. But as the Industrial Rev chugged along, more and more people moved into cities. The riffraff and the wealthy? In the same space? Absurd!
Rich people were super paranoid about lower class folk trying to steal from them because for the first time, they were all congregated in the same general space. But also rich people apparently couldn’t learn how to cook so they still needed to employ those of the lower class to do shit for them. This is kind of where police also enter the picture cause their job was to uhhh *checks notes* beat up poor people. And of course, they had detectives as well. Because this idea of “poor people are scawwy” was so big in the upper class, most of the police just sort of adopted it and from there it became a thing to suspect the butler, the maids, the cook, etc.
Funny how in most detective media the victims are rich people… weird, isn’t it? because that certainly isn’t a reflection of reality.
TL;DR: classism sucks and blamed poor people whenever something bad happened to a rich person, all the printed media with these stories were made cheaply or were played on radios.
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