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Pinkerton's National Detective Agency

Pinkerton's National Detective Agency was founded circa 1850 in Chicago by Scottish immigrant Allan Pinkerton (1819-1884), a leading figure in crime detection particularly for clients in business and industry. What began as a detective agency in Chicago grew into a national private police force. The Pinkertons stood against organized labor at nearly every turn from Haymarket to Homestead and famously took down the Molly Maguires, while instilling fear in the hearts of fugitives across the country. Allan Pinkerton, born in Glasgow, Scotland, on August 25, 1819, founded the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. But his career as a detective began by chance. After emigrating to the United States in 1842, he established a barrel-making shop in a small town outside of Chicago. Pinkerton was an abolitionist (activist against slavery). His shop functioned as a "station" for escaped slaves traveling the Underground Railroad to freedom in the North. One day while out gathering wood, Pinkerton discovered a gang of counterfeiters making coins in the area.

Assisting in the arrest of these men and another gang led first to Pinkerton's appointment as deputy sheriff of Kane County and, later, as Chicago's first full-time detective. In 1850, Pinkerton left this post to start his own detective agency. One of the first of its kind, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency provided a wide array of private detective services and specialized in the capture of train robbers and counterfeiters. By the 1870s, the agency had the world's largest collection of mug shots and a criminal database. The agency's logo, the All-Seeing Eye, inspired the term "Private Eye."

Pinkerton's first big contracts were with railroad companies, and the Administrative File includes a copy of a contract signed in 1855 with the Illinois Central Railroad, whose legal counsel was Abraham Lincoln and director of security was George B. McClellan. Lincoln and McClellan later turned to Pinkerton for detective work at the outbreak of the Civil War. Allan Pinkerton's work included efforts to establish a secret service in 1861 to protect the president and provide military intelligence for the Army of the Potomac. Field investigations gathered by Pinkerton's operatives and largely concern incidents of sabotage and espionage occurring in the Washington, DC, area.

In 1861, while investigating a railway case, Pinkerton uncovered an assassination plot against Abraham Lincoln. The conspirators intended to kill Lincoln in Baltimore during a stop on his way to his inauguration. Pinkerton warned Lincoln of the threat, and the president-elect's itinerary was changed so that he passed through the city secretly at night. Lincoln later hired Pinkerton to organize a "secret service" to obtain military information in the Southern states during the Civil War. In Tennessee, Georgia and Mississippi, he performed his own investigative work and traveled under the pseudonym (false name) "Major E.J. Allen."

In the late 1800s, Pinkerton guards and agents played an unpopular role as strike breakers. The agency had a harsh policy toward labor unions. Pinkerton said that he was helping the men by opposing unions. Union activists couldn't disagree more. Confrontations resulted and sometimes became violent.

The investigation of the Molly Maguires was the last important case that Allan Pinkerton personally supervised. The Molly Maguires were a secret organization of Irish immigrant coal miners who used violence and intimidation to battle low wages, poor working conditions, and ethnic discrimination in the anthracite fields of Pennsylvania. A report dated 24 January 1875 and sent to Franklin Gowen, president of the Reading Railroad, by Benjamin Franklin, superintendent of the Philadelphia office, recounts the daily movements of James McParland, the Pinkerton operative who infiltrated the Molly Maguires.

Crimes committed by a group of cowboy criminals are subsumed under the entry for Butch Cassidy and the “Wild Bunch,” the name given to the cattle thieves, bank and train robbers, holdup men, and general outlaws congregating in the Hole-in-the-Wall country of Wyoming where, commencing in 1897, they came under the leadership of Robert Leroy Parker, alias Butch Cassidy.

Agency policy called for cooperation with law enforcement officials requiring that evidence be given to police and prosecuting authorities when a case reached the point of arrest and prosecution. There was no federal police agency in the nineteenth century, and the Pinkerton agency played a prominent role in apprehending lawbreakers, particularly train and bank robbers and jewel thieves. As bankers and jewelers formed associations for mutual protection, Pinkerton's provided security services to these associations.

The agency's investigative methods, were later adopted by public law enforcement units. Pinkerton's compiled dossiers on criminals, used mug shots for purposes of identification, cultivated informers who were given code names, sent operatives undercover to infiltrate gangs, and circulated notices to alert the public that criminals were at large.

The rules of conduct and a code of ethics were communicated to his employees by Allan Pinkerton in essays entitled, “General Principles.” Pinkerton determined that the agency would not undertake an investigation in behalf of a defendant in a criminal case, would not conduct investigations involving the activities of public officers, or investigate parties suing for divorce. Pinkerton's agency did investigate labor unrest and was involved in strikebreaking at mining operations and related industries.

Pinkerton's had serious competition by the beginning of the twentieth century, especially from the agency headed by William Burns, a successful private detective. Pinkerton's criticized Burns's investigative methods, particularly his use of wiretaps, and the moral character of his operatives, some of whom had criminal records. For several years, Pinkerton's investigated the Burns agency and worked with a legal team that charged it with improper conduct.

Pinkerton's sons, William (1846-1923) in Chicago and Robert (1848-1907) in New York, expanded the agency during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. At the time of Robert Pinkerton's death in 1907, the agency had two thousand employees, safeguarded four thousand banks in the United States, and had branch offices operating throughout the country. Robert's son, Allan Pinkerton (1876-1930), managed the New York office after his father's sudden death in 1907, continuing the agency partnership with his uncle, William, who remained head of the Chicago office. When William died in 1923, Allan Pinkerton incorporated the agency and became sole family director. Allan's son, Robert Pinkerton (1904-1967), succeeded him in 1930 and was the last of the family to direct the agency.