1402 Allan J. Pinkerton

Allan J. Pinkerton (1819 – 1884). Scottish–born American detective and spy, best known for creating the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.

Born in Gorbals, Glasgow, he left school at the age of 10, after his father's death, and was largely self-educated. He secretly married Joan Carfrae (1822–1887) then a singer, on 13 March 1842 and they emigrated to the United States in the same year.

Pinkerton first became interested in criminal detective work while wandering through the wooded groves around Dundee, looking for trees to make barrel staves (he worked as a cooper), when he came across a band of counterfeiters. After observing their movements for some time he informed the local sheriff, who arrested them. This later led to Pinkerton being appointed, in 1849, as the first police detective in Chicago. In 1850, he partnered with Chicago attorney Edward Rucker in forming the North-Western Police Agency, which later became Pinkerton & Co, and finally Pinkerton National Detective Agency, still in existence today as Pinkerton Consulting and Investigations, a subsidiary of Securitas AB. Pinkerton's business insignia was a wide open eye with the caption "We never sleep." As the US expanded in territory, rail transport increased. Pinkerton's agency solved a series of train robberies during the 1850s, first bringing Pinkerton into contact with George McClellan, then Chief Engineer and Vice President of the Illinois Central Railroad, and Abraham Lincoln, the company's lawyer.

When the Civil War began, Pinkerton served as head of the Union Intelligence Service during the first two years, and served on several undercover missions as a Confederate soldier using the alias Major E.J. Allen. He was succeeded as Intelligence Service chief by Lafayette Baker; the Intelligence Service was the predecessor of the U.S. Secret Service. His work led to the establishment of the Federal secret service.

Pinkerton produced numerous popular detective books, ostensibly based on his own exploits and those of his agents. Some were published after his death, and they are considered to have been more motivated by a desire to promote his detective agency than a literary endeavour. Most historians believe that Allan Pinkerton hired ghostwriters, but the books nonetheless bear his name and no doubt reflect his views.

 

- "As a young boy, Pinkerton was a fiery redhead..." https://www.scotsman.com/.../pinkertons-great-detective...

 

- "... with penetrating blue eyes beneath a coarse thatch of reddish hair." https://books.google.it/books?id=r0dJ7dKxFhEC&pg=PT29...