Allan Pinkerton

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Allan Pinkerton, 1861
Pinkerton (left), President Lincoln (center) and General McClernand after the Battle of Antietam , 1862

Allan Pinkerton (born August 25, 1819 in Glasgow , † July 1, 1884 in Chicago , Illinois ) was a Scottish Büttner , American detective and founder of the Pinkerton Agency , which is now considered the first US private detective agency .

Life

Allan Pinkerton was born on August 25, 1819 in the Gorbals , a district of Glasgow, to the unemployed police officer William Pinkerton and his wife, Isobel McQueen. At the age of ten, after his father's death, he left school to help support the family. As an assistant to a Büttner, he joined the English Chartist movement. He soon succeeded in taking on a recognized position within the organization. As a member of the Chartist , he advocated trade union approval, social reform and the expansion of the UK's franchise . Shortly after his marriage to the singer Joan Carfrae (1822-1887) on March 13, 1842, he and his wife were warned that their arrest was imminent because of his political activities. Both then fled Scotland by ship and emigrated to the USA.

First he started working again as a buttner in a factory in Chicago. With the money he earned, Allan Pinkerton settled in Dundee in 1843, about 70 kilometers northwest of Chicago, and ran his own cooperage there: Pinkerton's One and Original Cooperage of Dundee . The business flourished and soon ten craftsmen were working for him. His son William was born in 1846, and twins Robert and Joan soon followed. In 1846, Pinkerton accidentally discovered the whereabouts of a gang of forgers, which enabled them to be arrested by the local sheriff , with support from Pinkerton. When the Cook County Sheriff offered him a job, Pinkerton and his family moved to Chicago in 1849 and worked as a detective for the police. His official title was "Investigater". Since he did not receive too much money for these services, Allan Pinkerton separated from the police service in 1850 in order to found the North-Western Police Agency together with the former prosecutor Edward Rucker . It was later renamed Pinkerton's National Detective Agency . The detective agency had a wide open eye in its logo with the slogan "We never sleep" - We never sleep! Occasionally it is claimed that the English term "private eye" for a private detective comes from this - but this is not the case.

Pinkerton's grave, Graceland Cemetery , Chicago

Its main clients were the local railway companies. The Pinkertongesellschaft used undercover agents, but did not shy away from harshness and physical violence in the investigation and prevention of crimes. While investigating a railroad case, Allan Pinkerton came across evidence of a planned assassination attempt on President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865). In consultation with the government security agencies, he followed the lead and as a result, the criminal group of the Dalton brothers could be hunted down.

The Pinkerton Agency soon cleared up some high-profile railroad robberies, which made Washington aware of them. For example, he was able to identify the perpetrators of a robbery at the Adams Express Company with the sum of $ 700,000. One of the directors of the railway companies for which he worked was McClellan (1826-1885). Allan Pinkerton had become good friends with him and when he became General of the Union Forces during the American Civil War in 1861 , he also received further assignments from him. One of them was to set up a "Secret Service" for the reconnaissance of the Union troops, which, as a kind of military secret service, collects information about enemy troop movements. During these missions, Pinkerton was under military cover as Major EJAllan in camouflage, but remained a civilian the entire time. After McClellan's recall as Commander in Chief of the Union Army in March 1862, Pinkerton refused to continue working for the Union. After the war, Pinkerton continued to develop and expand the Pinkerton Agency . After the Civil War, for example, the number of branches was expanded, and in 1865 the first Pinkerton branch was opened in New York. With the emergence of photography, there was the possibility of even better identification of criminals. Allan Pinkerton took advantage of this and set up an initial criminal record with corresponding photos of the perpetrators and suspects. The fight against trade unions became a focus of the work in the late 1870s / early 1880s . Pinkerton Agency infiltrated repeated labor protests and supported in the service of entrepreneurs scabs - a field of activity that should be a priority of the Agency for Pinkerton's death. When Allan Pinkerton's physical strength waned, he handed the business over to his eldest son, William, who was already with the company.

On July 1, 1884, Allan Pinkerton died of infection; he bit his tongue when he stumbled on a sidewalk in Chicago. Since he did not take the injury seriously, the wound became infected and he developed gangrene, from which he died. He was buried in Graceland Cemetery in Chicago.

Works

  • A double life and the detectives . Dillingham, New York.
  • Strikers, communists and tramps . Dillingham, New York 1900.
  • Thirty years of a detective . Dillingham, New York 1900.

literature

  • MacKay, James: Allan Pinkerton: the first private eye . Wiley, New York 1996, ISBN 0-471-19415-8 .

Others

The American writer Mark Twain (1835–1910) was enthusiastic about Allan Pinkerton's courage and zest for action. In one of his stories, which is only available as a fragment, he set a monument to him in 1866 with the figure of "Simon Wheeler - Detective".

An issue of the Lucky Luke comic series was dedicated to Allan Pinkerton , Lucky Luke versus Pinkerton .

Allan Pinkerton is the role model of Pinky, the hero of the book Detective Pinky by Gert Prokop .

Web links

Commons : Allan Pinkerton  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Pinkerton's biography on trutv.com ( memento from October 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ^ Logo of the Pinkerton Agency ( Memento from October 24, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Etymology of Private Eye at dictionary.com
  4. ↑ Betina Meister, biography of Allan Pinkerton - August 25, 1819 - birth of Allan Pinkerton; in: https : //www . Zaubererspiegel-online.de/index.php/mythen-aamp-realities-mainmenu-288/geschichte-mainmenu-289/4848-das-historische-kalnderblatt
  5. ↑ Wolfgang Knöbl: Police and rule in the modernization process
personal data
SURNAME Pinkerton, Allan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American founder of a private detective agency
DATE OF BIRTH August 25, 1819
PLACE OF BIRTH Glasgow , Scotland
DATE OF DEATH July 1, 1884
Place of death Chicago , Illinois , USA