Did you ever feel the need for a private investigator? Well, me neither. But a lot of people do.
There’s my favorite, Father Brown. Or perhaps Magnum P.I. is more your speed. Maybe you like Sherlock Holmes or the team on “Moonlighting.” If we lived in the TV World, there’d be a lot to choose from.
But here on the cold hard streets of reality, many people rely on Pinkerton’s. Yes, good old Pinkertons. They do more than just security. In fact, they started out in the detective business.
The founder, Allan Pinkerton, was born on this date, August 24, 1819, in Glasgow, Scotland (d. 1894)
His father died when Allan was only ten years old. He left school right after the funeral to work. But he also started reading books. Voraciously. He became highly educated in doing so—a self-educated man.
Somewhere along the lines, he learned to be a cooper. A barrel maker. But he was also active in the Scottish Chartist movement as a young man. The Chartists were a working-class movement who mostly wanted equality in the vote and pay. He seemed very concerned about equal rights throughout his life.
When he was 23, Allan Pinkerton emigrated to the United States in 1842. He had heard of a place called Dundee Township, Illinois, fifty miles northwest of Chicago. So he moved there, built his cabin, and started a business in cooperage.
Right away, he became involved in human rights affairs here in the United States, carrying over his behavior from Scotland. By 1844, Pinkerton worked for the Chicago abolitionist leaders. His farm there in Dundee Township became a stop on the Underground Railroad.
He always looked for the “right” way. As such, Pinkerton first became interested in criminal detective work during his work as a cooper. He’d trek through the wooded groves around Dundee, searching for trees to make barrel staves. While doing this, he came across a band of counterfeiters.
Now, I don’t know what those counterfeiters were doing in the woods. But apparently, these guys were up to no good. After observing their movements for some time, he took his information to the local sheriff, who arrested them.
Because of his sleuthing, Pinkerton was appointed, in 1849, as the first police detective in Chicago, Illinois. Then, just a year later, he partnered up with Chicago attorney Edward Rucker. The two of them decided to form the North-Western Police Agency. Later, that morphed into Pinkerton National Detective Agency.
Here is an interesting twist. At that time, the United States was in the midst of expanding its territory in the railway system. Of course, as the region grew, more trains began transporting people and goods. Pinkerton’s agency solved a series of train robberies during the 1850s. This work brought Allan Pinkerton into contact with George McClellan, then Chief Engineer and Vice President of the Illinois Central Railroad, and Abraham Lincoln, the company’s lawyer. Ta-da.
When the Civil War began, Pinkerton served as head of the Union Intelligence Service during the first two years. He headed off an assassination plot in Baltimore while guarding Abraham Lincoln on his way to Washington, D.C. Pinkerton did all sorts of intelligence and spying activities during the war. His work led to the establishment of the Federal Secret Service.
His life is filled with so much more in the way of things covert. Even a marriage. Pinkerton secretly married Joan Carfrae (1822–1887), a singer from Duddingston. They wed in Glasgow on 13 March 1842 and remained married until his death.
And his death happened in Chicago on July 1, 1884. It is usually said that Pinkerton slipped on the pavement and bit his tongue, resulting in gangrene.
So there it is. The sleuthing to find out the truth of the matter.
Wouldn’t it be grand if everyone would take more time in finding out the truth of things?
Because. It really does matter.
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“Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.”
― Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack
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“I’ve learned that we’re all entitled to have our secrets.”
― Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook
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“Secrets have a way of making themselves felt, even before you know there’s a secret.”
― Jean Ferris, Once Upon a Marigold
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Sneaky. Sleuthy. The detective way.
