Pinkerton National Detective Agency
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The Pinkerton National Detective Agency is a private U.S. security guard and detective agency established by Allan Pinkerton in 1850. Pinkerton had become famous when he foiled a plot to assassinate President-Elect Abraham Lincoln. Pinkerton's agents performed services ranging from security guards to private military contracting work. During its height, the Pinkerton Detective Agency employed more agents than the standing army of the United States of America, causing the state of Ohio to outlaw the agency due to fears it could be hired out as a private army or militia.
During the labor unrest of the late 19th century, businessmen hired Pinkerton guards to keep strikers and suspected unionists out of factories. The most notorious example was the Homestead Strike of 1892, when Pinkerton agents killed several people while enforcing the strikebreaking measures of Henry Clay Frick, acting on behalf of Andrew Carnegie, who was abroad. The agency's logo, an eye embellished with the words "We Never Sleep" inspired the term "private eye." The "Pinkertons" were also used as guards in coal, iron and lumber disputes in Illinois, Michigan, New York and Pennsylvania, as well as the railroad strikes of 1877.
The company now operates as a division of Securitas.
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[edit] Origins
In the 1850s, Allan Pinkerton partnered with Chicago attorney Edward Rucker, in forming the North-Western Police Agency, later known as the Pinkerton Agency.[1][2][3]
Historian Frank Morn writes: "By the mid-1850s a few businessmen saw the need for greater control over their employees; their solution was to sponsor a private detective system. In February 1855, Allan Pinkerton, after consulting with six midwestern railroads, created such an agency in Chicago."[4]
[edit] Government work
In 1871, Congress appropriated $50,000 to the new Department of Justice (DOJ) to form a suborganization devoted to "the detection and prosecution of those guilty of violating federal law." The amount was insufficient for the DOJ to fashion an integral investigating unit, so the DOJ contracted out the services to the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.[5]
[edit] Molly Maguires
In the 1870s, Franklin B. Gowen, then president of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad hired the agency to investigate the labor unions in the company's mines. A Pinkerton agent, James McParlan, infiltrated the Molly Maguires using the alias James McKenna, leading to the downfall of this secret organization. The incident was the inspiration for Arthur Conan Doyle's The Valley of Fear, one of the few Sherlock Holmes stories which focus on the exploits of one of the characters in the story instead of Holmes himself. A Pinkerton agent also appears in a small role in The Adventure of the Red Circle, another Holmes story.
[edit] Homestead Strike
During the Homestead Strike, the arrival, on July 6, 1892, of a force of 300 Pinkerton detectives from New York and Chicago, who were called in by Henry Clay Frick to protect the mill and replacement workers ("scabs"), resulted in a fight in which about 11 men were killed, and to restore order two brigades of the state militia were called out.
[edit] Steunenberg murder and trial
Teamster agent Harry Orchard was arrested by the Idaho police and confessed to a Pinkerton agent that he assassinated Governor Frank Steunenberg of Idaho and received a sentence of life imprisonment in a nationally publicized trial.
[edit] Outlaws and competition
Pinkerton agents were hired to track western outlaws Jesse James, the Reno brothers, and the Wild Bunch (including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid).
G.H. Thiel, a former Pinkerton employee, established the Thiel Detective Service Company in St. Louis, Missouri, a competitor to the Pinkerton agency. The Thiel company operated in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.
The William J. Burns Detective Agency was founded about 1910. In July 2003 Securitas AB acquired the United States companies of Pinkerton and Burns to make it Securitas Security Services USA, Inc., one of the largest security companies in the world.
[edit] Well-known operative and author
Dashiell Hammett, a well-known mystery-story writer, was an ex-detective for Pinkerton and adapted some of experiences in his stories and novels.
[edit] In popular culture
In 1892 there was a popular song about the Pinkertons: "Hear the poor orphans tell their sad story/Father was killed by the Pinkerton men."[6]
In the 2005 movie The Legend of Zorro, Pinkerton agents goad Zorro's wife to divorce him and become one of their agents in order to investigate a secret society threatening to derail California's 1850 admission to the Union.
The Pinkerton Agency and several agents are featured in the HBO series Deadwood. Pinkertons are often referred to ominously or with contempt by several of the show's characters. In season 1, episode 3, Brom Garrett threatens action by the Pinkertons towards Swearengen, set in 1876. In season 3, originally aired in 2006, they were hired by the character of George Hearst.
Corporate-hired Pinkerton personnel assault early 20th century union organizers in an early scene of the 1992 movie Hoffa.
Pinkerton toughs occasionally appear as secondary characters throughout Harry Turtledove's series of Great War and American Empire fictional novels.
In Sergio Sollima's Faccia a faccia (1967), William Berger portrays a real-life Pinkerton agent Charlie Siringo.
Pinkerton agents appear on the trail of four heroines in the 1994 movie Bad Girls.
Pinkertons appear a few times in the TV show The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.
Pinkerton men are frequently referred to in the 1980 film about Jesse James and his gang, The Long Riders.
Pinkertons also appear in the early Ian Fleming James Bond novels. Felix Leiter joins Pinkertons after leaving the CIA.
In Mean Streets 1997 by Terrance Dicks, Roz Forrester and Chris Cwej pose as agents of the "Interplanetary Pinkerton Bureau" in order to investigate Megacity.
In the 2001 movie American Outlaws, Allan Pinkerton is portrayed by actor Timothy Dalton. The Pinkerton Agency is shown trying to capture outlaw Jesse James (portrayed by Colin Farrell).
The Valley of Fear, a fictional story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, features a Pinkerton Detective among a gang of terrorist 'Scowrers', a sect of Freemasons, living in the imaginary Gilmerton Mountains set in the west of the United States.
In The Dante Club a Pinkerton Detective is hired to investigate people's feelings about Dante's literature.
Due to its conflicts with labor unions, the word Pinkerton remains in the vocabulary of labor organizers and union members as a derogatory reference to authority figures who side with management (in the opinion of the union). [citation needed]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Foner, Eric, John Arthur Garraty (Oct 21, 1991). The Reader's Companion to American History. Houghton Mifflin Books. ISBN 0-395-51372-3.p. 842
- ^ Robinson, Charles M (2005). American Frontier Lawmen 1850-1930. Osprey Publishing. ISBN 1-84176-575-9.p. 63
- ^ Horan, James David, Howard Swiggett (1951). The Pinkerton Story. Putnam.p. 202
- ^ Morn, Frank (1982). The Eye That Never Sleeps: A History of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-32086-0. p. 18
- ^ Churchill, Ward (Spring 2004). "From the Pinkertons to the PATRIOT Act: The Trajectory of Political Policing in the United States, 1870 to the Present". The New Centennial Review 4 (1): 1-72.
- ^ Powers, Richard Gid (Oct 19, 2004). Broken: The Troubled Past and Uncertain Future of the FBI. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-684-83371-9.p. 44
[edit] External links
- Pinkerton Consulting & Investigations Inc.. Retrieved on 2006-05-11.
- (Spring 2004) "From the Pinkertons to the PATRIOT Act: The Trajectory of Political Policing in the United States, 1870 to the Present". The New Centennial Review 4 (1): 1-72.
[edit] Further reading
- Jeffreys-Jones, Rhodri (Oct 1, 2003). Cloak and Dollar: A History of American Secret Intelligence. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-10159-7.
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