Baldwin-Felts

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The Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency was a private detective agency in the United States, founded in 1900 by William Gibboney Baldwin and Thomas Lafayette Felts and based in Richmond, Virginia and Bluefield, West Virginia.

Agents were hired by railroads and other companies to investigate train robberies and other crime, but Baldwin-Felts became best known for being willing to be hired to violently attack labor union members in such places as Ludlow, Colorado and Matewan, West Virginia. Thus, the agency continues to have an extremely poor reputation among labor union members to this day and are thought of as union busters and hired thugs. Seven detectives were killed in Matewan on May 19, 1920 during a shootout known as either the Matewan Massacre or the Battle of Matewan. Agents killed including Thomas Felts' brothers Albert and Lee. Three townspeople were also killed, including Matewan Mayor Testerman. Following the events in Matewan, Baldwin-Felts gunmen, including undercover agent C.E. Lively, assassinated Matewan Sheriff Sid Hatfield and his friend Ed Chambers on the steps of the Welch, West Virginia Courthouse in retribution for the killing of Albert and Lee Felts.

The agency's most famous case of its day was the capture of the Floyd Allen and his family who were involved in a courtroom shootout in Hillsville, Virginia during which 5 people died and 7 were wounded. This event was the big news in the nation from March 13, 1912 until April 15 that year when the Titanic sank.

Baldwin-Felts Detectives pursued two of the fugitives from Virginia to Des Moines, Iowa before finally capturing them. Hired by the Governor of Virginia due to the fact Virginia had no State Police force, the detectives cut a wide swath through Carroll County in their quest. Confiscating horses, performing illegal searches, tampering with the US Mail and beating witnesses, they managed to capture most of the Allens within a three week time period. Only six months elapsed before the final two were captured in Iowa.

Baldwin died in 1936 at age 75 and Felts a year later at age 69. Legislation outlawing the use of private detectives for the purpose of spying on workers had made such detectives less useful to mine owners.

The Baldwin-Felts agency was dissolved in the late 1930s and most of its files were destroyed.

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[edit] References

Estep, Francis F. "Paint and Cabin Creek Murders." In The Goldenseal Book of the West Virginia Mine Wars. Ken Sullivan, ed. Charleston, WV: Pictorial Histories Publishing Company, 1991. ISBN 0929521579
Kilkeary, Desmond. "The Hatfields and the Baldwin-Felts." Chaparral. May 2005.
McDaniel, Brenda. "Gun Thugs and Heroes." The Roanoker Magazine. July/August 1979.
Smith, Robert Michael. From Blacjacks to Briefcases: A History of Commercialized Strikebreaking and Unionbusting in the United States. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2003. ISBN 0821414658
Weiss, Robert P. "Private Detectives Agencies and Labour Discipline in the United States, 1855-1946." The Historical Journal. 29:1 (1965).