The Private Investigator: an Early History
We Never Sleep. That’s the motto that began in 1850 and lasted until July 2003—and has been the most revered and remembered PI motto throughout history. Its foundation in the early years of private investigation established a standard for the modern private investigative firms, detectives, and detective agencies worldwide. Many of the current private, as well as police investigative and security teams, have adapted and employed the private investigative tactics and decoy strategies invented by the Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency.
Many of you are probably thinking, “well of course anyone who knows a little about detective work knows about the Pinkerton legacy—it’s basically Private Eye 101.”
However, those of you who are unfamiliar with the Pinkerton legacy are in for a real treat because the astonishing part is that Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency head man and founder, Allan Pinkerton, was a fugitive. Nothing serious, mind you, and totally justifiable to anyone who not only appreciates freedom but who must live it or die.
But Allan Pinkerton was a fugitive, nonetheless.
Allan Pinkerton (1819-1884)
Photograph, circa 1866
Pinkerton's National Detective Agency
His story begins in Scotland around 1840. The law enforcers of England’s Queen Victoria issued an arrest warrant for Allan Pinkerton because he represented a “covert threat.” His crime? Being a hot headed youth with increasing incendiary and radical views.
The facts are that Allan Pinkerton was part of Scotland’s Chartists’ Proletarian movement that was working towards the reformation of Britain’s Parliament. Most working men had the hopes of new prosperity as well as political rights and libertarian reform; sophisticated conservatives saw the movement as a socialist restructuring of society, but all in all, Chartism was seen as a protest against hunger and physical suffering. Allan Pinkerton was viewed as a threat to the country because classical conservatives saw the movement as an attack on property, and thus on civilized society, so it had to be resisted in the best interests of all.
So, in the best interest of himself and his new beautiful bride, Allan Pinkerton fled for a new life and freedom that could only be granted in the United States of America. He was twenty-two years old.
Now that you have the opening scene, the birth of the “private investigator” goes as follows…
One night, around 1847, Allan, with the local Dundee, Illinois sheriff in tow, proceeded to investigate a curious group of men that had been gathering together around campfires over the past few nights on the small island of a nearby river. As it turned out, the men were counterfeiting coins and were promptly arrested. Thus was the beginning of Allan Pinkerton’s private investigation career and legacy.
Pinkerton’s reputation grew exponentially and by the following year, in 1848, he was made Chicago’s first full-time detective. Just two short years later, in 1850, Pinkerton established his own private investigative agency that provided detective and security service for private and government officials alike—all while covertly keeping a reliable passageway for the underground railroad bringing many southern men and women to safety and freedom.
Allan Pinkerton had been an arch-opponent of Southern slavery almost from the moment he set foot on American soil. In the decade preceding the Civil War, his conscience apparently was never troubled by the curious contradiction that, while his agency’s reputation rested on strict adherence to the law, he was secretly, and quite unlawfully, engaged in providing aid to runaway slaves.
In any event, when the sectional disputes over slavery finally erupted into armed conflict in 1861, Pinkerton predictably stood up for the Union cause and was soon turning over the resources and talents of his agency to the federal government for use in military and civilian intelligence.
In 1861, at the outbreak of the Civil War, Allan Pinkerton and his then growing detective force aided in providing security for the then President-elect Abraham Lincoln and prevented an early assassination attempt that was believed would take place in Baltimore, Maryland. Soon thereafter, President Lincoln reassigned Allan and his Pinkerton security team to sensitive investigative duties for the Union. Pinkerton quickly distinguished himself as a spy catcher and provided service through the end of the Civil War.
Allan Pinkerton, aka Major E.J. Allan
Photographer: Alexander Gardner (1821-1822)
Photograph taken in 1862
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
After the Confederate surrender, Pinkerton returned to Chicago and resumed the work for which he was best suited: snooping on the common criminal and building his rogue’s gallery of outlaw habits and techniques—which would later become the foundation for tracking and identifying criminals. It was at this time that Allan Pinkerton and his Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency directed their attention and resources to the lawless and desperate Wild West.
After the Civil War, as bank and train robberies became an ever-increasing problem in the frontier West, the Pinkertons were commissioned by railroad owners and government law officials alike to help tame the rampaging outlaw gangs and renegades becoming more and more prevalent and menacing.
Although the offices of Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency were located in the large established cities of New York and Chicago, its operatives were not the typical city slickers they might appear to be, as often seen pictured, seated at their desks in conservative business suits. Over the next three decades, Pinkerton agents proved themselves readily adaptable to the demands of so-called boots-and-saddle law enforcement and successfully pursued the most wanted and hardened criminals of the time: Jesse James, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Reno Brothers’ Gang, and The Wild Bunch. For more in-depth information on these and other notorious outlaws, please click here. Nonetheless, by 1900, the Pinkerton name was as well known and intertwined with western banditry as the outlaws themselves.
During the late 1870’s, Allan Pinkerton’s two sons, Robert and William, had become Allan’s two right-hand men while proving themselves and developing a solid reputation and healthy respect from not only the agents they worked with but also the criminals they tracked down and brought to justice. Despite their talents, Allan was reluctant to hand over the reins and continued to run the company with an iron fist until his death in 1884.
Robert Pinkerton (1848-1907), left,
and William Pinkerton (1846-1923), right
Photograph circa 1876
Pinkerton National Detective Agency
Truly, Allan Pinkerton holds the title of the grandfather of private investigation and his history is considered gospel by most modern private investigative firms and detective agencies in North America as well as those on international soils. It is also worth mentioning, and not well known, that Allan Pinkerton was the first private investigator to hire the first female detective in history, Kate Warne, in 1856. Unequivocally, the Pinkerton history is an admirable and captivating story and is highly recommended*.
After their father’s death and under their joint aegis, Robert and William proved themselves able administrators while continuing to expand the agency’s field of operations. By the turn of the century, the Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency business practices and superior reputation were global.
After the deaths of Robert (1907), and William (1923), the agency still thrived for decades; however the police modernization movement, that brought the rise of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, cut into the demand for Pinkerton’s private investigator services. This forced the agency to become increasingly involved in personal protection services and after 1960, the Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency changed its name to Pinkerton Consulting and Investigations. The private investigators known to the Wild, Wild West, like everything else, had to change with the times.
All things must come to an end, and by 2003, the Pinkertons, along with long-time rival, the William J. Burns Detective Agency (established in 1910), where bought out by a Swedish security company, Securitas AB (established in 1934), and merged into a new company, Securitas Security Services USA, Inc. Securitas, based in London, England, is now one of the largest investigative and security companies in the world employing over 230,000 employees in over 30 countries worldwide.
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*Desperate Men. By James D. Horan, published by Bonanza Books, 1949.
Mate Check Private Investigations
Specializing in Domestic Relations Cases
Phone: 1 (480) 391-1010
Toll Free: 1 (866) 640-1010
matecheck@matecheckpi.com
License # 1003408
*Mate Check welcomes same sex and alternative lifestyle cases.
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