Source: Wikipedia

Allan Pinkerton (August 25, 1819 – July 1, 1884) was a U.S. detective and spy, best known for creating the Pinkerton Agency, the first detective agency.

Pinkerton was born in Glasgow, Scotland, to William Pinkerton and his wife Isabell, in 1819. The location of the house where he was born is now occupied by the Glasgow Central Mosque. A cooper by trade, he was active in the Chartist movement as a young man. Disillusioned by the failure to win universal suffrage, Pinkerton emigrated to the United States in 1842, at the age of 23. In 1849, Pinkerton was appointed as the first detective in Chicago. In the 1850's, he partnered with Chicago attorney Edward Rucker in forming the North-Western Police Agency, later known as the Pinkerton Agency. Pinkerton's business insignia was a wide open eye with the caption "We Never Sleep." This is one theory of where the term "Private Eye" came from. As the United States was gaining land mass, rail transportation was becoming more popular. Pinkerton's agency which solved a series of train robberies during the 1850s.

Prior to his service with the Union Army, he developed several investigative techniques that are still used today. Among them are "shadowing" (surveillance of a suspect) and "assuming a role" (undercover work). Following the outbreak of the Civil War, Pinkerton was head of the Union Intelligence Service in 1861–62 and foiled an assassination plot in Baltimore, Maryland, while guarding Abraham Lincoln on his way to his inauguration for his first term as president. His agents often worked undercover as Confederate soldiers in an effort to gather military intelligence. In fact, Pinkerton served several undercover missions as well under the alias of Major E.J. Allen. Pinkerton was succeeded as Intelligence Service chief by Lafayette Baker.

Following Pinkerton's service with the Union Army, he continued his pursuit of train robbers and also sought to stem the infiltration of secret terrorist labor organizations. Pinkerton died in Chicago, Illinois on July 1, 1884 as a result of infection after biting his tongue when he slipped on a sidewalk. At the time of his death, he was working on a system that would centralize all criminal identification records; a database now maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Pinkerton is a member of the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame.

Pinkerton was so famous that for decades after his death, the word "Pinkerton" was a slang term for a private eye.

Cases from his detective agency became the basis for a series of sensationalised accounts published under his name. Later novels written by Allan's son A. Frank Pinkerton appeared under the name "The Frank Pinkerton Detective Series".

Some of the Frank Pinkerton detctive stories are available from Project Gutenberg.

Bibliography

Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express

Five Thousand Dollars Reward

Jim Cummings Or, The Great Adams Express Robbery