No. 645
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
March 19, 2024

Allan Pinkerton.

The Eye that Never Sleeps.
March 27, 2012
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Encountering a ghost may be a strange, possibly terrifying experience, but fortunately they are rarely harmful.  However, every now and then there is an account of a spirit that is not just malevolent, but physically dangerous.  One such story was told by folklorist Mary L. Lewes in the December 1912 issue of “Occult Review.”  It concerns a couple named Mr. and Mrs. Caxton. 
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Strange Company - 3/18/2024
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HE DUEL IN ELLEN'S HONOR. Soapy Smith’s grandmotherOn Wednesday, August 9, 1820, an argument between 17-year-old, James Bowe Boisseau (1802-1820) and Robert C. Adams (unknown-1820) vying for the attention of 18-year-old Ellen Stimpson Peniston (1802-1860), took a terrible turn. The happy party in her honor took a tragic turn when the competition for Ellen’s affections ended in a deadly duel,
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Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 1/10/2024
Going to the theater has always been a beloved New York City pastime. But theater became even more thrilling with the advent of open-air rooftop gardens—which hit the scene in the late 1880s with the opening of the rooftop theater at the Casino on Broadway and 39th Street. It wasn’t just the cool breezes that […]
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Ephemeral New York - 3/18/2024
An article I recently wrote for the British online magazine, New Politic, is now available online. The article, “The Criminal Origins of the United States of America,” is about British convict transportation to America, which took place between the years 1718 and 1775, and is the subject of my book, Bound with an Iron Chain: […]
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Early American Crime - 12/17/2021
Dr. John W. Hughes. Dr. John W. Hughes was a restless, intemperate man whose life never ran smoothly. When his home life turned sour, he found love with a woman half his age. Then, he lost her through an act of deception, and in a fit of drunken rage, Dr. Hughes killed his one true love.Date:  August 9, 1865Location:   Bedford, OhioVictim:  Tamzen ParsonsCause of Death:&
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Murder By Gaslight - 3/16/2024
Included in yesterday’s trip to Fall River was a stop at Miss Lizzie’s Coffee shop and a visit to the cellar to see the scene of the tragic demise of the second Mrs. Lawdwick Borden and two of the three little children in 1848. I have been writing about this sad tale since 2010 and had made a previous trip to the cellar some years ago but was unable to get to the spot where the incident occured to get a clear photograph.  The tale of Eliza Borden is a very sad, but not uncommon story of post partum depression with a heartrending end. You feel this as you stand in the dark space behind the chimney where Eliza ended her life with a straight razor after dropping 6 month old Holder and his 3 year old sister Eliza Ann into the cellar cistern. Over the years I have found other similar cases, often involving wells and cisterns, and drownings of children followed by suicides of the mothers. These photos show the chimney, cistern pipe, back wall, dirt and brick floor, original floorboards forming the cellar ceiling and what appears to be an original door. To be in the place where this happened is a sobering experience. My thanks to Joe Pereira for allowing us to see and record the place where this sad occurrence unfolded in 1848. R.I.P. Holder, Eliza and Eliza Ann Borden. Visit our Articles section above for more on this story. The coffee shop has won its suit to retain its name and has plans to expand into the shop next door and extend its menu in the near future.
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Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 2/12/2024
Youth With Executioner by Nuremberg native Albrecht Dürer … although it’s dated to 1493, which was during a period of several years when Dürer worked abroad. November 13 [1617]. Burnt alive here a miller of Manberna, who however was lately … Continue reading
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Executed Today - 11/13/2020
Killed By Cowardly Anarchists. | Hospital Horrors.

Allan Pinkerton.

نحن لا ننام أبدا

Allan Pinkerton, and the organization he founded in 1850, Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency, embodied all the traits that have come to be associated with the mythic American private detective. They were tough, honest, incorruptible, fair-minded, dogged and independent. The Pinkerton logo—a vigilant eye with the motto “We Never Sleep” –was the source of the term “private eye.” But not everyone has been pleased with Pinkerton’s work. Some detractors, then and now, have characterized the Pinkertons as little more than a private army for capitalists.

آلان بينكرتون

Pinkerton came to America from Scotland with his young bride at age 24 and set up a cooperage in Dundee, Illinois. After accidentally discovering a counterfeiting operation, Pinkerton contacted the sheriff of Kane County and assisted the sheriff and his men in arresting the counterfeiters. This series of events led Pinkerton to turn to a career in law enforcement and in 1849 became the first detective in the Chicago Police Department.

He left the police department less than a year later due to “political interference,” and after a brief but successful stint as Special Agent for the U.S. Post Office, Pinkerton opened his own detective bureau, Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency.  One of the company’s first clients was the Illinois Central railroad who had been plagued by train robberies. He was hired by the company’s vice-president, George McClellan; the contract was drawn up by Illinois Central’s attorney, Abraham Lincoln.

Pinkerton’s was not the first private detective agency in America. In an era with no national law enforcement and when state and city police forces were notoriously corrupt and inefficient, private forces had sprung up in most eastern cities. But these organizations tended to provide private substitutes for regular police functions such as recovering stolen goods.; Pinkerton’s was the first agency to specialize in the type of undercover operations commonly associated with modern detective work.

Pinkerton’s agency also differed from other law enforcement groups, public and private, in the high moral standards set for the organization and its operatives. In a document entitled General Principles Pinkerton outlined the company’s moral parameters:

"The Agency will not represent a defendant in a criminal case except with the knowledge and consent of the prosecutor;  they will not shadow jurors or investigate public officials in the performance of their duties, or trade-union officers or members in their lawful union activities; they will not accept employment from one political party against another; they will not report union meetings unless the meetings are open to the public without restriction; they will not work for vice crusaders; they will not accept contingent fees, gratuities or rewards. The Agency will never investigate the morals of a woman unless in connection with another crime, nor will it handle cases of divorce or of a scandalous nature."

وردي 2 Allen Pinkerton, Pres. Lincoln, Maj. Gen. McClernand

Following the Presidential election of his long-time associate, Abraham Lincoln, Allan Pinkerton uncovered a plot to assassinate the President-elect in Baltimore, en route to his inauguration. He convinced Lincoln to change his travel plans, probably saving his life. When the Civil War broke out, Pinkerton, who had always been an ardent abolitionist, rallied to the Union cause, volunteering his agency's services. He established the Secret Service, and supplied intelligence for another of Pinkerton’s old friends, George McClellan, now General of the Army of the Potomac.

After the Civil War the Pinkerton Agency, hired by railroad and express companies, actively pursued outlaw gangs and train robbers, such as the James gang and the Reno gang. “The eye that never sleeps” was well known to outlaws of the old west who had reason to fear the incorruptible and unyielding Pinkertons.

The Pinkerton name began to tarnish when the agency became involved in the labor struggles at the end of the 19th century.  In 1873 they were hired by the Philadelphia and Reading Railway, Coal and Iron Companies to investigate the Mollie Maguires, a particularly violent Irish-American secret society that had been terrorizing northeastern Pennsylvania in the name of labor reform. An undercover operation by the Pinkertons led to the arrest and execution of twenty Molly Maguire members. The question of whether these hangings were justified is still debated today.

In 1892, eight years after Allan Pinkerton’s death, the Carnegie Steel Company hired the Pinkertons to break a strike at the Homestead Steel Works, south of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Workers opened fire on a barge containing 300 Pinkerton agents. The resulting battle lasted several hours and caused the death of three Pinkerton agents and seven strikers.  Though they were outnumbered ten-to-one the Pinkertons have been portrayed as the aggressors. 

At the start of the 20th century, it became apparent that America needed a public law enforcement agency at the national level. In 1908 the Federal Bureau of Investigation was established, using Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency as its model. The Pinkerton agency still thrives today as Pinkerton Consulting & Investigations, a leader in the field their founder virtually invented.


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