PINKERTON, ALLAN (18191884)

This article appears in Volume V21, Page 627 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: PIG-POL

PINKERTON, ALLAN (18191884) , American detective, was born in Glasgow,

Scotland

, on the 25th of August 1819. His father, a sergeant of the Glasgow municipal police, died in 1828 of injuries received from a prisoner in his custody. In 1842 .al]an emigrated to Chicago, Illinois. In 1843 he removed to Dundee, Kane county, Illinois, where he established a cooper-'age business. Here he ran down a gang of counterfeiters, ,nd he was appointed a deputy-sheriff of Kane county in 1846 and immediately afterwards of Cook county, with headquarters in Chicago. There he organized a force of detectives to capture thieves who were stealing railway property, and this organization developed in 1852 into Pinkerton's National Detective Agency, of which he took sole charge in 1853. He was especially successful in capturing thieves who stole large amounts from express companies. In 1866 his agency captured the principals in the theft of $700,000 from Adams Express Company safes on a

train

TRAIN (M. Eng. trayn or trayne, derived through Fr. from Late Lat. trahinare, to drag, draw, Lat. trahere, cf. trail, trace, ultimately from the same source)

of the New

York

YORK
YORK (
HOUSE
- HOUSE
- HOUSE (O. Eng. hiss, a word common to Teutonic languages, cf. Dut. huis, Ger. Haus; in
  Gothic
  - GOTHIC
  it is only found in gudhiss, a temple; it may be ultimately connected with the root of " hide," conceal)
OF)
YORK, EDMUND OF
LANGLEY
- LANGLEY, SAMUEL PIERPONT (1834-1906)
, DUKE OF (1341-1402)
YORK, EDWARD
YORK, FREDERICK
AUGUSTUS
- AUGUSTUS (a name 1 derived from Lat. augeo, increase, i.e. venerable, majestic, Gr. Ee0avr6s)
, DUKE OF (1763-1827)
YORK, RICHARD, DUKE

, New Haven & Hartford railway, and recovered all but about $12,000 of the stolen money. In February 1861 Pinkerton found evidence of a plot to assassinate President-elect Lincoln upon his arrival in

Baltimore

BALTIMORE
BALTIMORE, GEORGE CALVERT, 1ST BARON (C. 1580—1632)

on his way to Washington; as a result, Lincoln passed through

Baltimore

BALTIMORE
BALTIMORE, GEORGE CALVERT, 1ST BARON (C. 1580—1632)

at an early hour in the morning without stopping. In April 1861 Pinkerton, onthe suggestion of General George B. McClellan, organized a system of obtaining military information in the Southern states. From this system he developed the Federal

secret

SECRET (Lat. secretum, hidden, concealed)

service, of which he was in charge throughout the war, under the assumed name of Major E. J. Allen. One of his detectives, James McParlan, in 18731876 lived among the Molly Maguires (q.v.) in

Pennsylvania

PENNSYLVANIA
PENNSYLVANIA, UNIVERSITY OF

and secured evidence which led to the breaking up of the organization. In 1869 Pinkerton suffered a partial stroke of paralysis, and thereafter the management of the detective agency devolved chiefly upon his sons, William Allan (b. 1846) and Robert (18481907). He died in Chicago on the 1st of July 1884. He published The Molly Maguires and the Detectives (1877), The Spy of the Rebellion (1883), in which he gave his version of President-elect Lincoln's journey to Washing-ton; and Thirty Years a Detective (1884).

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