Short History Of... - The Pinkerton Detective Agency

Episode Date: November 17, 2025

⁠A Short History of Ancient Rome⁠ - the debut book from the Noiser Network is out now! Discover the epic rise and fall of Rome like never before. Pick up your copy now at your local bookstore or visit ⁠⁠noiser.com/books⁠⁠ to learn more. The Private Eye has long been a fixture of popular culture - from Sherlock Holmes, to Philip Marlowe, to Jessica Fletcher. But behind the fictional detectives lies a real figure whose influence shaped the very idea of the private investigator: Allan Pinkerton. After fleeing Scotland for the US under murky circumstances in the mid-1800s, he reinvented himself as a crime fighter and founded America’s first detective agency. Soon, his name was everywhere. His agents guarded trains, infiltrated gangs, and uncovered a plot to kill a president.   But how did a poor Scottish immigrant build a private army more powerful than the police? How did his methodologies shape surveillance, and influence the foundations of the FBI? And what happened when his agents went head-to-head with legendary outlaws like Jesse James or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? This is a Short History Of The Pinkerton Detective Agency. A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins. With thanks to Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, a historian, and author of Allan Pinkerton, America’s Legendary Detective and the Birth of Private Security. Written by Sean Coleman | Produced by Kate Simants | Production Assistant: Chris McDonald | Exec produced by Katrina Hughes | Sound supervisor: Tom Pink | Sound design by Oliver Sanders | Assembly edit by Anisha Deva | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: The Soundhouse Studios If you enjoyed this episode, you might also like to listen to the full story of the Baltimore Plot – when the Pinkerton Agency used cunning, guile, and disguise to foil an attempt on Abraham Lincoln’s life as he travelled to his presidential inauguration. You’ll find it as part of the Detectives Don’t Sleep series from the Noiser Network. Follow this link to listen right away: https://www.noiser.com/detectives-dont-sleep/the-baltimore-plot Get every episode of Short History Of… a week early with Noiser+. You’ll also get ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to shows across the Noiser podcast network. Click the subscription banner at the top of the feed to get started. Or go to noiser.com/subscriptions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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We'd love to talk, business. It's 1847, and in Dundee, Illinois, a narrow skiff is gliding quietly and steadily along the tree-lined Fox River. On board, scanning the riverbank, is a cooper or barrel maker, Alan Pinkerton. His single paddle dipping gently into the water to guide his vessel along. He's in his mid-twenties, sleeves rolled, muscles taught from work. His boots are scuffed, his hands thick with calluses, and he moves with measured purpose, eyes narrowed and searching. A couple of days ago, while scanning the banks for tall, straight timber to use in his cooperage,

he happened upon a small encampment on an island in the river. Knowing that the spot offers little in the way of hunting, and from the remnants of scrap metal and rough moulds he found, immediately suspected it to be the sight of some illicit practice. Counterfeiting has already taken root in Illinois, threatening to flood small towns like Dundee with worthless currency and ruin honest trade. For a man trying to build a business and a life here, turning a blind eye isn't an option. Today he is back to investigate further.

As he nears a part of the river that splits around a small island, he picks up the scent of a campfire and something else too. A strong, acrid note to the smoke, chemicals. He slows the skiff, moving closer until he can hear the crackle of the fire and the sound of men's voices. Drawing the paddle in, he lets the current carry him quietly to the shore, where he beaches the a skiff on a muddy bank and moves into the undergrowth. He stays low to the ground until up ahead he sees the clearing he found a few days ago.

Only this time, the fire is burning, and there's a group of men hunched over crates, stoking the flames. Alan hunkers down to watch them. In a pot over the fire, they're melting metal, which one man pours out onto a plate in small discs. Another takes the cooled discs and presses them in a low mold. It's exactly as Alan suspected. These men are counterfeiters and they're minting their own coins. Having seen everything he needs to, he sneaks back to his skiff and pushes softly away. Later, he'll alert the sheriff.

this illegal gathering and helped take down the gang. And when he looks back on this day, Alan Pinkerton will describe it as the moment he put his barrel-making days behind him and turned his hand to becoming a detective. The private eye has long been a fixture of popular culture, from Sherlock Holmes, stalking the foggy streets of Victorian London, to hard-boiled gumshoes like Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, to TV favourites like Magnum P.I. and Jessica Fletcher. But behind the fictional detectives lies a real figure whose influence shaped the very idea of the private investigator, Alan Pinkerton. After fleeing Scotland for the US under murky circumstances in the mid-1800s, he reinvented

himself as a crime fighter and founded America's first detective agency. Soon, his name was everywhere. His agents guarded trains, infiltrated gangs and uncovered a plot to kill a president, as well as crushing strikes and breaking unions. But how did a poor Scottish immigrant build a private army more powerful than the police? How did his methodologies shape and define surveillance, union-busting, and even influenced the foundations of the FBI. And what happened when his agents went head-to-head with legendary outlaws like Jesse James or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? I'm John Hopkins, from the Noyser Podcast Network.

This is a short history of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Alan Pinkerton is born. on the 21st of June 1819 into a poor family in the Gorbils District of Glasgow, a rough working-class neighbourhood known for its poverty and radical politics. His father is a hand-loom weaver, which offers barely enough income to keep the family afloat, especially as mechanical looms are beginning to replace weavers across the land. His mother, Isabel, takes on odd jobs and domestic work to stretch what little income William brings in for the growing brood.

Alan is his father's 11th child, though at the time of his birth, and thanks largely to the grip of poverty and endemic disease, only five of his siblings are still alive. Quiet, serious, stubborn, and wary of authority, he manages to survive an impoverished childhood in an area awash with drinking dens, brothels, criminals and brutal gangs. Soon the hand-loom weaving work all but dries up, but using some local connections, William Pinkerton manages to land himself a plumb job as a prison officer in Glasgow's newly built jail. But when he is just 11, Alan's father dies, and the family's fragile stability collapses completely. With Isabel widowed, the children are called upon to help provide, meaning Alan is forced to leave school and find work. After an unfulfilling year running errands for a friend of his late fathers, he becomes an apprentice Cooper, learning the tough, physical craft of making barrels. But it's not just the hard graph that shapes him.

First in the Cooper's workshop, and then as a journeyman Cooper traveling the country picking up work where he can, Pinkerton is exposed to radical new ideas about workers' rights and and equalities. Soon, his politics are as hardened as his hands. Rodry Jeffrey Jones is a historian and author of Alan Pinkerton, Americans' legendary detective, and the birth of private security. In the course of his career as a Cooper, he became radicalized and joined the Chartist movement, which was a movement in the 1830s to attempt to secure the votes for a wider segment of the male population.

The Chartist movement was divided into two wings, the peaceful wing and the physical force or revolutionary wing, and he was a leading voice in the revolutionary wing of the Chartists. For a young man like Pinkerton, shaped by hardship and injustice, the Chartist message of political reform and the working class right to vote hits home. But his involvement in the more violent, militant wing of the movement soon lands him in trouble. In 1840, he appears to lie low, and his name isn't found on public records until 1842. When aged nearly 23, he marries a young woman called Joan Carfrey in Glasgow Cathedral.

At the time of their wedding, she is a mere 15 years old, and already a successful soprano singer. Just three weeks later, and perhaps still on the run from whatever previously sent him into hiding, they step aboard the 404-ton square-rigued passenger ship, the Kent, and set sail for Canada under something of a cloud. Now there are two theories about why he emigrated. One is that he was wanted by the police for his chartist activities, and the consequences of being caught and prosecuted were quite severe. you would be deported to Australia, as it's now called.

Another explanation is that, in fact, he was an informer to the police, and the chartists found out what he was up to, and he was hiding from his fellow workers for that two-year period before he emigrated. After a brief, though not especially harrowing shipwreck on route, the newlyweds arrive in America in the summer of 1842. At first, Pinkerton continued. used to ply his trade as a cooper, settling in the small community of Dundee, around 40 miles from Chicago. Here he establishes a Cooperage business, and before long he's managing at least 20

employees, and doing rather better for himself than he had been in Scotland. And it's in Dundee, in 1847, that he suddenly happens upon a new career path. He one day found that he needed a particular a kind of wood for his barrels and was running short. So he polled down the river on a skeff looking for this kind of wood along the banks and happened across a little island in the river. And in this spot he found the remains of a campfire. And he wondered what had taken people to the islands and what kind of activities they were engaged in.

He worked out that in fact it was a band of counterfeiters. they were making counterfeit coins. He then worked out who they were and deported them to the local police. They were arrested. And the bankers were very grateful to him because counterfeiting was a real threat to the banking profession at that stage.

Thanks to the fake coins being minted there, the island earned the nickname Bogus Island. And the incident establishes Pinkerton as a man the bankers can trust to root out counterfeiters. Not long after his first success, he gets a tip-off about a farmer from Vermont called John Craig, who has a lucrative side hustle in laundering forged banknotes. Pretending to be someone interested in buying some of these notes,

Pinkerton ingratiates himself with Craig and entraps him, getting the man arrested in possession of the incriminating forgeries. The arresting officer is the sheriff of Cook County, which is home to Chicago. Seeing Pinkerton's clear aptitude for catching criminals, he offers him a job as deputy. The Scotsman accepts and promptly moves his family to the city of Chicago. Now it is quite a decision because Chicago was a suspect of a city. It was a very successful city, but there was Roche's Surage flowing down the streets, the streets, you know, there's a proper frontier town, terrible health problems. And Joan, his

wife, was less than keen than moving from a very healthy environment in rural Dundee back to Chicago. And in fact, at least six of her nine or ten children died in Chicago of these various diseases. But he was a very determined man, and the sense of adventure and opportunity governed his decision to become a private detective. After a year he finds that he's enjoying the challenge, the adventure, and the public fame that comes with his numerous successes. So it is that in 1850 he found the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. The first of its kind in America, it is dedicated to investigating crimes and recovering stolen

property. Its logo is a wide open eye, paired with a motto that becomes famous across the country, we never sleep. Some even say that the eye gives rise to the term, private eye, though whether that's fact or just a bit of detective law is still up for debate. Though small were the staff of just five people to begin with, the agency quickly earns a reputation for taking on cases that local police can't or won't handle. Their clients are the businesses most exposed to theft and fraud, banks, railroads, insurance firms, and express companies moving cash and goods across the country.

One major problem is counterfeiting. In theory, it's a national issue, but there's no federal force to police it, and local sheriffs have little reach beyond their own county lines. Counterfeiters move fast, across towns and states, leaving lawmen powerless to pursue them. For a bank or railroad losing money on worthless notes, hiring Pinkerton fills the gap. The agency promises a rigorous, incorruptible approach to detective work at a time when many lawmen are poorly trained, underpaid, and easily bought. And in an era where crime often seems to outrun the justice system, Pinkerton offers clients what the authorities can't, trained agents who can cross jurisdictions and relentlessly weed out criminals wherever they hide.

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Alison After Nexium from CBC's Uncover is available now on Spotify. Get no frills delivered. Shop the same in-store prices online and enjoy unlimited delivery with PC Express Pass. Get your first year for 250 a month. Learn more at pceexpress.ca. Within just a few years, the agency is operating across multiple states. By positioning itself as a professional alternative to local. police, it earns trust among larger businesses, especially the Illinois Central Railroad.

At the time, the company's legal work is handled by a young lawyer named Abraham Lincoln. And it's he who recommends Pinkerton when the railroad needs someone to investigate fraud and corruption among its staff. There was a problem with the railroads in that they suspected their conductors of being dishonest and widespread scale. the conductors would issue free tickets to their friends they would accept money for tickets and not issue the tickets there were scams of that type going on

and so Lincoln organized a contract for Pinkerton to install agents on the Illinois Central passenger trains and keep an eye on the conductors Pinkerton's undercover agents observe conductors at work, catch ticket skimming and bribery in the act, and report it straight back to headquarters. It's a model of proactive policing that catches wrongdoing at its source, and it cements the agency's reputation for thorough, effective work. That shared success also cements a personal connection. Pinkerton and Lincoln quickly become friends, drawn together by a

a mutual belief in abolitionism, the growing movement to end slavery. For Pinkerton, it's a natural extension of the radical politics of his youth in Scotland. In America, he channels that same conviction into action, using his network of agents to help enslaved people escape to Canada via a secret network of safe houses and guides known as the Underground Railroad. Lincoln, meanwhile, rises in politics. ties to the detective agency adding to his own network of allies. As both men climb higher, their paths converge in ways neither could have imagined, setting

the stage for one of the most delicate operations of Pinkerton's career. In November 1860, Abraham Lincoln is elected president of the United States. But his success proves a breaking point for many in the South who oppose his abolition visionist views and fear their way of life is under direct threat. Within weeks, South Carolina secedes from the Union, soon followed by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. The nation is teetering on the edge of civil war. With tensions running high, Lincoln prepares to travel on a multi-city celebratory tour

from Illinois through New York and Philadelphia, all the way to Washington and his inauguration. It's in this charged atmosphere that Alan Pinkerton hears whispers of a dangerous conspiracy to sabotage Lincoln's journey to the capital, or even worse, assassinate him on the way. The most credible threat seems to lie in Baltimore. Now, Baltimore was a city in Maryland, and Maryland was really a pro-slavery state. It never actually joined the south in the civil war, but it was a pro-slavery state and very anti-Lincoln. Now, Baltimore was one of the cities through which Lincoln had to travel as he proceeded from Philadelphia to Washington. And there was a security risk in that you had to change stations.

There wasn't a through train through Baltimore. So he'd arrive in one depot, and then he'd go on the local streets to the other station and continue the journey onto one. Washington, and that presented a security problem. Realizing that the threat to the president-elect is very real, Pinkerton decides to investigate personally, handpicking a small team of trusted agents to go south with him. None more trusted, perhaps, than a young woman called Kate Warn. A 23-year-old widow from New York, she walked into Pinkerton's office a few years earlier, response to earlier, responding to an advert for a detective job. With no background in police work,

she argued her case with conviction, persuading him that she could go places where men can't, and mix in circles where no one would suspect a woman of being an undercover agent. Pinkerton, who had originally assumed she was coming about a secretarial position, hired her on the spot, making her America's first female private detective. Sharp, resourceful and fearless, with a a chameleon-like ability to blend into any layer of society with ease, she has already proved to be one of his most valuable agents. Though a northerner herself, for this task she morphs into Mrs. Cherry, a southern bell from Alabama, complete with a drawling accent and a secessionist ribbon pinned to her chest. Mrs. Cherry will be joined in the south by a newly arrived

southern stockbroker called John H. Hutchison, or Alan Pinkerton, to those in the know. Accompanying them is a fresh-faced recruit, Harry Davies, posting as an extreme anti-union man from New Orleans. The three of them quickly set about ingratiating themselves with the locals, planting seeds of their anti-unionist secessionist leanings, and gaining the trust of the potential plotters. Then, when Lincoln's route to Washington is formally announced, they're in the perfect position to learn the true extent of the plan to assassinate him. There was a tunnel outside the first terminal, through which Lincoln would have to pass. And the plan apparently was to create a small riot nearby, which would distract the local police, whilst Lincoln went

into the tunnel so Lincoln would be unprotected and then they would shoot the fatal bullets and kill the President-in-Act. Thus, armed with the details, Pinkerton pleads with Lincoln to secretly change his travel plans. Reluctantly, the soon-to-be president agrees. After attending some of the organized functions as planned on the tour,

he finally boards the train for Baltimore, disguised as a failing passenger being accompanied by his caring sister, played by Kate Warn. Also on the carriage are Pinkerton himself, and another heavily armed agent both posing as businessman. With other agents posted at strategic points along the way, they cut the telegraph wires so that the plotters can't be alerted to the change in journey plans, and do their best to keep the identity of the president under wraps. But given his fame, not to mention his unusual stature at 6'4, it's no easy feat. He is instructed to stoop. His trademark stovepipe hat is replaced with a soft felt one, and his shoulders are wrapped in a blanket to complete the

look. Thanks to such careful planning, Lincoln is successfully spirited through the streets of Baltimore undetected, and lives to see his inauguration. Even so, he and Pinkerton will later be ridiculed for ever believing there was a plot at all. I think that Pinkston was absolutely right to take these as precautions. The feeling against Lincoln was so strong. There were certainly people who wished him ill. I think he deserves credit for having saved Lincoln on that occasion, but also for having highlighted the need for presidential protection in the future.

Within weeks of the inauguration, however, the country descends into civil war, and Lincoln now calls on Pinkerton to organize a far-reaching network. His operatives protect vital railroads, move information swiftly across Union Territory, and slip behind Confederate lines to gather military intelligence. It's dangerous work, but it transforms the agency's profile, proving it can operate on a national scale under extensive. pressure and in the murkiest of circumstances. By the time peace returns, Pinkerton is running the most recognizable private security force in America. In an era when most towns still rely on a handful of constables, the Pinkertons can deploy men by the dozen, even by the hundred, ready to take on work in the turbulent years ahead.

In the years after the war, Pinkerton's men swap battlefields for rail yards. for rail yards, city streets and factory gates, becoming the go-to private police force for America's booming industries. By now, the agency is very much a family business. His two sons, Robert and William, are both drawn into the fold, with each bringing his own temperament and talents to the work.

They both had positions in the agency. Robert had undertaken some intelligence work in the Civil War, although he was quite a young teenager at the time. at the time. William was a less tractable kind of person. He said both his kids to Notre Dame University, but William insisted on dropping out. He just once interested, and he was a bit of a playboy and flattenized with people in bars. But William turned out to be quite a gifted person in some ways because he got on with people, whereas Robert was more of an automaton. Despite his willingness to hire trailblazing female agents like Kate Warn, Pinkerton,

doesn't appear to be as liberal-minded with his own family. His daughter Joan never joins the agency, whether by her own choice or her father's rule against employing female relatives. There is no sign of a family rift, but she lives her life outside the business, while Pinkerton's sons take on the family legacy. His attitude towards women also shapes the rigid playbook of the agency, dictating the kind of work the Pinkertons will take on, and that which it absolutely won't touch. He had the prohibition on divorce work. He perceived that the real victims of the rise of divorce was women.

Although there was a female agitation for divorce, the proceedings which led to divorce really humiliated women in the 19th century, so he wouldn't touch it. And I noticed that that became a kind of staple of detective fiction. Pinkerton also resists relying on technology to get the job done. and has an aversion to using mechanical devices to snoop on people and record conversations. Although he knew Alexander Graham Bell, who developed the telephone personally, and they were both of Scottish extraction,

he had telephones installed in his offices, he wouldn't use them, and he thought that long-distance calls were an invention of the devil. Instead, the agency leans heavily on those elements Alan trusts the most, people, patience, and persistence. Using his tried and tested methods of undercover work and the meticulous following of paper trails, Alan's sons, Robert and William, run a tight ship. They send agents out to track embezzlers,

guard gold shipments on the move, investigate complex fraud schemes that outstrip the resources of local sheriffs, and protect the sprawling rail networks from theft and sabotage. For big business, the Pinkertons are an indispensable private police force who are on call at short notice, drilled in surveillance and undercover work and fiercely loyal for the right fee. Recruits are apprenticed to seasoned operatives, learning how to shadow suspects, file accurate reports, and adopt convincing disguises. It's not Police Academy training as we'd know it today,

but Pinkerton insists on discipline, discretion, and an indebton. and an incorruptible public face. But their growing power raises uneasy questions. They answer to paying clients rather than elected officials, and their work sometimes strays beyond the law, blurring the lines between protecting property and policing people. And soon, their sights turn to some of the most notorious outlaws in the American West. You think you understand how this business works, but you don't.

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increased prosperity, which naturally attracts all manner of criminals. From small-time hold-up artists to organized gangs, these are men willing to rob trains, banks, and payroll shipments at gunpoint, with little regard for their victims. But hunting them down is dangerous work, and not always popular with the public, who often see the robbers as folk heroes. they of course were in the eyes of a lot of people robin hoods people who stole it from the rich to give to the poor which is nonsense at least the second part of that is nonsense they did steal from the wretch but they didn't give it to the poor

but there were heroes partly because of the people that they robbed the people that they robbed were unpopular typically these were railroads and banks in the early 1870s one of the groups making themselves a particular Thorn in Pinkerton's side is the James Younger gang. Led by brothers Frank and Jesse James, along with Cole Younger and other seasoned outlaws, they rob banks, hold up trains and raid stagecoaches across the Midwest, and they are infuriatingly brazen about it. One of the more audacious moments in their career comes in 1871, when members of the gang

stroll into a photography studio in Huntington, West Virginia. Dressed in their best suits, they pose for a formal portrait as if they're respectable businessman. Not knowing who he snapped, the photographer displays the finished print in the shop window. Weeks later, a Pinkerton operative passes through town, recognizes a face, and secures a copy for the agency's files. It's quickly added to their growing collection of photographic mug shots of their most wanted felons, another innovation of theirs that will become a standard police tool, and one of the building blocks of modern investigative work used by the FBI and CIA. But these gangs are slippery and elusive. Sometimes the agency gets its man,

other times the outlaws are harder to pin down, just like Jesse James. It's late January, 1875, on a bitterly cold winter night in Clay County, Missouri. The James Family Farm sits low against the frozen ground, the surrounding fields bear and brittle under a hard frost. Beyond the split rail fence, a narrow track disappears into the dark. It's the route agent John Whitcher followed to the farmhouse earlier. and it will hopefully be his road out of there when the job is done. A seasoned Pinkerton man, right now he is completely still,

crouched in the shadows, watching the dim glow of the farmhouse windows, his tall frame hunched against the cold wind. Witcher has had the James Farmhouse under surveillance for hours. It's his belief that Jesse and Frank James are out here tonight. And the orders from the boss, Alan Pinkerton, Pinkerton are clear, flush them out, take them, alive if possible. But Witcher knows Jesse James' reputation better than most. He won't go down without a fight.

He shifts his weight, gloved hands gripping his rifle. Beside him, another agent cradles a small incendiary device. The plan is to launch the device into the house and drive the outlaws into the open. On a nod from Witcher, they move in, footsteps crunching over icy soil, the porch looming out of the dark. They can hear a woman's voice inside, followed by a sudden burst of movement and the sound of heavy boots pounding on wooden floors. It's now or never.

The fuse is struck. With a harsh hiss and a flare of light, the device arcs in through the window. The explosion shatters the stillness. Glass and debris fly, and smoke pours out into the night. A scream follows and a woman cries out in pain, and then the sound of horses' hooves clattering into action. The James brothers have once more slipped away into the darkness. By morning, the scale of the failure is plain.

Jesse's eight-year-old half-brother Archie lies dead, and his mother, Zarelda, has lost an arm, and the town is in uproar. The Pinkerton name, once spoken with respect, is on everyone's lips. But this time it's in anger, not admiration. They came to bring a criminal to justice, but instead they may have just made him a legend. The Clay Country Raid marks a turning point. While the James brothers slip away, their renown burnished by tragedy, the Pinkerton's reputation takes a serious heat. And in the end, despite years of pursuit, the agency never does catch Jesse James, who is instead shot by a bounty hunter. Pinkinters never caught him, but eventually Frank James decided to give himself up because he got tired of the constant fear that

People were hunting them down. The James brothers aren't the only targets. Pinkerton operatives go after the Reno gang, credited with committing America's first peacetime train robbery, tracking them across state lines in a relentless game of cat and mouse. Years later, the agency sets its sights on Butch Cassidy's Wildbunch, a loosely organized band of rustlers and bank robbers whose holdups stretch from Wyoming to New Mexico.

Just like the James Younger gang before them, they can't resist the lure of a studio portrait. Taken for fun in a local studio, the famous Fort Worth Five photograph ends up plastered across wanted posters nationwide, as Pinkerton agents ride deep into the frontier, shadowing the outlaws in the hope of bringing them to justice. There's an interesting scene in the movie Butch Cassidy and Sandance Kid. Sundance and Butch are being pursued across the mountainous terrain and they try every trick in their book to shake off these men on horseback who are pursuing them. In the end, they abandon their horses and climb a hill

and they're looking down to see what's happening to their pursuers and they begin to close on the mountain where the outlaws are taking refuge and the Sun Dan's kid says to Butch, who are those people? those people are the Pinketons These high-profile chases feed America's appetite for true crime stories

with the Pinkerton's cast as fearless seekers of justice Yet behind the heroic image lies a far more complicated reality The agents operate more like a private army than a police force They're heavily armed, travel in squads And sometimes use explosives or gunfire to flush out their targets. In theory, they are accountable to the law,

but in practice, their contracts with powerful corporations give them a shield of protection. On the lawless frontier, with little official government presence, the Pinkertons often stand in for the law itself, but their mix of violence and untouchability fuels both their fearsome reputation and the very deep public mistrust that is beginning to follow them. Because, away from the dusty trails and the romanticized pursuit of outlaws, the agency

is turning its sights on a very different target. The kind of people that its founder, as a young man, would have stood up for. By the late 19th century, the Pinkertons have taken on a new and far more controversial role as anti-union enforcers for America's growing corporations. It's a startling shift for Alan Pinkerton. You could say it's hypocrisy. You could say he's just allowed his commercial greed to overtake his principles.

But he did have a rationale that unionism and strike action in particular involve coercion and violence. And he said he was against violence. Now, this is definitely a contradiction in his point. personality. In 1877, during America's first major nationwide labor uprising, the Great Railroad Strike, Pinkerton men are deployed to protect company property and break the strike, adding to a growing reputation among workers as hired muscle for the rich. Some historians believe

that by this time a stroke may also have affected Pinkerton's judgment and personality, making this reversal of his earlier radicalism even more pronounced. He said his work against strikes and labour leaders was in the interest of labour because if he managed to eradicate strike action and use of force, then labour would benefit in the long run because it would be more respectable and employers would be happy to pay the more wages and so on. By the early 1880s, he has already stepped back from daily operations, though he remains a public figure and the symbolic head of his agency. But in July 1884, Alan Pinkerton dies at the age of 64, reportedly from gangrene as the result of biting his tongue after tripping while walking his dog. With his sons Robert and William at the helm, the agency's work in industrial disputes steps up. They begin infiltrating unions, spying on strike organizers, and, when needed, breaking picket lines with violence. And nowhere is that escalation more visible than in Pennsylvania in the summer of 1892.

A bitter labor dispute between Carnegie Steel and the amalgamated association of iron and steel workers is about to explode, and the Pinkertons are heading straight into the heart of it. That's annoying. What? You're a muffler. You don't hear it? Oh, I don't even notice it. I usually drown it out with the radio.

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On short history of, we'll step beyond the Leonine Wall and into Vatican City, the smallest sovereign state in the world. We'll follow the extraordinary life of Irish writer Oscar Wilde and crack befuddling cases with the Pinkerton Detective Agency. On real survival stories, we'll find ourselves marooned on a wild, remote fjord in British Columbia,

witness a terrifying lightning strike atop a Wyoming mountain, and watch on as a fearsome typhoon devastates a Pacific lagoon. In Jane Austen's stories, pride and prejudice continues, with a free-spirited Lizzie attending a dinner party at the grand estate of Lady Catherine, and not exactly making a favourable impression. And, in Sherlock Holmes short stories, a professor returns from Prague with a mysterious carved box and a strangely changed personality in The Adventure of the Creeping Man.

Get all these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus. It's just after Doors. Dawn, in Homestead, Pennsylvania, on the 6th of July 1892, and the first pale light is creeping over the Mononga Hela River. Standing on the riverbank is a middle-aged steel worker, with 15 years in the mill. Collar turned up against the morning chill. Around him are hundreds of striking men, members of the Amalgamated Association Union, some with wives and children at their sides, all clustered along the shore.

Beyond them, the idle bulk of the Carnegie steel plant looms against the sky, its smokestacks cold for the first time in years. They've been here all night, holding the line against the company's attempt to break their strike. Weeks ago, the management dismantled their union in retaliation for their refusal to work longer hours for lower wages. Ever since, the men of Homestead have been locked out of the mill. Carnegie Steel has fortified the plant with high fences and watchtowers, determined to restart operations with non-union labor if the workers don't acquiesce. But the strikers are not for moving. And now the bosses have called in reinforcements.

Out of the mist upriver, the steel worker spots two long barges, low in the water, moving steadily towards the mill's landing. Word ripples along the crowd This can only mean one thing The Pinkertons are coming Hired in their hundreds And brought here to take the mill by force He tightens his grip

On the length of iron pipe in his hand The barges draw closer Shields of fresh timber Fixed along their sides Men in bowler hats and plain clothes Crouch behind them Rifles ready A voice from the crowd shouts a warning to them to turn back.

They're not welcome here. It's impossible to say who fires first, but within seconds the air is alive with gunfire. Bullets tear through the morning haze. Men on the barges reload again and again. While on the bank, strikers and townsfolk scramble for cover, ducking behind piles of scrap and the wooden highlings along the river's edge. The fight rages for hours under the rising sun. Finally, with their ammunition low, the angry crowd pressing in and several men lying wounded

on both sides, the Pinkertons are forced to surrender. As they are marched through the jeering strikers, the steel worker watches fists and boots fly. By the time the agency men reach the safety of the town jail, they are blooded. and humiliated, and their actions at Homestead have burned the name Pinkerton deep into American labor history. In the hours that follow, the situation spirals, and Pennsylvania's governor is left with little choice but to call in the state militia to restore order. When soldiers take control of the mill, break the blockade and escort non-union workers inside, the strike collapses. Those who return to work do so under the worst terms they had fought so hard to resist, and

the Amalgamated Association's presence at Homestead is shattered. The Homestead event was probably the major domestic political scandal in the United States in the 1890s. There were congressional inquiries by both the Senate and the House of Representatives. The background was that the Republicans were seen as hand-in-hand with Carnegie and big employers.

The Republicans had passed the McKinley tariff, hiking tariffs in America protecting the steel workers, steel industry, and other major industries. But the Democrats now saw on opportunity. to exploit the Homestead Affair and advance their chances of winning the 1892 presidential election, which occurred just after the Homestead strike. So the Pinkertons featured prominently in that debate,

and there was already a widespread agitation to secure legislation to limit the use of Pinketons in labor disputes. Ironically, the harsh tactics of the Pinkertons Pinkertons help to strengthen the very labor movements they were paid to crush. The site of hired gunmen putting down American workers on American soil is deeply unsettling to many citizens. While workers rally against what they see as corporate mercenaries, politicians and newspapers criticize the unchecked power of a private police force.

This backlash leads to an era of reform. Labor movements gain sympathy and broader public support, while lawmakers take up the question of whether any private company should be allowed to deploy armed agents. By this point, the Pinkertons have become symbols of corporate might, but also of how fragile civil liberties can be in the face of muscle funded by capitalist interests. Indeed, their name becomes a generic term for any agent of the many other detective agencies engaging in similar strike-breaking work. The public outrage reaches Washington,

and in 1893, Congress responds with the Anti-Pinkerton Act, a law barring the federal government from hiring Pinkerton agents or any similar private detective agency for work on U.S. soil. In practice, most of their work has always been for private clients, but the symbolism of the act matters. The same agency that once guarded Abraham Lincoln and gathered intelligence for the Union Army has now been branded unfit for federal service. It's Congress drawing a line, distancing itself from the image of hired gunmen in the streets of Homestead.

Congress was brought in favor of legislation. However, when it came to the Senate, the Senate was not really sympathetic to pro-label legislation. So they passed an anti-Pinkton law which did not prohibit the use of Pinkton's in labour disputes, but did forbid the use of Pinkton's by the federal governments. The Act doesn't end their lucrative work for private corporations, nor does it stop them from turning up at strikes. Even so, it's a dramatic reversal of fortune for a company once so close to the heart of federal power. In the years that follow, the landscape changes again.

State policing becomes more professional and local law enforcement better trained and funded. The appetite for an unaccountable quasi-military private army begins to fade. By the early 20th century, a new legal framework for policing takes hold, with a growing sense that public security should answer to democratic control. The Pinkertons, still powerful but under greater scrutiny, are forced to adapt or die out. Their era of full-bore militia operations is coming to an end. To ensure their survival, the Pinkertons move away from strike-breaking and man-hunting and move into corporate security and private investigations.

In the early 1900s, they guard gold and payroll shipments for mining companies, provide security for world fairs and investigate large-scale insurance fraud. The work is quieter and less likely to make headlines, but it keeps the agency profitable and the Pinkerton name alive. Labour work accounted for at least one-third of the income of the Bigton agency over a long period. That's a huge proportion of the work you do, but they did do other kinds of work. The anti-counterfeiting had taken up a less important role after the formation of the United States secret service. But they worked on security for the banks, for the railroads, for the rising

racetrack industry. The Pinkton sons, William and Robert, were both highly interested in horse racing and dog racing. So they provided security, which is very much needed for that kind of event. So they had other strings to their bows. As the decades pass, they evolve even further into a full-service security farm. Through mergers and acquisitions, the Pinkerton name survives, pivoting from the bloody strikes of the 1890s to a corporate security brand recognized around the world. Today, the agency still exists,

though not as an independent detective bureau, but as Pinkerton Consulting and Investigations, a division of the global security giant, Securitas. From its headquarters in Michigan, it provides risk management, corporate investigations and security services in more than 100 countries. And yet their history is never far behind them. The Pinkertons helped shape the modern detective profession and left a permanent imprint on American culture. In books, movies, and dramas of all kinds, the archetype of the hard-boiled private eye as relentless, cunning, and a little, dangerous owes much to the real men and women of the Pinkerton Agency. But for all its distinctive

principles and peculiarities, the history of America's first detective agency raises difficult questions around the privatization of justice, the limits of corporate power, and about who really gets to enforce the law in a democracy. Those questions remain urgent even today, in a world of modern security contractors with sophisticated monitoring technologies and global reach. The Pinkerton story is not just a relic of the past, but a mirror, reflecting how we continue to wrestle with questions of power, accountability, and the interplay of civil liberties and profit. And at the heart of that story is the first and arguably the most famous private detective of all.

There's widespread interest in the competition for the hearts and minds of America between the private eye who has a certain amount of glamour and the Western bandits of the 19th century era. The private detective is of his nature an ambivalent person and that interests us because that's a widespread aspect of human nature and we're all interested in that. If you enjoyed this episode, you might also like to listen to the full story of the Baltimore plot when the Pinkerton Agency used cunning, guile, and disguise to foil an attempt on Abraham Lincoln's

life as he traveled to his presidential inauguration. You'll find it as part of the Detectives Don't Sleep series from the Noiser podcast network. Click the link in the episode description or search for Detectives Don't Sleep wherever you get your podcast. Next time on Short History, I'll bring you a short history of the Bronte Sisters. I think if you read any Bronte novel today, you'll enjoy it. Yes, they're writing about a time 200 years ago, nearly, but they're relevant, you know, the people, and the people you could meet on the streets today,

and some of the issues they're writing about are very modern, especially the tenant of Wildfell Hall by Am Bronte, which I think is a very modern but well ahead of its time. I think there were forward-thinking, very relevant novels, even today, But they're just brilliant stories. We were amazing geniuses, but they were obviously humans as well. I think as long as humanity exists, as long as this world keeps turning, as long as people read books in whatever form they read them,

people will still read the Bronte Nobles. That's next time. If you can't wait a week until the next episode, you can listen to it right away by subscribing to Noiser Plus. Head to www.noiser.com forward slash subscriptions for more information.