Allan Pinkerton

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{{Infobox person |name = Allan Pinkerton |image = Allan Pinkerton-retouch.jpg |caption = Portrait of Allan Pinkerton, circa 1861 |birth_date = (1819-08-25)25 August 1819 |birth_place = Gorbals, Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Scotland, United Kingdom |death_date = 1 July 1884(1884-07-01) (aged 64) |death_place = Chicago, Cook County, Illinois |resting_place = Graceland Cemetery, Chicago, Cook County, Illinois |known_for = Creating the Pinkerton Detective Agency and being an American Civil War Union spy |occupation = cooper, abolitionist, detective, spymaster |nationality = Scottish American |spouse = Joan Pinkerton (m. 1842–1884) |children = William Pinkerton
Robert Pinkerton
Joan Pinkerton (Born 1ton from Harper's Weekly, 1884]] Allan J. Pinkerton (25 August 1819 – 1 July 1884) was a Scottish American detective and spy, best known for creating the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.

Early life, career and immigration[edit]

Allan Pinkerton was born in Gorbals, Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Scotland, United Kingdom, to William Pinkerton and his wife, Isobel McQueen, on August 25, 1819.[1] He left school at the age of 10 after his father's death. Pinkerton read voraciously and was largely self-educated.[2] A cooper by trade, Pinkerton was active in the British Chartist movement as a young man. He secretly married Joan Carfrae, a singer, in Glasgow on 13 March 1842.[3] Pinkerton emigrated to the United States in 1842.

In 1843 Pinkerton heard of Dundee Township, Illinois, fifty miles northwest of Chicago on the Fox River.[4] He built a cabin and started a cooperage, sending for his wife in Chicago when their cabin was complete.[4] As early as 1844, Pinkerton worked for the Chicago abolitionist leaders, and his Dundee home was a stop on the Underground Railroad.[5]


In 1859, he attended the secret meetings held by John Brown (abolitionist) and Frederick Douglass in Chicago along with abolitionists John Jones and Henry O. Wagoner. At those meetings, Jones, Wagoner, and Pinkerton helped purchase clothes and supplies for Brown. Jones' wife, Mary, guessed that the supplies included the suit Brown was hung in after the failure of John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in November 1859.[6]

American Civil War[edit]


After the war[edit]


Pinkerton on horseback on the Antietam Battlefield in 1862


Pinkerton's Tomb, Graceland Cemetery, Chicago

Pinkerton is buried in Graceland Cemetery, Chicago.[11] He is a member of the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame.



Despite his agency's later reputation for anti-labor activities, Pinkerton himself was heavily involved in pro-labor politics as a young man.[12] Though Pinkerton considered himself pro-labor, he opposed strikes[13] and distrusted labor unions.[14]




In popular culture[edit]

In the 1951 feature film The Tall Target, a historical drama loosely based upon the Baltimore Plot, Allan Pinkerton is portrayed by Robert Malcolm. The M-G-M production starred Dick Powell and was directed by Anthony Mann.




In the HBO series Boardwalk Empire, an agent of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency runs an undercover operation to coax a murder confession out of a major character. In the HBO series Deadwood, several references are made to the "Pinkertons" and fear that agents might be called in to investigate illegal activities in the lawless Deadwood mining camp in the Dakota territory prior to its being organized as a US territory.





Pinkerton is also portrayed in an episode of The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams, by Don Galloway (1937-2009), and in Frank and Jesse by William Atherton, but in these cases, as in the others, he seems to be portrayed with an American accent, although he was Scottish by birth, and may still have retained his Scots accent.

Hardboiled crime fiction writer Dashiell Hammett was employed by the Pinkerton agency before becoming an author, and his experiences influenced the character of Nick Charles in The Thin Man.

See also[edit]


  1. ^ Encyclopedia Britannica
  2. ^ Hunt, Russell A. (2009). "Allan Pinkerton: America's first private eye (1819-1884)". The Forensic Examiner. 
  3. ^ ScotlandsPeople OPR Banns & Marriages Record 644/001 0420 0539
  11. ^ Allan Pinkerton at Find a Grave
  12. ^ "Allan J. Pinkerton". Retrieved 2011-12-28. 

External links[edit]