Allan Pinkerton: America’s Legendary Detective and the Birth of Private Security

Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones

Allan Pinkerton (born 1819) was the world’s most prominent detective. He was a Chartist in Scotland, then an abolitionist once settled in Chicago. He pioneered the employment of female detectives. In 1861, he credibly claimed to have saved Lincoln from assassination. In the 1870s, his Pinkerton National Detective Agency pursued armed robbers like the James brothers, and crushed the proto-labour movement, the ‘Molly Maguires’. Soon, the ‘Pinkertons’ main source of income was union busting. This practice had its roots in the founder’s Scottish experience, when he may have been a police informer. After Allan’s death in 1884, his agency was involved in two controversial events in U.S. labour history, the Haymarket bomb affair (1886) and Homestead lockout (1892). The resultant Anti-Pinkerton Act of 1893 forbad the federal employment of private detectives. The Pinkertons had to forego potentially lucrative contracts guarding federal installations. Instead, they doubled down on union busting – until the La Follette Senate inquiry of the 1930s exposed their activities. Post-World War II, the Pinkertons concentrated on supplying security to private firms. The 1893 law prevented their pursuit of government contracts until the present century, when the requirements of post-9/11 national security culminated in a privatization boom.

Georgetown University Press. June 2, 2025. £24. ISBN 9781647125844