Allan J. Pinkerton
As a youngster, I remember reading novels of the wild west, which always seemed to feature the feared Pinkerton detectives, who chased outlaws and desperadoes back and forth across the American West.
The founder of America's first detective agency was born on 25th August, 1819. Not in America, but in the 'Gorbals', an area renowned for violence and poverty, in Glasgow, Scotland.
His early life was a tough one, after his father had suffered a serious injury in his duty as a police officer and was no longer able to work. When he was just ten years old, his father passed away, and so Allan left school and began working as an apprentice barrel maker to support his family.
He was determined to strive for a better life, and continued to self educate himself by reading whatever books he could get his hands on. He was also a strong supporter of radical political reform, but it was this which led to he and his young wife fleeing the authorities to America in 1842 due to his membership of the Chartist movement.
They settled in Dundee, in the Chicago area, where Allan found work, but it wasn't long before he chanced upon a rural counterfeiting lair. He notified the town Sheriff, who was impressed with his honesty and courage. That event changed his life. It led to work from the Treasury Department, and on another occasion he successfully helped the Cook County Sheriff's department to track down the kidnappers of two girls from Michigan.
By 1855, he had realized what America needed. Detectives. So he formed his own private agency, the North-Western Police Agency, which was soon to become The Pinkerton National Detective Agency, and where he and his private operatives quickly gained a reputation for being relentless, tough, thorough and above all, professional.
In old time radio, you'll perhaps have heard the 'Pinkertons' mentioned many, many times in both westerns and detective stories. There were two shows in particular which popped up in my search results. One is from the Cavalcade of America, and is the story of Allan Pinkerton and the dramatic role he played in foiling an assassination plot of Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.
The other is a CBS Radio Mystery Theater show, called The Pinkerton Method, which is the story of how the legendary Pinkerton Detective Agency stemmed the tide of one of the most lucrative forms of crime - train robbery.
During his lifetime, Pinkerton's agency successfully brought down some of the country's most ruthless criminals, and in his later life, he put pen to paper and wrote about several of these cases, which almost certainly inspired other authors to contribute to the detective genre.
Happy listening my friends,
