Pinkerton (detective agency)

The Pinkerton National Detective Agency was a security guard agency established in the United States in 1850 by Allan Pinkerton who became famous when he foiled a plot to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln. During labor unrest in the late 19th century, businessmen hired Pinkerton guards to keep strikers and suspected unionists out of their factories, the most notorious example being the Homestead strike of 1892, where hundreds of Pinkerton agents ended up killing several people by enforcing the strikebreaking measures of Henry Clay Frick (acting on behalf of Andrew Carnegie, who was abroad). The agency's logo, an eye embellished with the words "We Never Sleep" inspired the term "private eye." The "Pinkertons" were also used as guards in coal, iron and lumber disputes in Illinois, Michigan, New York and Pennsylvania, as well as the railroad strikes of 1877.

In the 1870s, Franklin B. Gowen, then president of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad hired the agency to investigate the labor unions in the company's mines. A Pinkerton agent, James McParland, infiltrated the Molly Maguires using the alias James McKenna, leading to the downfall of this secret organization. The incident was the inspiration for Arthur Conan Doyle's The Valley of Fear, one of the few Sherlock Holmes stories which focus on the exploits of one of the characters in the story instead of Holmes himself.

During the Homestead Strike, the arrival, on July 6 1892, of a force of 300 hundred Pinkerton detectives from New York and Chicago resulted in a fight in which about 11 men were killed, and to restore order two brigades of the state militia were called out.

Pinkerton agents were hired to track notorious western outlaws Jesse James, the Reno brothers, and the Wild Bunch (including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid).

G.H. Thiel, a former Pinkerton employee, established the Thiel Detective Service Company in St. Louis, Missouri, a competitor to the Pinkerton agency. The Thiel company operated in the US, Canada and Mexico.

The William J. Burns Detective Agency was founded about 1910. In 2001 Pinkerton and Burns International merged operations to become Securitas Security Services USA, Inc.

Pinkerton is currently a brand name for security guard services provided by Securitas AB.

The Pinkerton Agency also featured prominently in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novel, The Valley of Fear, in which a Pinkerton detective infiltrates a criminal organisation.

External links

• Pinkerton Consulting & Investigations Inc.
• Securitas