Collection Highlights - Allan Pinkerton

Allan Pinkerton (August 25, 1819-July 1, 1884) founded the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in 1850 which provided detective and security services. Pinkerton was hired to guard Abraham Lincoln in the beginning of the Civil War and later was hired by the railroad companies to capture Jesse James. The agency's actions against the labor movement led to the Anti-Pinkerton Act of 1893, which restricted the government from hiring employees of the Pinkerton agency or similar groups. The company is still in existence today as Pinkerton Consulting & Investigations, Inc.

Pinkerton wrote accounts of some of his investigations, including The Expressman and the Detective and Criminal Reminiscences and Detective Sketches. As Pinkerton stated in the preface of The Expressman and the Detective:

"The Expressman and the Detective," and the other works announced by my publishers, are all true stories, transcribed from the records in my offices...and if the incidents seem to the reader at all marvelous or improbable, I can but remind him, in the words of the old adage, that "Truth is stranger than fiction."
Allan Pinkerton
Chicago, October 1974
Pinkerton books

The books displayed are:

  • Pinkerton, Allan. The Expressman and the Detective. Chicago, Ill. : W.B. Keen, Cooke & co.,1875, [c1874]. HV 7914 P58 (This item is located in our Rare Book collection)
  • Pinkerton, Allan. Criminal Reminiscences and Detective Sketches. New York : Garrett Press, 1969, [c1879]. HV 7914 P54 1879a