Pinkerton, Allan

Pinkerton, Allan (1819-84), Scottish-American detective. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, Pinkerton came to the United States and settled near Chicago in 1842. While engaged in business as a barrel maker in 1846, he captured a gang of counterfeiters and was consequently elected county sheriff. In 1850 he organized Pinkerton's National Detective Agency and was appointed the first city detective in Chicago. The recovery of a large sum of money stolen from the Adams Express Company and the discovery of a plot to murder Abraham Lincoln in 1861 made his reputation. During the American Civil War he organized the secret service of the U.S. Army. During the railroad strikes of 1877, his agency provided strikebreakers. His books include Strikers, Communists and Tramps (1878) and Thirty Years a Detective (1884).

After his death, the agency continued to operate and soon became a major force against the young labour movement developing in the United States and Canada. This effort tarnished the image of the Pinkertons for years. They were involved in numerous activities against labor during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Many labor sympathizers accused the Pinkertons of inciting riots as a means of keeping employment or for other nefarious purposes. The Pinkertons' reputation was harmed by the organization's protection of replacement workers and business property of the major industrialists, including Andrew Carnegie.
Pinkerton was so famous that for decades after his death, the word Pinkerton was a slang term for a private eye. Due to the Pinkerton Agency's conflicts with labor unions, the word Pinkerton remains in the vocabulary of labor organizers and union members as a derogatory reference to authority figures who side with management (in the opinion of the union).