Joseph whicher

There he discovered the remains of a campsite. It struck him as suspicious, so he returned at night to find a group of counterfeiters manufacturing coins. Not one to tolerate criminal behavior, Pinkerton fetched the sheriff, and the gang was arrested. At a time when rampant counterfeiting endangered businesses, local merchants lauded Pinkerton as a hero and began asking him to investigate other incidents.

He became so good at running sting operations to catch counterfeiters that the sheriff of Kane County, Illinois, made him a deputy. In , Pinkerton was appointed Chicago's first full-time detective, and he gave up the barrel business for good.

He founded Pinkerton's Detective Agency in , setting up his first office in downtown Chicago. By , the agency had branches in New York and Philadelphia. In the midth century, police forces were small, often corrupt and unwilling to follow suspected criminals outside their own jurisdictions. People did not feel that the police were watching out for them, and Pinkerton took advantage of this deficiency, creating Pinkerton's Protective Police Patrol, a corps of uniformed night watchmen who protected businesses.

Soon these "Pinkerton men," as they were called—though a few undercover agents were women—were as important to law enforcement as official police. As the railroads sped west, a new task arose: hunting down outlaws. The outlaws of the 19th century have been much-romanticized in popular culture, but they were actually dangerous, ruthless and often brutal.

Criminals like Jesse James and his brother Frank murdered anyone who got in their way; the killing of Joseph Whicher was characteristic behavior. An active bank and train robber since , James was also an unreformed Southern secessionist. Pinkerton, who had worked for the Underground Railroad and once guarded Abraham Lincoln's train, was especially eager to bring Jesse James to justice. The Pinkerton agency usually succeeded when it came to capturing criminals. Toward the end of his life, Pinkerton authored a popular book series based on his agency's most famous cases—prototypical true-crime stories that inspired later detective writers.

In Bank-Robbers and the Detectives , Pinkerton explained his accomplishments by citing "well-directed and untiring energy" and "a determination not to yield until success was assured. In the late s, the Pinkerton agency captured the Reno brothers' gang, the first organized train robbers in the United States—Pinkerton himself chased Frank Reno all the way to Windsor, Ontario.

During that same period, Pinkerton detectives nabbed several more high-profile bank and train robbers, in some cases recovering thousands of stolen dollars. The agency gained a reputation for tenacity, and citizens, terrorized by outlaws, looked to the Pinkertons as heroes. After Whicher's murder, Pinkerton sent more agents after the James gang.

In January , a group of Pinkerton men and a local posse, responding to a tip, rushed to James' mother's Missouri farm. The mother, Zerelda Samuel, was mean, ugly and strong-willed, as well as a dedicated slaveholder and secessionist. Still angry about the way the war had turned out, Samuel saw Jesse and Frank, the sons by her first marriage, as freedom fighters for the downtrodden southern states, rather than mere bandits and murderers.

When the Pinkerton-led raiders appeared on her farm late one night, she refused to surrender. A standoff ensued, and someone threw a lantern into the darkened house, purportedly to aid visibility. There was an explosion, and the posse ran in to find Zerelda Samuel's right arm blown off. Reuben Samuel, her third husband, and their three young children had also been inside.

Pinkerton and his wife settled in the Chicago area, where Allan worked as a barrel-maker. By accident he discovered the lair of a gang of counterfeiters and had them arrested. The resulting celebrity led to his appointment as a deputy sheriff and then special agent for the U. Post Office, where his success in catching criminals continued. This would lead to the description of independent detectives as "private eyes. In addition to being a noted crime fighter, Allan was also a committed abolitionist.

His agency protected President-elect Abraham Lincoln during his trip to Washington to be sworn in, and Pinkerton served as chief of intelligence for Union general George mcClellan during the Civil War. After the conflict was over, Pinkerton's agency continued to grow; his agents infiltrated America's first-train robbing gang, the Reno brothers of Indiana, and he collected photographs of known criminals to aid in their apprehension and capture.

Express companies were paid to carry valuables on the railroads, and they, rather than the train companies, typically suffered the largest losses during robberies. Pinkerton accepted the assignment and sent one of his detectives to Clay County, Missouri, to investigate. Botched Raid That detective, a man named Joseph Whicher, arrived in early March and made his way to the James homestead, despite being warned by a former sheriff that "the old woman [ Zerelda ] would kill you if the boys didn't.

His death scared off the express company, but not the old abolitionist Pinkerton, who vowed vengeance on the outlaws who still espoused the Confederate cause. Public opinion rallied to the James family as never before, and the Pinkerton agency was excoriated for the raid.

Stung with his worst defeat, Pinkerton gave up the chase. After the Raid Allan Pinkerton died in , just two years after Jesse James, but his sons William and Robert took over the running of the agency. Pinkerton detectives were often hired as muscle for factory management during bitter labor strikes.