Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency founded

Historical Context Note

Litencyc Editors (Independent Scholar - Europe)
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Domains

  • Organisations and institutions (political)
  • Policing and Surveillance

Dates

  • Date of occurrence 1850

Places

  • United States (Location)

The story of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency reveals several of the underlying trends in the development of mass society in the United States. Born 25 August 1819 in Glasgow, Scotland, and dying on 1st July 1884, Allan Pinkerton began his working life as an artisan, a cooper, and became involved in his early 20s in the Chartist movement for political reform. His activities earned him a warrant for arrest and he fled Scotland in 1842 for Chicago where he set up as a cooper and by accident of fate in 1846 earned public respect by assisting in the capture of a gang of counterfeiters. Pinkerton was elected Deputy Sheriff for Cook county and the political radical thus migrated to the police. However, his stay was brief, his …

312 words

Citation: Editors, Litencyc. "Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency founded". The Literary Encyclopedia. [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=4923, accessed 23 November 2024.]

4923 Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency founded 2 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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