Published in Scotland Magazine Issue 39 on 23/06/2008.

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The first private eye

We look at the exciting life of America’s James Bond – Allan Pinkerton

Talk about right place at the right time. This Glasgow-born immigrant to the United States in the mid-1800s not only laid the foundations for the modern secret service but also foiled an attempted assassination on one of the country’s most famous presidents.

Allan Pinkerton was born in the centre of Glasgow, probably near the site of the present day central mosque. After the death of his father, a police sergeant, Pinkerton left school to support the family. He trained as a cooper but became a member of the Chartist Movement which defended workers’ rights and was involved in a strike by spinners in Glasgow.

He then tried to help a leader of the movement to break out of prison in 1839 and it is understood he had to leave Scotland to avoid being arrested in 1842.

Reports of his life after this period get a little muddied, but Pinkerton resurfaced in Chicago in 1849 where he was appointed the city’s first detective. He then moved up the tree of law enforcement being appointed deputy-sheriff and then sheriff in Chicago.

In the 1850s, he partnered with local attorney Edward Rucker to form the North- Western Police Agency, later known as the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, which is still running (but has been renamed) as a subsidiary of Securitas.

The Pinkerton Detective Agency was a great success. On the outside of his threestory Chicago headquarters was the company slogan, ‘We Never Sleep.’ Above this was a huge, black and white eye. The Pinkerton logo was believed to h.....

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By Allan Pinkerton

Section : Scotland Legends

Page number : 41