Allan Pinkerton

Allan Pinkerton (25 August 1819 - 1 July 1884) was a Scottish American detective and spy, best known for founding the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, the first detective agency in the United States.

In his early life, he was a member of the Chartist Movement in Glasgow, his hometown. After they failed to gain suffrage, he moved to America in 1842, and by 1849 he was appointed the first detective of Chicago. His detective agency worked hard against the train robbers in the new territories gained by the U.S. in the 1850's, where he came to the attention of Abraham Lincoln.

During the Civil War, he joined the Union side, serving as the head of the Union Intelligence Service. He developed several techniques, such as shadowing, and undercover work, and many of his agents worked as Confederate soldiers or sympathisers. In the early 1860's, he foiled an assassination attempt on Lincoln in Baltimore, Maryland.

Following the Civil War, he again worked against train robbers, and also for several countries, such as for the Spanish in 1872 to crush rebels in Cuba. He died in 1884, from an infected tongue, caused by biting it while slipping up a Chicago pavement.