There Pinkerton served as sheriff of Cook County and was appointed as Chicago's first detective. In addition to his work as a cooper and amateur detective, Pinkerton became involved in the burgeoning abolitionist movement, establishing his home as a stop on the underground railroad from which slaves escaped to freedom in Canada.Īfter selling their cooperage, the Pinkertons moved back to Chicago in the late 1840s. Soon thereafter, local bankers and shopkeepers began hiring Pinkerton to help them apprehend thieves and counterfeiters, and he was appointed deputy sheriff of Kane County. According to his biographers, Pinkerton's involvement in detective work began in 1847, when his suspicions regarding some activities he observed on a nearby island resulted in the exposure of a gang of counterfeiters. The Pinkertons settled in Chicago, where Allan found work making kegs and barrels for a brewery before establishing his own cooperage in the nearby town of Dundee. In April of 1842 he and his bride, Joan Carfrae, set sail for the United States. When police sought his arrest, he went into hiding for several months and eventually decided to flee the country. The movement turned violent in the early 1840s, and Pinkerton became known in Glasgow for his activism. During this time, Pinkerton became involved in Chartism, a political movement espousing an independent, democratic Scottish parliament that would provide citizens with voting and property rights. Soon after the death of his father in 1827, Pinkerton left elementary school to help support his family, achieving the status of journeyman cooper ten years later. Pinkerton was born in 1819 in the Gorbals, an impoverished and crime ridden district of Glasgow, Scotland. The history of the Pinkerton detective agency may be traced to its founder Allan Pinkerton.

Since the 1940s, however, Pinkerton's has focused increasingly on security, developing into a business primarily engaged in guarding property in 1990 more than 98 percent of the company's business consisted of contracts to provide security guards. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the company emerged as a leading detective agency whose private investigators became famous for solving crimes involving the country's railroads, banks, and businesses.

is the country's oldest security firm, providing security guard personnel and investigative services to some of the largest businesses in the United States, including ITT Corp.

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