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The Pinkerton Detective Agency · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:11
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. So I'm Josh, and
0:13
Speaker 2: there's Chuck and there's Jerry and this is stuff you
0:16
Speaker 2: should know. You we're keeping an eye on you, sucker.
0:21
Speaker 3: Did I throw you off when I'm pre recording.
0:24
Speaker 2: No, I'm always expecting anything from you.
0:28
Speaker 1: We do our usual countdown everyone so we can sink sound,
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Speaker 1: and you do that. Here's a little how the sausage
0:33
Speaker 1: is made. You do that by a counting down and
0:36
Speaker 1: then each of us clapping so you have a spike
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Speaker 1: in the audio wave file that the engineers and editors
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Speaker 1: can align, so we match up right, and I clapped,
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Speaker 1: But this time I also said schlamiel, hoping you would say, oh.
0:52
Speaker 2: You set me up. Huh, I'm sorry here, let me
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Speaker 2: say it now, Shla masel.
0:56
Speaker 3: There you go.
0:58
Speaker 2: Okay, are you ready to get on with our sausage party?
1:02
Speaker 3: Gross? Yeah, sure, okay.
1:05
Speaker 2: That was nice of you to kind of give that
1:06
Speaker 2: behind the scenes tour to everybody. Chuck, Yeah, you know,
1:10
Speaker 2: that's why everyone likes you.
1:11
Speaker 3: More trade secrets. That's not true. So I've been on Reddit.
1:18
Speaker 2: Whatever. Everybody likes you, including me, especially me. At any rate.
1:23
Speaker 2: So we're talking today about the Pinkerton Detective Agency, and
1:27
Speaker 2: this one strikes me as odd that we have waited
1:30
Speaker 2: this long seventeen years to finally talk about them. Yeah,
1:33
Speaker 2: and uh, because they're just so legendary. You know, like
1:36
Speaker 2: everybody knows what the Pinkertons are, and if you don't,
1:39
Speaker 2: I'm not taking that back, because everyone else knows what
1:42
Speaker 2: the Pinkertons are.
1:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency technically was the name
1:48
Speaker 1: of it, but they were generally called the Pinkertons, led
1:51
Speaker 1: by Alan Pinkerton, and they're you know, what they're known
1:55
Speaker 1: for is being one of the first or perhaps the first,
2:00
Speaker 1: and I say private detective agency, but not like we
2:02
Speaker 1: think of pi's.
2:04
Speaker 2: Like not Sam Spade stuff.
2:06
Speaker 1: No, no, no, just a detective agency that's privatized like
2:09
Speaker 1: police kind of detective work, right, And you know, they
2:12
Speaker 1: did a lot of stuff, including, as we'll see, busting
2:16
Speaker 1: up bank robbers and then later busting up unions.
2:21
Speaker 2: Yeah. It took a dark turn for sure.
2:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, but they got their their start doing you know,
2:26
Speaker 1: God's work by working in the Abolitionist.
2:28
Speaker 3: Movie, by helping to free enslave people.
2:31
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that's one thing. So there's a lot of
2:34
Speaker 2: stuff you'll find when you dig into the history of
2:36
Speaker 2: the Pinkerton Detective Agency. It depends on who you're reading.
2:43
Speaker 2: Either they were pretty great and did some really great work,
2:47
Speaker 2: or they were evil from the start. And then apparently
2:50
Speaker 2: also one of the things that complicates it is Alan
2:54
Speaker 2: Pinkerton was known to kind of hype his own company,
2:58
Speaker 2: hype his own exploits. Yeah, and some people interpret that
3:02
Speaker 2: as like personal myth making, and whether that's correct or not.
3:05
Speaker 2: A lot of historians have delved into and I think
3:08
Speaker 2: the answer generally is it's a case by case thing,
3:11
Speaker 2: whether it's actually true, whether it actually happened quite that way.
3:15
Speaker 2: But for the most part, from what I saw from
3:17
Speaker 2: researching this is generally most of the stuff can be
3:22
Speaker 2: accepted at surface level. For the most part, it's not like,
3:25
Speaker 2: if you buy into this story that we're about to
3:28
Speaker 2: tell you yeah, yeah, that you're just being totally misled.
3:31
Speaker 2: So for the most part, just relax is what I'm trying.
3:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we'll go back in time and hoping the
3:37
Speaker 3: way back machine to witness the bird.
3:46
Speaker 1: It's eighteen nineteen in Scotland, so it's not a pretty
3:49
Speaker 1: sight no giving birth back then, but little Alan Pinkerton
3:53
Speaker 1: is born in Scotland. He is the son of a
3:57
Speaker 1: police sergeant, so you know, law enforcement was in his
4:00
Speaker 1: family roots. And he went to the United States in
4:03
Speaker 1: eighteen forty two at the age of twenty three. And
4:09
Speaker 1: we should kind of mention just one thing he was
4:11
Speaker 1: involved in early on in Scotland before he left was
4:14
Speaker 1: something called the Chartist movement, which was we're not going
4:17
Speaker 1: to get super into it, but it was basically a
4:19
Speaker 1: movement of the working class over there that tried One
4:23
Speaker 1: of the main things they tried to do is extend
4:24
Speaker 1: voting rights to all men, non landowners, that is.
4:29
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, and election of parliamentary members. That kind of
4:33
Speaker 2: stuff is basically democratic reform in England. And at the
4:37
Speaker 2: time this was considered radical politics.
4:39
Speaker 3: Yeah.
4:39
Speaker 2: And Alan Pinkerton actually fled the country with his family
4:43
Speaker 2: because the fuzz was looking for him, essentially, and they
4:47
Speaker 2: landed in the Chicago area Dundee, Illinois, appropriately enough. Yeah,
4:52
Speaker 2: and he decided that he would become a cooper, yeah,
4:55
Speaker 2: which is somebody who makes barrels. And I guess he
4:58
Speaker 2: was a pretty decent barrel maker because he did it
5:00
Speaker 2: for a little while.
5:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, they it's a trade he learned in Scotland. So
5:04
Speaker 1: he opened up that Cooper Ridge and Dundee, like you said,
5:08
Speaker 1: And a fortuitous incident happened as a cooper when he
5:13
Speaker 1: was on apparently this sort of abandoned or maybe just
5:17
Speaker 1: not claimed land cutting wood looking for wood for barrels,
5:20
Speaker 1: and he discovered a hideout of some counterfeitters. He rustled
5:26
Speaker 1: up a posse, got some citizens together and captured them,
5:30
Speaker 1: and for his efforts got a lot of local notoriety.
5:33
Speaker 1: And they said, hey, how about you become deputy sheriff
5:36
Speaker 1: here in Caine County, Illinois. And this was in eighteen
5:39
Speaker 1: forty six, and he said, well, I guess dad was
5:41
Speaker 1: a copper and so maybe I should be too, or
5:45
Speaker 1: a quasi copper at least.
5:47
Speaker 2: Yeah. This was actually before Chicago had an established police force. Yeah,
5:52
Speaker 2: and it was a big deal to be a cop.
5:54
Speaker 2: And if you were a cop, they also called them
5:56
Speaker 2: watchmen because in a lot of cases that's what it
5:58
Speaker 2: amounted to, like these men would not go into the
6:02
Speaker 2: highest crime areas and they would avoid the most dangerous criminals.
6:06
Speaker 2: And there were just a few handfuls of them, but
6:10
Speaker 2: Pinkerton made a name for himself very quickly as somebody
6:14
Speaker 2: who had just like a sixth sense for just knowing
6:19
Speaker 2: when somebody was up to no good and following them
6:21
Speaker 2: and seeing what they were up to, for being fearless. Yeah,
6:25
Speaker 2: and for not accepting bribes. He was as honest as
6:29
Speaker 2: the day as long as far as bribery is concerned.
6:32
Speaker 2: And that made him stand out. And he started kind
6:35
Speaker 2: of moving up the ranks pretty quickly and moved from
6:37
Speaker 2: Kinge County to Cook County, where he worked in the
6:41
Speaker 2: assessor's office, protecting Steven Spielberg.
6:47
Speaker 3: Well, I'm not sure I get the reference.
6:49
Speaker 2: From Blues Brothers. Remember, wasn't Steven Spielberg the Cook County
6:52
Speaker 2: assessor eating the sandwich when they come to pay the taxes? Uh?
6:56
Speaker 3: Frank Oz?
6:58
Speaker 2: No, Frank Oz was the the guy in the captain
7:01
Speaker 2: property room.
7:02
Speaker 3: Oh, with Spielberg in that too.
7:04
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm pretty sure he was the assessor at the
7:06
Speaker 2: Cook County Assessor's office.
7:08
Speaker 3: I believe you. I don't.
7:09
Speaker 1: I shamefully don't know Blues Brothers as well as clearly
7:13
Speaker 1: you do.
7:14
Speaker 2: So either, I'm like really just making this stuff up.
7:17
Speaker 2: But we've had this conversation and we were fully on
7:20
Speaker 2: board with Spielberg being an assessor. Oh you know me
7:25
Speaker 2: and I mean this was like two weeks ago.
7:27
Speaker 3: No, it wasn't.
7:28
Speaker 2: Okay, it wasn't two weeks ago. But we have had
7:30
Speaker 2: this conversation. I know we have.
7:31
Speaker 1: I've just turned fifty four, so things are slipping, all right,
7:35
Speaker 1: I'll ease off.
7:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's what happened.
7:38
Speaker 1: Eventually he would also be a special agent for the
7:40
Speaker 1: US Post Office, and finally in eighteen fifty he started
7:45
Speaker 1: the detective agency, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. Apparently was
7:51
Speaker 1: the first detective. He was named the first detective in Chicago,
7:55
Speaker 1: I think previous to this at just thirty one years old.
7:58
Speaker 1: And from the beginning from eighteen fifty till the end
8:01
Speaker 1: of emancipation, Like I mentioned from the outset, he worked
8:05
Speaker 1: to assist the escape and freeing of enslaved people. I
8:10
Speaker 1: think he even had a stop, like a volunteer to
8:12
Speaker 1: stop on the underground railroad.
8:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there was one. He apparently was bosom friends
8:18
Speaker 2: with John Brown. As he put it, he had a
8:21
Speaker 2: real chance to coin the term bosom buddies, but he
8:24
Speaker 2: didn't do it.
8:25
Speaker 3: Friends. Yeah, the ring does it.
8:27
Speaker 2: No, it really doesn't. But John Brown, the white abolitionist
8:31
Speaker 2: gorilla essentially made a raid on a few farms in
8:35
Speaker 2: Missouri and ended up freeing eleven enslaved people and leading
8:39
Speaker 2: them to Canada. And one of the stops was with
8:44
Speaker 2: Alan Pinkerton in Chicago, and Pinkerton by this time was
8:48
Speaker 2: wealthy enough that he paid for I guess, the train
8:51
Speaker 2: ride from Chicago onto Detroit for everybody who John Brown
8:55
Speaker 2: had busted out. So he definitely was an abolitionist, and
8:59
Speaker 2: from what I read was like from the moment he
9:01
Speaker 2: landed in the United States, he was an abolitionist. This
9:04
Speaker 2: wasn't like him pumping up his image years later.
9:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
9:09
Speaker 1: So a lot of the other work they were doing,
9:11
Speaker 1: they were doing other, you know work as an agency
9:13
Speaker 1: besides working in the in the emancipayer, I guess, the
9:16
Speaker 1: abolitionist movement. But this was you know, again in and
9:19
Speaker 1: around Chicago that didn't have a real police department at
9:23
Speaker 1: the time, and they didn't exactly work as cops though.
9:29
Speaker 1: It was sort of this weird hybrid of a thing
9:32
Speaker 1: like they were.
9:34
Speaker 3: It wasn't like.
9:36
Speaker 1: Police, it wasn't like a private detective agency. But they
9:39
Speaker 1: also weren't like full on cops. It was kind of
9:42
Speaker 1: hard to define at the time.
9:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think one of the big distinction was is
9:47
Speaker 2: they weren't out there like actively seeking crime as part
9:51
Speaker 2: of the public good. They were hired to find like
9:54
Speaker 2: specific things, specific criminals, or to prevent specific crimes by
9:58
Speaker 2: corporations typically, And one of the early employers or clients
10:03
Speaker 2: I guess were the railroads because at the time, people
10:07
Speaker 2: would steal from railroads left and right. There were just
10:09
Speaker 2: so many goods going across the United States. It was
10:12
Speaker 2: just too tempting, and they started I think the first railroad, possibly,
10:18
Speaker 2: if not one of the first, was the Illinois Central Railroad,
10:22
Speaker 2: and they worked security and did detective work for this railroad.
10:26
Speaker 2: And this would be a significant client for Pinkerton to
10:31
Speaker 2: land throughout the rest of his life because the corporate
10:33
Speaker 2: attorney for the Illinois Central Railroad at the time was
10:36
Speaker 2: Abraham Lincoln and the president of the railroad was William McClellan.
10:41
Speaker 2: And when you put those two together, you have some
10:44
Speaker 2: high powered Civil War people on the Union side, and
10:47
Speaker 2: as we'll see, Alan Pinkerton join them in the Civil War.
10:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you've ever seen there weren't a lot of
10:54
Speaker 1: photographs back then, but there's a very famous photograph of
10:57
Speaker 1: Lincoln at Antietam.
10:59
Speaker 3: Have you ever seen this one?
11:00
Speaker 2: Yeah? I was looking at it today.
11:02
Speaker 3: Yeah.
11:02
Speaker 1: So that's Pinkerton on the left. He's with two dudes
11:05
Speaker 1: standing in front of that canvas tent. And that's Pinkerton
11:07
Speaker 1: on the left and Major General John mclarenand on the
11:11
Speaker 1: right of Lincoln, who always just not forget. But anytime
11:16
Speaker 1: you see a photo like that where you and there
11:18
Speaker 1: aren't many where you see like full size the full
11:20
Speaker 1: sized Lincoln doll, right, yeah, or cardboard cutout. He's just
11:24
Speaker 1: impossibly tall for back then. And then that stove pipe
11:28
Speaker 1: hat just adds to it obviously. But I don't know
11:31
Speaker 1: if he wore that hat to further imitant intimidate people,
11:34
Speaker 1: but he was just such a tall, lanky guy.
11:36
Speaker 3: It's just odd looking for that time period.
11:39
Speaker 2: For sure. I have trouble anytime I say stovepipe hat
11:43
Speaker 2: not saying stove top hat.
11:45
Speaker 3: Instead of stove top stuff. Did you eat that stuff?
11:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, we never got to eat that stuff. My mom
11:53
Speaker 1: didn't buy that stuff.
11:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, we ate that stuff, for sure. We ate all
11:58
Speaker 2: sorts of weird stuff like that, just.
12:00
Speaker 3: Like dehydrated bread crumbs.
12:02
Speaker 2: Yes, but very tasty.
12:04
Speaker 3: With herbs and stuff. M And what do you do?
12:06
Speaker 3: You just mix it with some or put it on
12:09
Speaker 3: a casserole topper.
12:11
Speaker 2: You put it in a pot with some weight, you
12:14
Speaker 2: boil a little water, and then you add it to
12:18
Speaker 2: the water, soaks up the water, and then you add
12:20
Speaker 2: like ten sticks of butter, which is really what drives
12:22
Speaker 2: the whole thing home. There you go, and then yeah,
12:24
Speaker 2: you put it in your mouth directly from the pot. Typically.
12:28
Speaker 1: All right, well, this episode is clearly brought to you
12:30
Speaker 1: by stovetop stuffing instead of potatoes.
12:32
Speaker 2: Hey, one other thing too. While we're on a tangent.
12:35
Speaker 2: I mentioned Sam Spade earlier. I cannot recommend enough the
12:39
Speaker 2: limited series Monsieur Spade. It's on Netflix, starring Clive Owen.
12:44
Speaker 2: Have you seen it?
12:45
Speaker 3: I have not.
12:47
Speaker 2: God, it's so good. But at the same time, I've
12:50
Speaker 2: never seen such a tightly constructed show just come totally
12:58
Speaker 2: off the rails in like.
12:59
Speaker 3: The last hour in a bad way.
13:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, ultimately compared to the rest of the shows,
13:05
Speaker 2: it's bad, but it's almost like they forgot that they
13:09
Speaker 2: had to wrap it up and they just shot a
13:11
Speaker 2: scene and that was it, and it was like so
13:14
Speaker 2: totally improbable and just stood out so far from the
13:18
Speaker 2: rest of the series that you're just like, what, But
13:21
Speaker 2: luckily the rest of the series is so great it
13:22
Speaker 2: doesn't really damage it at all.
13:24
Speaker 1: Oh, well, you led me down the right path with
13:26
Speaker 1: black doves, so I'll give it a shot.
13:28
Speaker 2: I'm really glad you guys liked that. Did you finish it?
13:30
Speaker 3: Yeah?
13:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's good that one fell apart at the end too.
13:35
Speaker 3: You think, m huh, I liked it, man, you just
13:38
Speaker 3: don't like things ending.
13:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, I hadn't thought about that. Maybe not all.
13:44
Speaker 1: Right, back to who are we talking about here, Pinkerton,
13:47
Speaker 1: not stovepipe or stuffing. So like I said, he was,
13:53
Speaker 1: or like you said, I guess he was buddies with
13:55
Speaker 1: Lincoln pre Civil War and had gotten to know what
13:59
Speaker 1: was this.
14:00
Speaker 2: Name, William McClelland who would become the general that's right,
14:05
Speaker 2: the head of the Union.
14:06
Speaker 3: Forces, that's right.
14:07
Speaker 1: So that leads us to a story, a pretty major
14:09
Speaker 1: story story early on, I guess it's not that early on.
14:11
Speaker 1: It's about eleven years into the Detective Agency. But Pinkerton
14:16
Speaker 1: learned of an assassination plot against President elect Lincoln at
14:20
Speaker 1: the time, and there was a barber in Baltimore from Corsica.
14:27
Speaker 1: His name was a Cipriano FADENDINEI, and he wanted to
14:32
Speaker 1: kill Abraham Lincoln when he was coming through Baltimore. When
14:36
Speaker 1: Lincoln was on his way to Washington and Pinkerton, you know,
14:40
Speaker 1: found out about this and was like, you're not going
14:42
Speaker 1: to kill my buddy.
14:43
Speaker 3: I'm going to thwart your plan.
14:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, he did. This was apparently like part of a
14:48
Speaker 2: general plan to prevent Lincoln from making it to his
14:51
Speaker 2: inauguration in Washington. Right, just kill him in Baltimore, right, So,
14:58
Speaker 2: as Lincoln got told Baltimore, they enacted a plan where
15:03
Speaker 2: he was taken off of the train at a stop
15:06
Speaker 2: I think like Harrisburg or something right before Baltimore, and
15:11
Speaker 2: he was disguised and he basically played the brother of
15:16
Speaker 2: a woman named Kate Warren, who was a detective who
15:19
Speaker 2: will talk about in a second, and she escorted him
15:23
Speaker 2: on another train through Baltimore that went through at night,
15:27
Speaker 2: again in disguise. No one knew who he was. And
15:30
Speaker 2: one of the things that kind of came out of
15:32
Speaker 2: the story that was so significant was that Kate Warren
15:36
Speaker 2: stayed up all night and watched over Abraham Lincoln on
15:39
Speaker 2: this train ride to Washington, d C. And that kind
15:43
Speaker 2: of coined this term or this slogan that they adopted,
15:46
Speaker 2: we never sleep and led to the logo which was
15:49
Speaker 2: this open eye, like the all seeing eye that's watching you,
15:53
Speaker 2: that never sleep yepes.
15:54
Speaker 3: And that eventually led to the just the term private eyes.
15:57
Speaker 2: Right, yes, exactly.
15:59
Speaker 3: Yeah.
16:00
Speaker 1: I imagine Lincoln was a pretty hard guy to disguise
16:03
Speaker 1: now that I think about his height, that mustacheless beard
16:07
Speaker 1: and that hat, like they're probably like, take off the
16:10
Speaker 1: hat to begin with the first, get that hat off your.
16:13
Speaker 2: Head, right, get that stove top hat off.
16:15
Speaker 3: And they got a sharpie.
16:16
Speaker 1: They drew on a mustache and then they they probably
16:20
Speaker 1: put him if they would have been smart, they would
16:22
Speaker 1: have put him like in a wheelchair or something, which
16:25
Speaker 1: they made.
16:26
Speaker 2: I saw that he was. I guess the term that
16:29
Speaker 2: you would use today is like he posed as a
16:32
Speaker 2: handicap brother to Kate Warren.
16:34
Speaker 3: Oh there you go, oh and told him to lower
16:36
Speaker 3: his voice.
16:38
Speaker 2: Right. It was a very good cher.
16:41
Speaker 3: It was very.
16:41
Speaker 1: Shocking still when everyone saw Lincoln and Daniel Day Lewis
16:45
Speaker 1: came out like this.
16:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know it was quite a choice, and only
16:51
Speaker 2: Daniel day Lewis would have been allowed to do that too, totally.
16:55
Speaker 2: Anybody else the director had been like, what are you
16:57
Speaker 2: doing exactly?
16:59
Speaker 3: You don't question him. So you mentioned Kate Warren? Is
17:02
Speaker 3: it Warren and not Warny?
17:04
Speaker 2: I think it's Warren?
17:05
Speaker 3: Okay, Wrny.
17:06
Speaker 1: She's very notable too, though, aside from just assisting in
17:09
Speaker 1: this plot to save Lincoln or I guess action to
17:12
Speaker 1: save Lincoln against the plot.
17:16
Speaker 3: She was a.
17:17
Speaker 1: Detective like Pinkerton in a very forward thinking sort of way.
17:21
Speaker 1: In eighteen fifty six, hired her after she convinced him like, hey,
17:25
Speaker 1: you get you know, there are things that women can do,
17:28
Speaker 1: places we can infiltrate information, we can get in ways
17:32
Speaker 1: that men cannot. And he saw the value in that
17:35
Speaker 1: hired her, and then I think, but four years later
17:38
Speaker 1: made her head of the female detective Bureau. So they
17:41
Speaker 1: kind of stamped up with some women to work in
17:44
Speaker 1: these undercover roles.
17:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's really like this was unheard of. So
17:49
Speaker 2: eighteen fifty six is when he hires her. The first
17:53
Speaker 2: actual sworn policewoman that I could find in the United
17:57
Speaker 2: States was a woman named Lola baldin eighty s Portland, Oregon. Yeah,
18:03
Speaker 2: in nineteen oh eight. Okay, so, uh, forty four plus
18:06
Speaker 2: eight is fifty four fifty two years, Yeah, fifty two
18:10
Speaker 2: years ahead of schedule. Pinkerton hired a woman and made
18:14
Speaker 2: her a very famous detective and just.
18:17
Speaker 1: Super smart, you know, because she was right on the money.
18:19
Speaker 1: I'm sure there were great assets to their cause.
18:22
Speaker 2: For sure. You want to take a break, Yeah, let's
18:25
Speaker 2: do it.
18:26
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, so we're back with more on Pinkerton.
18:59
Speaker 1: The Silver War would begin, and Lincoln put George McClellan,
19:03
Speaker 1: who we previously mentioned as someone who knew Pinkerton through
19:07
Speaker 1: the railroad business, put him in charge of the Army
19:09
Speaker 1: of the Potomac, and he said, hey, Pinkerton does pretty
19:13
Speaker 1: good work. I'm going to bring this guy in as
19:15
Speaker 1: sort of a head spy. We'll call it like a
19:18
Speaker 1: secret service division. And he worked under Allan Pinkerton, that is,
19:22
Speaker 1: worked under the code name Major E. J. Allen, and
19:26
Speaker 1: was pretty good at rooting out spies, but not so
19:28
Speaker 1: good at intelligent gathering and interpretation.
19:33
Speaker 2: No, he rooted out a spir ring led by a
19:35
Speaker 2: woman named Rose O'Neil greenhow who was a Southerner but
19:39
Speaker 2: was still like the toast of Washington D c. Society,
19:42
Speaker 2: And she was really running a very sophisticated and very
19:48
Speaker 2: developed spirring for the Confederacy, and he found her out,
19:52
Speaker 2: busted everybody. It was a big deal. But with estimating
19:55
Speaker 2: troop strength, no, he may have single handedly added years
20:02
Speaker 2: onto the Civil War when he told McClellan. General McClellan
20:06
Speaker 2: that he estimated the Confederates had between I think one
20:11
Speaker 2: hundred or two hundred thousand troops.
20:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, I saw two hundred.
20:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, So at the time Robert E. Lee had forty
20:18
Speaker 2: thousand to forty five thousand troops, so he grossly overestimated it,
20:24
Speaker 2: and McClellan had something like seventy six thousand troops, so
20:27
Speaker 2: they could have very easily overwhelmed the Confederacy early on,
20:32
Speaker 2: had Pinkerton not overestimated the troops and had I also
20:36
Speaker 2: saw McClellan didn't vet that information at all. He just
20:39
Speaker 2: took it on face. And by the way, all of
20:42
Speaker 2: you Civil War buffs, if you can go back and
20:44
Speaker 2: unsend your emails, it's not William McClellan, it's George B. McClellan.
20:48
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I misspoke.
20:50
Speaker 3: Oh I think I said William too, didn't I? Or
20:52
Speaker 3: did I?
20:53
Speaker 2: I led you down the wrong pain.
20:54
Speaker 3: Okay.
20:56
Speaker 1: So Pinkerton would eventually leave his role in military intelligence.
21:01
Speaker 1: I think this was in eighteen sixty two after McClellan,
21:04
Speaker 1: who had hired him, was demoted. Essentially he lost his
21:10
Speaker 1: whatever not real huh position. Yeah, I guess he lost
21:16
Speaker 1: his positions as rank leader or whatever terms not going
21:22
Speaker 1: to be emailed by civil war buffs at all. And
21:26
Speaker 1: then he said, all right, let me go back. You know,
21:27
Speaker 1: he still had his private detective agency, so let me
21:32
Speaker 1: go back to doing that. And I guess we can
21:34
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about some of the other innovations,
21:36
Speaker 1: you know, aside from hiring women to work as infiltrators
21:40
Speaker 1: and moles. He and I believe we've talked about this
21:44
Speaker 1: in one of our crime episodes.
21:46
Speaker 3: Yes, did we do one on mug shots or just
21:49
Speaker 3: I think it came up to the criminal databases maybe.
21:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, Alfonse Bertillon or Berrol on He in the I think,
21:58
Speaker 2: like the eighteen forties came up with the idea of
21:59
Speaker 2: mug shots fingerprints using like head measurements to Yeah, basically
22:05
Speaker 2: create a database of criminals so that they couldn't pose
22:09
Speaker 2: his other people. And I guess that Pinkerton heard about
22:13
Speaker 2: this and brought it to the United States.
22:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, but when he brought it to the United States,
22:17
Speaker 1: he wanted to sort of codify it, I guess, and
22:20
Speaker 1: make it a more usable system and standardize everything. So
22:24
Speaker 1: he you know, made all the pictures the same size.
22:26
Speaker 1: He essentially made little yearbooks. He made got handwriting samples,
22:30
Speaker 1: and he would make these books and he would send
22:32
Speaker 1: them out and they called it the Rogues Gallery, and
22:35
Speaker 1: it was sort of the beginning of the you know,
22:37
Speaker 1: the United States criminal database.
22:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, and each picture had a senior superlative underneath this,
22:44
Speaker 2: so there was like most likely to unnecessarily shoot someone
22:48
Speaker 2: you're robbing in the knee.
22:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, stuff like that. That's good.
22:52
Speaker 2: I also saw that this was so sophisticated that it
22:54
Speaker 2: wouldn't be until the FBI was formed that something like
22:59
Speaker 2: a criminal database like this would be expanded upon.
23:03
Speaker 3: Basically, did you get a senior superlative?
23:06
Speaker 2: I did most most likely to talk about criminal databases?
23:10
Speaker 3: Oh?
23:11
Speaker 2: Did I? In reality, I don't think so, no, because
23:17
Speaker 2: my senior quote was leave me alone.
23:20
Speaker 1: We had fun ones and then real ones, like official ones,
23:24
Speaker 1: and I got one of each.
23:26
Speaker 3: Oh well, what were they I got? Actually?
23:28
Speaker 1: I got two of the unofficials. For the unofficials, I
23:31
Speaker 1: got best style.
23:34
Speaker 2: Oh nice, that's really saying something in high school, man.
23:37
Speaker 3: I guess so I'm not sure how I won that one. Actually.
23:40
Speaker 1: And then I got most fun on a Date, which
23:43
Speaker 1: was very ironic because I literally dated one person my
23:47
Speaker 1: senior year and I was just the good friend to
23:50
Speaker 1: all the girls that I wanted to date.
23:52
Speaker 3: Wow, I was that guy.
23:53
Speaker 1: But then the official ones that were in the yearbook.
23:56
Speaker 1: Best all round boy.
23:58
Speaker 2: Jeez, man, I see you in a different light now.
24:02
Speaker 3: Oh you know it's pretty. I still got my T shirt.
24:04
Speaker 3: I'll wear it occasionally.
24:06
Speaker 2: Best all around boy.
24:07
Speaker 3: Best all round boy.
24:09
Speaker 2: I think that's your new nickname.
24:11
Speaker 3: B A A R B B. Well, best all around technically.
24:18
Speaker 2: Oh, I say all round, But then again I call
24:20
Speaker 2: stove top hats well.
24:22
Speaker 1: So best best be a Barb? Right, yeah, all right,
24:27
Speaker 1: just call me Barb from now on.
24:29
Speaker 2: Okay, Barb. I have a beloved aunt named Barb.
24:33
Speaker 1: Do I do too, or Emily does, so she's sort
24:36
Speaker 1: of my aunt as well.
24:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can claim her all right. So, uh, there's
24:41
Speaker 2: another thing that that Pinkerton did to really kind of
24:45
Speaker 2: help establish his his agency is like just nationally recognized
24:50
Speaker 2: and also kind of heroes. They were considered heroes across
24:54
Speaker 2: the United States because they went after bad guys and
24:57
Speaker 2: they usually got their man. They were very person and dogged.
25:01
Speaker 2: Sometimes they would pursue criminals for years. Yeah, like it
25:04
Speaker 2: wasn't like, well, we tried for a month and we
25:07
Speaker 2: gave up. Like they would just keep going until they
25:09
Speaker 2: found the person. They would pursue them into Canada sometimes wow,
25:13
Speaker 2: into Mexico and beyond. And I guess one of the
25:17
Speaker 2: reasons why they were revered is because they had a
25:20
Speaker 2: code of conduct that was like strictly implemented. It was
25:25
Speaker 2: things like like we will take no bribes, which is
25:28
Speaker 2: a big one at the time. Oh yeah, probably still
25:31
Speaker 2: is now. Will never compromise with criminals. Yeah, we will
25:37
Speaker 2: partner with local law enforcement when possible. Okay, this one
25:41
Speaker 2: stood out to me. I thought this was kind of upstanding.
25:43
Speaker 2: They wouldn't take divorce cases or any case that could
25:47
Speaker 2: create a scandal for anybody.
25:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, I thought that was pretty cool.
25:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty stand up. They also turned down reward money,
25:55
Speaker 1: and he paid his agents pretty well apparently, and this
25:59
Speaker 1: is just sort of business nuts and bolts, but he
26:01
Speaker 1: had a pledge to never raise fees without the client knowing,
26:04
Speaker 1: like in other words, I'm not going to hand you
26:06
Speaker 1: a bill at the end. That's not what we talked about, right,
26:09
Speaker 1: And also would just keep all of his clients very
26:12
Speaker 1: well informed. They had internal rules that were like I
26:17
Speaker 1: think in the pamphlet the General Principles of Pinkerton's National
26:20
Speaker 1: Detective Agency, they said things like the agent must be
26:24
Speaker 1: of a high order of mind, must possess clear and honest,
26:26
Speaker 1: comprehensive understanding, force.
26:28
Speaker 3: Of will, vigor of body.
26:30
Speaker 1: And you can't drink on the job unless you absolutely
26:34
Speaker 1: have to as assumed assumingly some part of like some
26:38
Speaker 1: mole situation where you're like, hey, do you want to
26:41
Speaker 1: go to the bar with us?
26:43
Speaker 2: Right, you better drink this rye whiskey or else. Well, know,
26:46
Speaker 2: you're a Pinkerton man exactly. They also, unless you had
26:51
Speaker 2: a direct order from your superior too, you weren't allowed
26:54
Speaker 2: to use alcohol to get like confessions or anything out of.
26:59
Speaker 3: Suspects someone's super drunk. Yeah, yeah, I.
27:02
Speaker 2: Mean these are all pretty great like.
27:05
Speaker 3: Codes of conduct in totally. Yeah.
27:08
Speaker 2: I did not see any stories of like rogue Pinkerton
27:11
Speaker 2: agents or that this was all just you know, a whitewashing,
27:13
Speaker 2: and they actually didn't behave like this at all. They
27:15
Speaker 2: do seem to have been pretty upstanding. And then so
27:18
Speaker 2: the other thing that really expanded the legend of the Pinkertons,
27:22
Speaker 2: and probably in part of why we still understand or
27:24
Speaker 2: know them today, is Alan Pinkerton wrote a bunch of books,
27:30
Speaker 2: or at least published a series of books under his name,
27:33
Speaker 2: that were like true crime detective stories.
27:36
Speaker 3: Yeah.
27:37
Speaker 2: This would have been in the eighteen sixties, eighteen seventies,
27:40
Speaker 2: I think, so this is like the dawn of detective stories.
27:45
Speaker 3: I think they don't.
27:47
Speaker 2: Remember when Poe wrote Murder in the Room Morgue. Was
27:49
Speaker 2: that the first detective story.
27:51
Speaker 3: I don't know, but I mean it was. It was
27:53
Speaker 3: early on in the going for sure.
27:55
Speaker 2: It was ahead of its time.
27:56
Speaker 3: Yeah.
27:57
Speaker 2: One of the most famous ones was the Detective in
27:59
Speaker 2: the Somnambula.
28:00
Speaker 1: Right, Yes, And that is one in which he as
28:04
Speaker 1: the character and Kate Warren as her character. They catch
28:08
Speaker 1: a murderer. They go into cover, of course, and catch
28:10
Speaker 1: a murderer and a bank robber using a Pinkerton agent
28:15
Speaker 1: as always that posed as a ghost to get a confession.
28:20
Speaker 2: Yeah. I saw there was another one where Kate Warren
28:22
Speaker 2: posed as a fortune teller to get a confession out
28:24
Speaker 2: of somebody.
28:25
Speaker 3: Oh that's pretty smart.
28:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, but these are like the books that they're saying
28:29
Speaker 2: like this, this is what we did. Yeah, And I mean, like,
28:31
Speaker 2: if this was even remotely close, it must have been
28:35
Speaker 2: thrilling to be a Pinkerton detective at this time, because
28:38
Speaker 2: this is again when they were just a cause celeb
28:41
Speaker 2: in America and did not have the blemish reputation that
28:44
Speaker 2: they have today.
28:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, and a book potentially being like a character in
28:49
Speaker 1: a book would be, you know, back then a sort
28:52
Speaker 1: of tantamount to like they made a TV show about
28:55
Speaker 1: us or something.
28:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we played like a semi fictional version of
28:59
Speaker 2: ourselves or something like that.
29:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
29:03
Speaker 2: One of the other things they were known for, Chuck
29:04
Speaker 2: was nabbing outlaws in the wild West, because as the
29:08
Speaker 2: United States expanded westward and the frontier just kept going,
29:14
Speaker 2: it was a while in raucous and lawless place you
29:18
Speaker 2: might have a marshal. I know, we talked about the
29:20
Speaker 2: Marshall Service serving as the law enforcement out west, but
29:25
Speaker 2: there it was kind of far and fewed between. So
29:29
Speaker 2: the Pinkertons filled the real need at the time. Because
29:32
Speaker 2: one of the first things that developed after the Civil
29:35
Speaker 2: War was train robberies.
29:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you got these. Like you said earlier,
29:39
Speaker 1: it's a pretty good take when you rob a train
29:43
Speaker 1: and you know, you get them out in the middle
29:45
Speaker 1: of nowhere, which is kind of the great. The great
29:47
Speaker 1: thing about robbing trains, everybody, yeah, is you can just
29:51
Speaker 1: you know, ride your horses up. You've seen all the
29:52
Speaker 1: movies in the middle of nowhere where there's no one
29:54
Speaker 1: around to help. But in this case, the Pinkertons are there.
29:57
Speaker 1: One of the first gangs that they got the Reno Gang.
30:01
Speaker 1: After the Civil War, they started robbing trains in Indiana
30:05
Speaker 1: and Missouri and banks and other places, but not from Reno,
30:09
Speaker 1: but they were the Renos John Frank Simeon and William Reno.
30:13
Speaker 1: And in October eighteen sixty six, for instance, they robbed
30:19
Speaker 1: the Ohio and Mississippi Express to the tune of fifteen
30:22
Speaker 1: thousand dollars in eighteen sixty six money, which is a huge,
30:25
Speaker 1: huge haul. Were arrested, but they posted bail and then
30:30
Speaker 1: started robbing again kind of right away, trains and banks,
30:34
Speaker 1: and so the Pinkertons were like where on the job.
30:37
Speaker 1: I think the Adams Express company was like, we've had enough,
30:39
Speaker 1: We got to hire these guys.
30:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, in the two years that the Reno Gang was active,
30:43
Speaker 2: they stole about a half a million dollars in eighteen
30:47
Speaker 2: sixties money. Wow, that was a ton of cash. They
30:51
Speaker 2: were very successful. So yeah, they definitely caught the attention
30:54
Speaker 2: of the train companies. Adams Express hires the Pinkertons and
30:59
Speaker 2: they start hunting down the Reno Gang. And this is
31:02
Speaker 2: a good example of them just using dogged persistence over
31:05
Speaker 2: and over and over again. They just kind of one
31:08
Speaker 2: by one captured the gang members. The first was John Reno,
31:15
Speaker 2: not Geen Renau from Twin Peaks.
31:18
Speaker 3: I had that same joke.
31:20
Speaker 2: They got him first. He may have been the leader
31:23
Speaker 2: as far as I know. They also caught a guy
31:26
Speaker 2: named Charles Roseberry who was a member of the gang.
31:29
Speaker 2: And I don't know if they were expecting this or not,
31:32
Speaker 2: but the locals who were with them when they caught
31:36
Speaker 2: Charles Rowberry strung him up and hung him right there
31:39
Speaker 2: they when they caught him, and I didn't see, like
31:42
Speaker 2: what the Pinkertons thought about this kind of thing.
31:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I think a lot of those guys
31:47
Speaker 1: were lynched and hanged. And yeah, I don't know. I'm
31:51
Speaker 1: not sure if that's a good question. Actually, if that
31:54
Speaker 1: was I mean, obviously it wasn't his call, but after
31:57
Speaker 1: he hands them over, but I wonder if he was, like,
32:00
Speaker 1: I mean, how about a trial at least?
32:02
Speaker 2: Right, this doesn't seem to jibe with the code of conduct.
32:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
32:07
Speaker 2: I also saw they recovered about three hundred thousand dollars
32:09
Speaker 2: in cash and at least one instant, So definitely got
32:13
Speaker 2: your money's worth when you hired the Pinkertons to nab
32:15
Speaker 2: wild West train robbers.
32:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, I bet they weren't cheap though I tried to
32:18
Speaker 1: find out kind of how much they were paid. But
32:21
Speaker 1: if he was paying his agents well, which he supposedly did,
32:23
Speaker 1: then I'm sure they were not a cheap hire.
32:26
Speaker 2: No, And then things kind of went pear shaped for
32:30
Speaker 2: the Pinkertons. As far as I can tell, this was
32:33
Speaker 2: the first time the Pinkerton's reputation took a real hit
32:37
Speaker 2: with the James Gang Yeah, they went after the James Gang,
32:40
Speaker 2: led by Frank and Jesse James. I didn't know this, Yeah,
32:43
Speaker 2: but they were terrorists, Confederate terrorists during the Civil War
32:48
Speaker 2: in Missouri, that's where they were from. And Missouri was
32:51
Speaker 2: this powder keg that actually kind of helped kick off
32:53
Speaker 2: the Civil War because I guess abolitionists and pro slavery
33:00
Speaker 2: people came together to settle Missouri and they did not
33:03
Speaker 2: get along. And during the Civil War one of the
33:06
Speaker 2: things that James Gang did was murder Union supporters in Missouri. Yes,
33:11
Speaker 2: not even on the front lines. These weren't even soldiers,
33:13
Speaker 2: these were civilians. They were just running around killing and terrorizing.
33:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
33:18
Speaker 1: And you know, after the war, of course, they gained
33:20
Speaker 1: further notoriety by robbing everything in sight, you know, trains, banks,
33:25
Speaker 1: stage coaches, you name it. And Jesse sort of built
33:28
Speaker 1: up this, oh what do you call it, like a
33:32
Speaker 1: sort of a legendary status among the poor in working
33:36
Speaker 1: class that he was some kind of a robin Hood type,
33:40
Speaker 1: even though there's no indication that he was ever like
33:42
Speaker 1: robbing to give to the poor, right, but people would
33:45
Speaker 1: you know, hide him and take care of him and
33:46
Speaker 1: stuff like that. For some reason, but at any rate,
33:49
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy four, the Pinkertons were hired to catch
33:52
Speaker 1: these guys, Frank and Jesse, and they sent an agent
33:57
Speaker 1: to infiltrate the gang.
33:58
Speaker 3: His name was Joseph.
34:00
Speaker 1: Witcher, and he did a pretty good job until they
34:04
Speaker 1: found out that he was an informant and he was murdered,
34:08
Speaker 1: which kind of started the downhill tumble.
34:11
Speaker 2: Yeah. Alan Pinkerton took this quite personally. Oh yeah, there's
34:15
Speaker 2: a quote from him saying that as far as capturing
34:17
Speaker 2: Jesse and Frank James, there's no use talking. They must die. Yeah,
34:21
Speaker 2: So if they were wanted dead or alive, he was
34:24
Speaker 2: going to bring him in dead for sure. And in
34:26
Speaker 2: eighteen seventy five, early on in the year, they went
34:30
Speaker 2: to the James's family home in Missouri, and Jesse and
34:35
Speaker 2: Frank James weren't home. They'd been tipped off that the
34:37
Speaker 2: Pinkertons with a bunch of local pro union supporters were
34:41
Speaker 2: going to be there to capture them, so they weren't there.
34:44
Speaker 2: But apparently the Pinkertons and their assistants didn't know this.
34:49
Speaker 2: Somebody the Pinkerton said this was a local that did this,
34:52
Speaker 2: that they did not do this. Somebody threw a lantern
34:56
Speaker 2: into the home I saw in the hopes of illuminating
35:00
Speaker 2: things better. Well, the lantern exploded, Yeah, exactly. The lantern exploded,
35:06
Speaker 2: killed their eight year old half brother Archie, and blew
35:10
Speaker 2: their mom, Zerelda's arm off. So they've killed a young
35:13
Speaker 2: boy and maimed an older woman, and the Pinkertons are
35:18
Speaker 2: the ones who took the hit reputation wise.
35:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, and after all that, you know, pr work, A
35:24
Speaker 1: lot of that was undone because of this, basically, But
35:28
Speaker 1: it's not like they've shut down or anything.
35:30
Speaker 3: And didn't they go after some other gangs too?
35:32
Speaker 2: Yeah? Very famously. They were the ones that chased Butch
35:36
Speaker 2: Cassidy and Sundance the Sundance Kid down to Bolivia. Bolivian
35:40
Speaker 2: army killed them, and they were famous for catching and
35:43
Speaker 2: summarily executing all the members of the Apple Dumpling Gang.
35:50
Speaker 3: All right, we'll take a break now.
35:52
Speaker 1: I'm going to contemplate that joke, and we're going to
35:56
Speaker 1: come back and talk about what the Pinkertons were kind
35:58
Speaker 1: of known for from this point forward.
35:59
Speaker 3: Right after this.
36:28
Speaker 2: Okay, so after the Wild West kind of came and went,
36:33
Speaker 2: they got into corporate affairs firmly on the side of
36:38
Speaker 2: the corporation. At the time, there was a lot of
36:41
Speaker 2: labor movements, a lot of workers write stuff going on,
36:44
Speaker 2: and don't forget Alan Pinkerton had to flee the UK
36:50
Speaker 2: because he was such a radical labor supporter. Now his
36:56
Speaker 2: agency is the Premier Security Group and labor organization infiltrators.
37:04
Speaker 2: This is what they started doing, and this is where
37:06
Speaker 2: they're the bad name, the blemish on their name that's
37:09
Speaker 2: still around today, really started to develop because they were
37:14
Speaker 2: at this point do whatever corporations wanted them to do
37:17
Speaker 2: as long as they paid them.
37:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know what corporations generally wanted them to
37:22
Speaker 1: do was bust up the unions. Was to infiltrate the
37:25
Speaker 1: companies and bust up unions, which is what they ultimately
37:28
Speaker 1: started doing for you know, a lot of money. It
37:31
Speaker 1: started out as an employee testing service in eighteen fifty
37:34
Speaker 1: five and sort of grew over.
37:35
Speaker 3: The next few years.
37:37
Speaker 1: And initially it was like, hey, let's get some moles
37:42
Speaker 1: in there and see if we can uncover like illegal activity,
37:47
Speaker 1: people stealing from the company and stuff like that.
37:49
Speaker 3: But then it's just understandable, Yeah, totally.
37:51
Speaker 1: But then that sort of expanded, and I guess the
37:53
Speaker 1: people hiring were like, Hey, since you're in there, why
37:56
Speaker 1: don't you kind of let us know what's going on,
37:57
Speaker 1: what they're talking about, and like if they like management discontented,
38:02
Speaker 1: and if they're you know, most importantly, if they're starting
38:04
Speaker 1: to organize and talk about forming a labor society, which
38:08
Speaker 1: you know, of course would ultimately be a union.
38:11
Speaker 2: Yes. This became such a part of their job that
38:16
Speaker 2: the Order of Railway Conductors started warning their members that
38:19
Speaker 2: there's Pinkerton's undercover who are watching you, and not just
38:23
Speaker 2: watching you to see if you're stealing, they're watching you
38:26
Speaker 2: to see if you want to form a union. And
38:28
Speaker 2: this was the I mean, this was a terrible direction
38:31
Speaker 2: for them to start to go down because this was
38:33
Speaker 2: such a militant time. I mean, there were like anarchists
38:38
Speaker 2: running around like throwing bombs in the United States. There
38:41
Speaker 2: were labor unions that soldiers were sometimes brought out to shoot.
38:46
Speaker 2: I mean, it was a really rough time as far
38:49
Speaker 2: as like labor and management goes, because there was just
38:52
Speaker 2: this struggle to say, who owns the fruit of our labor? Yeah,
38:57
Speaker 2: you who's paying for the raw materials or us who's
39:00
Speaker 2: actually turning those raw materials into the end product. And
39:05
Speaker 2: maybe it's not one or the other, but I guarantee
39:07
Speaker 2: it's more than the share that you're giving us a
39:11
Speaker 2: factory owner. And so this struggle became violent and many
39:14
Speaker 2: many times. Again, like I said, the Pinkertons landed firmly
39:18
Speaker 2: or started out firmly on the side of corporations that
39:20
Speaker 2: they stayed there.
39:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, we should probably highlight the Molly Maguire's that was
39:24
Speaker 1: one of more famous cases. They were a secret society
39:29
Speaker 1: in Ireland initially and then in eighteen sixties in Pennsylvania
39:33
Speaker 1: kind of re emerged from Irish immigrants because they were
39:36
Speaker 1: coal miners there and at the time they were facing
39:38
Speaker 1: a lot of discrimination. The job conditions were not good,
39:42
Speaker 1: working long hours, they were very dangerous, and they were
39:46
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of times living in company housing,
39:49
Speaker 1: paid in company script that they could only spend at
39:52
Speaker 1: the company store. They were just completely folded into this
39:56
Speaker 1: corporation as almost enslaved people in some way.
40:01
Speaker 3: You know.
40:01
Speaker 1: Ultimately they had their freedom, of course, but it was
40:04
Speaker 1: they were owned by the company essentially. Finally, in the
40:09
Speaker 1: eighteen sixties, supervisors started receiving these coffin notices basically from
40:15
Speaker 1: the worker saying, hey were the molly mcguires, and coffin
40:20
Speaker 1: notice means that your time on earth is nigh and
40:23
Speaker 1: you're not going to be around very long. So the
40:26
Speaker 1: writing was on the wall that things were about to
40:28
Speaker 1: turn violent.
40:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it did start to get violent. And I
40:31
Speaker 2: saw that the molly mcguires started murdering and assassinating some
40:36
Speaker 2: of the some of the members of the corporation, like Foreman,
40:40
Speaker 2: who were the people they worked with the most directly
40:43
Speaker 2: and who are the most brutal toward them. But I
40:45
Speaker 2: also saw that this was in retaliation for members of
40:48
Speaker 2: the molly mcguires being murdered first. Yeah, either way, it
40:52
Speaker 2: turned violent pretty terribly. What the molly mcguires did not
40:56
Speaker 2: know is that there was a Pinkerton man who they
40:59
Speaker 2: knew as James McKenna, but whose real name was James McFarlane,
41:03
Speaker 2: who had spent two years by now working under cover
41:07
Speaker 2: and ingratiating himself with the mally mcguires, or even beyond
41:11
Speaker 2: the mally McGuire's, just the Irish coal miners who worked
41:14
Speaker 2: and lived in this area, so much so he became
41:16
Speaker 2: the secretary of the local lodge of the Ancient Order
41:20
Speaker 2: of Hiberians, an Irish Catholic fraternal organization. So he really
41:25
Speaker 2: worked his way into it, and he got a lot
41:27
Speaker 2: of intel on them, and ultimately turned state's evidence and
41:33
Speaker 2: got twenty men executed almost exclusively on his testimony.
41:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, on charges of murder, arson, and kidnapping.
41:45
Speaker 1: Ten were hanged in eighteen seventy seven. Ten were then
41:48
Speaker 1: hanged in eighteen seventy eight, I guess, and this is
41:52
Speaker 1: one of the most like insider jobs of all time.
41:56
Speaker 1: I think there was a historian, Harald Aaron who that
42:00
Speaker 1: was one of the most astonishing, astounding, excuse me, surrenders
42:04
Speaker 1: of sovereignty and American history, because what happened was Franklin Gowan,
42:11
Speaker 1: who was the guy who ran the company who hired
42:13
Speaker 1: the Pinkertons to begin with, he was the chief prosecutor.
42:18
Speaker 1: So it was all this inside job. These guys were
42:22
Speaker 1: arrested by a private police force, and then the coal
42:26
Speaker 1: company's attorneys prosecuted them, and the only thing that the
42:31
Speaker 1: state did was like, here, use his courtroom and use
42:34
Speaker 1: our gallows or whatever, and other than that, it was
42:37
Speaker 1: all just a private job to find and execute these guys.
42:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, many of whom who were considered to have been innocent.
42:43
Speaker 2: They were innocent men who were executed again almost exclusively
42:48
Speaker 2: on James mcparlane, this Pinkerton man's testimony, and yeah, it
42:52
Speaker 2: was just a total travesty from starting to finish. In Pennsylvania.
42:56
Speaker 2: Did pardon one of the men, John Keho, in nineteen
43:01
Speaker 2: seventy nine, about one hundred years too late for John Keyho,
43:04
Speaker 2: but it was kind of a symbolic thing saying like, yeah,
43:06
Speaker 2: we really screwed up and letting this company essentially form
43:10
Speaker 2: their own court and trial and executions. Probably more famous though,
43:16
Speaker 2: is the Pinkerton's role in the Homestead strike in Homestead,
43:21
Speaker 2: Pennsylvania at one of the Carnegie Steel mills.
43:24
Speaker 3: Yeah.
43:25
Speaker 1: So in eighteen ninety two there was a union contract
43:27
Speaker 1: that expired for that steel company in Pennsylvania there in Homestead,
43:32
Speaker 1: and Henry Clay Frick and Andrew Carnegie, a couple of
43:35
Speaker 1: robber barons we've talked about in the past, said all right,
43:39
Speaker 1: we're going to cut wages back. We're going to break
43:41
Speaker 1: this union, which was the Amalgamated Association of Steel and
43:44
Speaker 1: Iron Workers and Carnegie said, I'm out here. I'm going
43:48
Speaker 1: to leave the country. Henry Clay Henry Clay Frick got
43:52
Speaker 1: involved sort of doing the dirty work on the ground.
43:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he said, all right, I'm going to hire
43:57
Speaker 3: the Pinkertons. We're not even negotiating.
44:00
Speaker 1: I'm going to bring these guys in to essentially act
44:03
Speaker 1: as guards to lock these people out.
44:06
Speaker 2: Yeah. And so three hundred Pinkertons showed up on July sixth,
44:11
Speaker 2: eighteen ninety two. They were pulled down the river on
44:13
Speaker 2: barges and they were all armed to the teeth with
44:16
Speaker 2: Winchester rifles and cold forty five's and all the modern
44:19
Speaker 2: guns you could hope for. And when they arrived, they
44:24
Speaker 2: were met with I think two or three thousand homestead
44:29
Speaker 2: not just steel workers, but neighbors, community members, just people
44:34
Speaker 2: who were supporting the strikers.
44:35
Speaker 3: Angry too.
44:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were really mad, not just because they were
44:40
Speaker 2: in the midst of the strike, but because this private
44:42
Speaker 2: police force had shown up to intimidate them or possibly
44:46
Speaker 2: kill them the way that they were armed. And so
44:49
Speaker 2: a battle ensued, Like there's no other word for it.
44:51
Speaker 2: It was a twelve or fifteen hour battle. Yeah, only
44:55
Speaker 2: a dozen people died. But that's amazing to me. As
44:59
Speaker 2: violent as this battle was, they tried to or I
45:02
Speaker 2: should say, they pushed a flaming train car at the
45:06
Speaker 2: barges to try to kill the Pinkertons. Like that was
45:09
Speaker 2: just one thing that the strikers did. Like it was
45:12
Speaker 2: really violent.
45:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it was shocking that only a dozen
45:16
Speaker 1: people died. I guess it's a testament to how bad
45:19
Speaker 1: of a shot they were. It really was collectively. Of course,
45:24
Speaker 1: the workers, you know, they they surrendered. The Pinkertons did
45:28
Speaker 1: because they were just so far outnumbered, even though most
45:30
Speaker 1: of the I think most of the dozen were the
45:33
Speaker 1: workers that died, but the Pinkertons knew that they were
45:36
Speaker 1: vastly outnumbered, so they surrendered.
45:38
Speaker 3: But the workers lost.
45:39
Speaker 1: Because he Henry Clay, frick Man, I have a hard time.
45:43
Speaker 3: With that one.
45:44
Speaker 2: You want to say, people, I know Henry Clay.
45:46
Speaker 1: People got eighty five hundred National Guard troops sent in
45:50
Speaker 1: after the Pinkertons left, and of course, you know, they
45:53
Speaker 1: broke the union and said we're going to decrease your wages,
45:56
Speaker 1: We're going to increase how much you have to work,
45:58
Speaker 1: and this just became sort of a cyclical thing that
46:01
Speaker 1: was happening. The Pinkertons early on, they were pretty good
46:06
Speaker 1: at infiltrating, but when it came to breaking these unions,
46:09
Speaker 1: the federal government would come in with the troops and
46:12
Speaker 1: do a far better job at doing so.
46:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, because strikers typically recognized federal troops is more legitimate
46:19
Speaker 2: than a private police force showing up, you know.
46:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, and just more people with more arms.
46:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, they had gatling guns, like it's demonstrated at the
46:28
Speaker 2: end of the Wild Bunch.
46:29
Speaker 3: That's right.
46:29
Speaker 2: You don't want to mess with those. So yeah, from
46:32
Speaker 2: those of us, like looking back today, you might think, oh,
46:34
Speaker 2: that's just what they did back then, which was messed up,
46:37
Speaker 2: but that's just the norm. Not true. Congress actually investigated
46:41
Speaker 2: this incident. They were like, that is pretty screwed up
46:44
Speaker 2: that you hired the Pinkertons and brought in the National
46:47
Speaker 2: Guard to essentially put this town under martial law. And
46:50
Speaker 2: as a matter of fact, Congress urged states to pass
46:54
Speaker 2: laws to make it so that corporations couldn't hire private
46:58
Speaker 2: companies to break unions, and Ohio went so far as
47:02
Speaker 2: to say the Pinkertons themselves are now illegal here.
47:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, that's true. So I mean that really changed
47:10
Speaker 1: everything for the Pinkertons there as far as strike breaking goes.
47:14
Speaker 1: It took a huge hit. Couldn't get a lot of
47:17
Speaker 1: work after that, But they did go on. They did
47:19
Speaker 1: anti union espionage work.
47:21
Speaker 3: Of course.
47:23
Speaker 1: This is something I never knew at all, was that
47:25
Speaker 1: they they just they kept going. They were acquired in
47:28
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine, Yeah, by Securitas, and I had no
47:33
Speaker 1: idea that they went on that much further after Pinkerton's death,
47:37
Speaker 1: after Alan Pickerton's death.
47:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, they trade on the name still, for sure. Yeah.
47:42
Speaker 2: It's a massive company I think, with like fifty thousand
47:45
Speaker 2: employees and offices all over the world, but they still
47:49
Speaker 2: use the Pinkerton name. Like you can hire Pinkerton for
47:52
Speaker 2: corporate security. Apparently they'll ride along and container ships to
47:56
Speaker 2: protect against pirates. Wow, they've served as guards at Marylyn
48:00
Speaker 2: Rose funeral. Yeah, back in the sixties. I also saw
48:02
Speaker 2: that same year they escorted the Mona Lisa from France
48:05
Speaker 2: to the US.
48:06
Speaker 1: Oh, which is you know, they could probably just do
48:09
Speaker 1: that under an overcoat. That thing's pretty small.
48:11
Speaker 2: It is fairly small. And then one other thing where
48:14
Speaker 2: they pop up and this made me wonder if this
48:16
Speaker 2: is where this idea came from. Apparently they're bad guys
48:20
Speaker 2: in the video game Red Dead Redemption two, which I
48:24
Speaker 2: know for a fact that you've played.
48:25
Speaker 1: They very much are figured, very heavily into that storyline
48:30
Speaker 1: if you play the story part of that.
48:33
Speaker 2: Is that where you got the idea to do one
48:35
Speaker 2: on them?
48:36
Speaker 1: No, because I haven't played that in a long time,
48:38
Speaker 1: I'm not sure where I got it. It may have been,
48:41
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm not really sure. They also pigure
48:45
Speaker 1: in a bunch of movies. Of course, they're in Deadwood.
48:48
Speaker 1: They were in The Long Riders in the eighties, and
48:51
Speaker 1: Friend of the Show Paul Schneider was in the Great
48:55
Speaker 1: Great Movie from two thousand and seven, the Assassination of
48:57
Speaker 1: Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford, and they that
49:00
Speaker 1: Pinkerton's figure pretty heavily in that movie too.
49:02
Speaker 2: That was a good movie. We should talk about the
49:05
Speaker 2: death of Alan Pinkerton real quick, Chuck.
49:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's pretty unusual.
49:10
Speaker 1: He died July first, eighteen eighty four, right before his
49:13
Speaker 1: sixty fifth birthday. And as the story goes, he slipped
49:17
Speaker 1: on a street in Chicago and bit his tongue something
49:21
Speaker 1: which I did when I was a kid, had twelve
49:23
Speaker 1: stitches across the center of my tongue back together when
49:27
Speaker 1: I was like twelve. But I did not die, because
49:30
Speaker 1: I'm still here. But Pinkerton died as a result of
49:34
Speaker 1: this because it turned gangrenous.
49:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, he wouldn't go get it treated, and it just
49:39
Speaker 2: kept getting worse, and that was it for him. Yeah,
49:43
Speaker 2: he was put to rest near his wife. And very interestingly,
49:48
Speaker 2: he also in his family plot, buried Kate Warren because
49:53
Speaker 2: he so admired this the first female detective ever hired.
49:57
Speaker 2: He so admired her in her work that he had
49:59
Speaker 2: her buried with him. She was still alive and was
50:03
Speaker 2: very unhappy about this, but he admired her that much.
50:06
Speaker 1: That's super cool. So she's there with him. Maybe I
50:10
Speaker 1: guess some of his sons are there and his wife Joan.
50:13
Speaker 3: Yes, wonderful.
50:15
Speaker 2: Nice Chuck, you got anything else?
50:18
Speaker 3: I got nothing else.
50:19
Speaker 2: That's it for the Pinkertons. Everybody at long last. And
50:22
Speaker 2: since I said it long last, I just triggered listener mail.
50:27
Speaker 3: That's right. This is a little follow up on the
50:29
Speaker 3: GPS episode.
50:30
Speaker 1: Toward the end, I kind of poked fun at Garman
50:33
Speaker 1: as being something that you know, like my mom uses
50:37
Speaker 1: and not like a more modern system. But it turns
50:39
Speaker 1: out Garment is still very popular because Deanna sent me
50:43
Speaker 1: an email saying, Hey, a lot of cyclists use this stuff,
50:46
Speaker 1: and I asked her why. I was like, oh, that's
50:48
Speaker 1: super interesting. I said, do you know why they have
50:50
Speaker 1: you know, they're used by cyclists, are still around in
50:53
Speaker 1: that capacity, and she said, good question. I think there
50:55
Speaker 1: are a couple of reasons why it's still the go
50:57
Speaker 1: to for GPS. They've been around forever. They've been making
51:00
Speaker 1: GPS for planes and boats since the late eighties, so
51:03
Speaker 1: they had a really big head start and then number
51:06
Speaker 1: two constant refinement. While others are just starting to develop
51:09
Speaker 1: their products, Garman was already fine tuning theirs, and they
51:12
Speaker 1: had a twenty year head start, so they packed in
51:14
Speaker 1: a ton of extra features. For example, they introduced the
51:17
Speaker 1: first bike radar system years before anyone else, and the
51:20
Speaker 1: radar still blows the competition away. I even have a
51:24
Speaker 1: buddy he works for Wahoo and he still uses a
51:27
Speaker 1: Garman radar.
51:29
Speaker 2: Very nice.
51:30
Speaker 1: Also, Deanna says they built a lot of brand loyalty,
51:33
Speaker 1: especially in the cycling world. Minievus still use them, even
51:36
Speaker 1: though the quality has slipped just a bit in recent years.
51:38
Speaker 1: We don't like using phones on our bikes because they're
51:40
Speaker 1: bulky and drain the batteries really fast, and Garman just
51:43
Speaker 1: feels more polished and reliable for our needs.
51:47
Speaker 2: Who is that from?
51:48
Speaker 3: That was from Deanna?
51:49
Speaker 2: Deanna Garman. That's right, Thanks Deanna. We appreciate that. That
51:54
Speaker 2: was a great email, and if you want to be
51:56
Speaker 2: like Deanna, you can email us too. Send it off
51:59
Speaker 2: to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
52:05
Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
52:08
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