Accidental Detective

A friend to honesty and 

a foe to crime

--Allan Pinkerton

Born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1819, Allan Pinkerton might never have followed in his policemen father’s footsteps had it not been for a chance encounter.

A cooper by trade, he ran afoul of the law because of his political affiliations and he and his wife fled Scotland and ended up in America. After settling in Illinois, he dreamed of monopolizing the cooper manufacturing company in the region and called his company Pinkerton’s One and Original Cooperage of Dundee.

FATE INTERVENES

While cutting down poles for his barrels, he came across a counterfeiting ring. He reported his discovery to the sheriff, who immediately deputized him to help find the leader.  Allan set up a sting and caught him.  The Cook County sheriff was so impressed he offered Allan a job. 

Allan eventually decided to start his own detective agency, the only one of its kind, and the Pinkerton National Detective Agency became reality. The agency’s “seeing-eye” logo  inspired the phrase private eye.

The Pinkerton name became a household word when he prevented an assassination plot on President-elect Lincoln.  Lincoln then hired Allan to organize the Secret Service to stop counterfeiting.

MANY THINGS TO MANY PEOPLE

Allan was accused of being both a traitor and a patriot. He was also innovative and many of his methods are still used to today. The first to use photography as a crime-fighting tool, he collected what he called mug shots and newspaper articles, and organized files on every known criminal in the country.

PETTICOAT DETECTIVES

He was also ahead of his time in other areas as well and hired his first female detective Kate Warne in 1852. He thought she was applying for a secretary job but she soon relieved him of that notion. Oh, to have been at that meeting!

Quick to see the advantage of female detectives, he put her in charge of the Pinkerton Female Detective Bureau formed in 1860 to ‘worm out secrets’ by means unavailable to male detectives. Unfortunately, most of the information pertaining to this bureau was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire, so we'll never know exactly how those lady detectives wormed out secrets.

FROM FAME TO SHAME

What we do know is that at the height of its existence, the Pinkerton Detective Agency employed more agents than the United States army.
Can you imagine having to track down criminals without benefit of DNA, fingerprints, security cameras, Facebook, cell phones or computers? But that’s exactly what those early gumshoes had to do and yet, they almost always got their man and, in some case, their woman. 

Their heavy-handed and sometimes ruthless pursuit of criminals like Jesse James (which resulted in the death of a child) earned the agency a bad reputation and tarnished the Pinkerton name. Several states passed anti-Pinkerton laws, which prohibited the hiring of private detectives. Allan fought back by publishing more than a dozen books in an effort to set the record straight.

Who is your favorite literary, movie or TV detective?

"Many things are worth dying for but modesty's
not one of them -Petticoat Detective

 

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We All Scream for Ice Cream (and Oysters)

“Ice cream is happiness condensed.”

                                                                                                        -Jessie Lane Adams

Ice cream might not be the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about the Old West, but as early as 1880 ice cream parlors were all the rage and began springing up in even the most out of the way places. Some frontier towns like Tombstone had more than one. 

Marshal Wyatt Earp didn’t drink, but he sure did love his ice cream. Every afternoon he headed for the Tombstone ice cream parlor on Fourth Street.  It’s not hard to imagine that he was on his way to enjoy his favorite dish when he got sidetracked by the shootout at O.K. Corral. 

“Ice-cream is exquisite. What a pity it isn’t illegal.”

                                                                                                                                                  -Voltaire

Many restaurants, hotels and inns advertised Ice Cream and Oysters. Fortunately, the two weren’t served together; ice cream was the summer treat and oysters a winter delicacy.   

Some parlors were quite fancy.  One in San Antonio advertised plush carpets, oak furnishings and stained glass windows, but ice cream was also sold out of wagons (the first good humor men?) and tents.  Churches also got into the act and ice cream socials rapidly grew in popularity.

Nothing Says Love Like Ice Cream  

Many a young man courted his lady love at an ice cream parlor. A Texas newspaper in the 1880s had this advice: "Love takes away the appetite.  If the woman of your dreams is on her third dish of ice cream, she’s not in love with you."

The same newspaper also announced the wedding of a young couple who had known each other for only “fifteen minutes” before tying the knot. But a successful marriage was assured as both had a passion for ice cream.

Ice cream came in all flavors including fruit and even chocolate.  Then, as now, the

most popular was vanilla. One flavor you might have found in those old time ice cream parlors that you won’t find today is avocado.

Toward the end of the 1880s newspapers began issuing warnings against overindulging in that “insidious foe of health” ice cream. As far as I can tell no one paid much heed to the caveats and no such warning was issued for oysters.

So Where Did All That Ice Come From?

Before the train, ice was wrapped in sawdust and transported by wagons.  The early ice houses were merely barns insulated with three foot walls of sawdust and hay. By the late 1880s, most western towns had their own ice houses and Tombstone had two.

 www.margaret-brownley.com

Tell me your favorite ice cream and

I’ll tell you what it says about your personality 

(at least I’ll try)! 


Working undercover is no job for a lady!

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