Allan Pinkerton: Informed Scot or Scottish Informer?

Abstract

Allan Pinkerton (1819–1884) has a conflicted legacy. To some, the founder of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency (PNDA) pioneered law and order on the American frontier, upheld principles of racial equality, and prepared the way for better public police forces including the FBI. To others, Pinkerton betrayed the values of his Scottish youth: he had been a champion of militant workers in Scotland, and participated in revolutionary uprisings in Wales and England, yet was instrumental in crushing organised labour in the United States. In truth, Pinkerton never played a part in Wales’ Newport uprising, and took with him, when he crossed the Atlantic in 1842, knowhow about repression that he had acquired on his native soil. He may have learned about informers because he was one of their victims, or he may have promoted labour espionage in Pennsylvania in the 1870s because he had been himself an informer before he emigrated. The Scottish authorities’ deliberate abstinence from record-keeping and the serial, defensive destruction of PNDA records mean it is impossible to prove or disprove the informer hypothesis, but the role of the informer in Scottish political culture does help to explain Pinkerton’s behaviour and apparent hypocrisy.