Private Eyes
Pinkerton, the Odd Fellows, regulators and undertakers: the private intelligence networks that policed America before the state did.
- 1The Business of Secrets: The Pinkerton family, private police, and the Struggle To Control Information
In Alexander Gardner’s photograph taken at Antietam in 1862, Allan Pinkerton stands beside Abraham Lincoln and Major General John McClernand, close enough to the president to belong comfortably in the picture. The arrangement has…
- 2The Eye and the Three Links: Pinkerton, the Odd Fellows, and America’s Private Intelligence Networks
The familiar story of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency usually begins with detectives, railroads, undercover operatives and the open eye beneath the words “We Never Sleep.” The Independent Order of Odd Fellows normally…
- 3The Secret Lodge Beneath the Hill: Odd Fellows’ Hall and the Strange Writing Inside Wyandotte Cave
Southern Indiana is full of caves, but Wyandotte Cave is different. Beneath the wooded hills of Crawford County, a few miles from Leavenworth, sits an underground landscape that Americans were already exploring, mapping and…
- 4Coroner Country: Undertakers, Odd Fellows, and Death as a Business
In October 1885, James “Big Jim” Kerr was found dead in the old canal lock at Lagro, Indiana. The surviving newspaper account is unusually good because it allows the machinery of a small-town death to be watched almost in real…
- 5Will the Real John Hutchison Please Stand Up?
Eddie Lincoln’s burial, a disputed Montgomery marriage, and the households behind a familiar name.
- 6The Commission Before the Mob
The familiar history of the American Mafia gives us five families, a war in New York, and a table at which the survivors finally learn to conduct business. It is a satisfying arrangement for a story. The violence supplies the…
- 7The Regulator State: Indiana and the Making of Private Intelligence
The counterfeiting press did not come from one shop. According to the 1877 history of St. Joseph County, its separate pieces were ordered from blacksmiths in Lima, Sturgis, Freedom, Burr Oak, and White Pigeon. Each man saw a job.…
- 8Why Allan Pinkerton Became John H. Hutcheson
On the evening of February 22, 1861, a man waiting in Philadelphia sent a telegram to Harrisburg. His question was brief: “Where is Nuts”. The sender signed himself J. H. Hutcheson. Behind that ordinary name was Allan Pinkerton…