Pinkerton Detective

And neither will you by the time we're done, union-man...

"We Never Sleep."

— Motto of the Pinkertons

An agent of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, "Pinkertons" for short, "Pinks" to their enemies.

Founded in the 1850s by Allan Pinkerton, the Pinkertons were often hired by corporations such as the railroad companies to investigate crimes against them and the activities of labor movements. Made famous by their protection of Abraham Lincoln from an assassination attempt prior to his taking the oath of office. In the 1870s, they added government work to their portfolio, as the Department of Justice did not have the infrastructure to do massive investigations on its own. (This work dried up in 1893 with the passage of the "Anti-Pinkerton Act", which prevented the US government from directly hiring Pinkerton agents.)

In addition to their notorious and much-reviled strikebreaking work, the Pinkertons were also active in chasing down outlaws who had pulled train jobs or major bank robberies. And if you were wealthy enough, you could hire them for regular detective work as well. The Pinks were well known for brutality and ruthlessness in their methods; in fiction, even when they are pursuing more laudable goals, this tends to give an unfavorable color to their portrayal.

It's believed the phrase "private eye" comes from the Pinkerton Agency's symbol, an open eye (which rather hilariously came to look like the CBS eye in later years). Dashiell Hammett was a former Pinkerton agent, and used his experience to inform his stories.

After the 1930s, the Pinkerton Agency largely concerned itself with security services. They were bought and merged with a Swedish security company called Securitas AB, and they are now known as Securitas Security Services USA, Inc. Poetically, Securitas is now the subject of unionization attempts. But that still hasn't stopped companies like Amazon from using Pinkerton operatives to spy on workers and labor unions.

Compare and contrast with Private Intelligence Agency, which is what the company does nowadays after Securitas purchased the company and its assets. Hilariously unrelated to Real Men Wear Pink.

No relation to the Weezer album Pinkerton, though the agency did file a Frivolous Lawsuit against the band, accusing them of trademark infringement. (The case was thrown out immediately.)

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Examples of Pinkerton detectives in fiction:

Anime & Manga

• In the spinoff arc of Gunka No Baltzar, a Fantasy Counterpart Culture detective agency is used to suppress a strike.
• The Pinkertons appear as villains in the short-lived, Original English-language manga No Man's Land by Jason DeAngelis. They try to harness the power of Legions of Hell.
• Moriarty the Patriot spins Billy the Kid of all people as a Pinkerton detective on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice after he's legally declared dead. He ropes Sherlock Holmes into the organization as well and even tries to recruit Professor Moriarty.

Comic Books

• A Comic Book story of Droopy (the dog) had him as a Pinkerton agent relentlessly and ruthlessly protecting a carpetbag of gold from a thief.
• Pinkertons have appeared frequently (usually as antagonists) in Jonah Hex.
• In the Elseworlds comic Justice Riders (The Justice League in the Old West) Guy Gardner appears as a Pinkerton agent.
• Lucky Luke:
  • In the book "Jesse James", two bumbling Pinkerton detectives appear. Might be a Shout-Out to two other bumbling detectives from Franco-Belgian Comics. They travel incognito, oblivious to the Sigil Spam that betrays them.
  • In a post-Morris album of the series, Lucky Luke finds himself going against Allan Pinkerton himself.
• Caleb Hammer, a Western character in the Marvel Universe.
  • Fellow Marvel character Cyber was one, as well.
• They sometime show up in Tex Willer. Being this a western comic book set before the start of the unions, they only show up chasing major criminals or doing investigative work. The agency is also noted to have some ethics, as they'll fire with prejudice any agent caught doing something illegal (as freeing a criminal after being bribed), and if asked about them will quickly denounce whatever they're doing now.
  • At the start of the "Death Cell" storyline Tex is framed for murder and it's mentioned they've been contacted to help find information to prove his innocence and catch the culprit before he and his accomplice can start an Indian war and have the Navajos evicted from their reserve. By the end of the storyline Tex and his pards have identified the culprit and found enough evidence to convict him and prove Tex' innocence on their own... And the Pinks reveal they have identified every single other member of the organization and provided enough evidence to arrest them, without even appearing on-page until one of their agents shows up to reveal what they've done in the meantime.
  • The "Pinkerton Lady" storyline chronicles Tex' first encounter with them, as he, then young and wanted for murder, found himself involved with them saving Abraham Lincoln's life from an assassination attempt. At the end of the storyline the Pinks feign not having identified him in gratitude for his help, laying the groundwork for their later collaboration.

Film — Live-Action

• The Hollywood western 3:10 to Yuma (1957) and its 2007 remake feature Pinkerton agents escorting an armed stagecoach filled with bank notes through Arizona. Pinkerton agents are seen throughout the 2007 version, and it's worth noting that in the remake the main Pinkerton is both a badass and deeply unpleasant character.
• A couple of Pinkerton's Detectives pursue the eponymous characters in Bad Girls. They never catch up with them.
• In Blackthorn, Butch Cassiday remembers his old friendships with the Sundance Kid and Etta Place, and how they escaped from Pinkerton Detective Mackinley.
• They pursue Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to Bolivia (both in real life and in the film).
• Hammett: Dashiell Hammett (reflecting Real Life) worked for Pinkerton alongside Jimmy Ryan. This is also how he knows Eli the cab driver, an old Wobbly whose IWW meetings he used to bust up.
• In an early scene of the 1992 movie Hoffa, corporate-hired Pinkerton personnel assault early 20th century union organizers.
• The 2005 movie The Legend of Zorro has Pinkerton agents extorting the wife of Zorro to help them investigate a secret society trying to prevent the 1850 admission of California to the Union. Rather anachronistically, since the Pinkertons weren't formed until after that event.
• The Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency (also a real company historically) engaged in similar strikebreaking actions in the semi-historical film Matewan.
• The 1970 film The Molly Maguires recounts the real-life story of Pinkerton detective James McParlan, alias McKenna, played by Richard Harris, as he infiltrates a gang of railroad saboteurs led by Sean Connery as Black Jack Kehoe.
• In both Murder on the Orient Express (1974) and Murder on the Orient Express (2017), Cyrus Hardman is a Pinkerton agent. (In the original novel, he worked for the fictional McNeil Detective Agency.)
• Spicer Lovejoy, Cal Hockley's valet in Titanic (1997) was a former Pinkerton.

Literature

• In The Coronation and the novella Dream Valley, it is mentioned that Erast Fandorin worked for the Pinkertons during his stay in the US (though mostly as a freelancer rather than a full agent).
• Pinkerton toughs occasionally appear as secondary characters throughout Harry Turtledove's series of Great War and American Empire Alternate History novels. As the USA in those novels is much more "Europeanized" than ours, with a strong Socialist movement, they ultimately end up being defeated by the organised strikers and unions.
• Holmes on the Range: The Amlingmeyer brothers spend the first several books trying to join the agency and getting turned away, before setting out to make their own agency.
• The Isaac Bell Adventures: Clive Cussler's character Isaac Bell is an investigator for the Van Dorn Detective Agency, a fictional organization modeled after the Pinkertons.
• Felix Leiter in the James Bond novels became a Pinkerton detective after being medically discharged from the CIA, for the rather good reason of losing a hand and a leg in Live and Let Die.
• The protagonist of Anthony Horowitz's Sherlock Holmes story, Moriarty, is Detective Chase; a Pinkerton agent seeking to track down an American Crime-boss before he can replace Moriarty after his fall from the falls.
• Cyrus Hartman in Murder on the Orient Express is an employee of the McNeil Detective Agency, a fictional counterpart of the Pinkertons.
• The Outlaw Josey Wales includes a brief chapter wherein a Texas Ranger and a Pinkerton Detective team up to search for Josey Wales.
• Sebastian Becker, the protagonist of a detective series by Stephen Gallagher, is an ex-Pinkerton.
• The Secret of Chimneys: Hiram P. Fish, the American lurking about the Chimneys mansion as murder and identity theft and all sorts of crazy things are going on, is a chance for Agatha Christie to indulge in American jokes like Funetik Aksent and Wacky Americans Have Wacky Names and Separated by a Common Language. That is, until the end, when he's revealed to be a Pinkerton agent tracking the jewel thief who is only part of a complicated mystery.
• Sherlock Holmes:
  • The Valley of Fear features a Pinkerton Detective infiltrating a gang of terrorist "Scowrers" (a fictional offshoot of the Freemasons, and who were based on the Real Life Molly Maguires.)
  • A Pinkerton named Leverton (described by Holmes as the "hero" of the "Long Island cave mystery") teams up with Holmes in The Adventure of the Red Circle.
• Michael "Meatpacker" Moran from the Young Bond novel SilverFin is a former Pinkerton Detective investigating an incident at the Big Bad's castle. At one point, Meatpacker does fall asleep, leaving Bond and his friend "Red" Kelly to continue the investigation on their own.
• In The Space Merchants, Mitchell Courtenay has a brief meeting with Commander MacDonald, an intelligence officer who is also a Pinkerton man and considers himself a specialist in catching Consies. (In an aside, Courtenay admires the brand integrity of the open eye logo.)
• PK Pinkerton in The Western Mysteries believes that he is a relative of the founder of the Pinkerton Detectives. His aspiration is to become a Pinkerton Detective.
• In Jordan L. Hawk's gay supernatural detective series Whyborne & Griffin, Griffin is an ex-Pinkerton, and his first encounter with the polymath Percival Whyborne relates directly to a terrifying ordeal he'd experienced while he was working with them. Later adventures often return to individuals or events from Griffin's Pinkerton past.

Live-Action TV

• Pinkertons appear a few times in the TV show The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr..
• In Boardwalk Empire Season 4, the Pinkerton Detectives are revealed to have been hired to investigate the suspicious death of Jimmy Darmody, to which end one of their agents seduces Gillian and manipulates her into confessing to the murder of the random young man whose corpse she passed off as Jimmy's to get him declared legally dead.
• Pinkerton agents figure in an episode of Copper. They are not portrayed in a positive light.
• In Damnation, one of the main characters, Creeley Turner, is a pink who is let out of jail in order to end a farmer's strike led by his pinko brother. In an interesting twist, he ends up helping the striking farmers partly out of sympathy for their plight, partly out of love for his brother, and partly because they end up getting attacked by The Black Legion and Even Evil Has Standards.
• Dead Man's Gun: In "The Pinkerton", a Pinkerton detective is called in to investigate the kidnapping of a wealthy man's wife.
• In the HBO series Deadwood, the Pinkerton Agency and its agents are occasionally referred to by several of the show's characters, often ominously or with contempt. Even Al Swearengren thinks they're below his admittedly low moral standards! Miss Isringhausen, Sofia's tutor from the show's second season, is eventually revealed to be an agent of the group.
• On the Ellery Queen episode "The Adventure of the Mad Tea Party", the victim's butler is an undercover Pinkerton, which doesn't stop him from being a suspect.
• "The Ten Li'l Grifters Job," an episode of Leverage, featured the team infiltrating a murder mystery costume party and had Eliot costumed as Charlie Siringo, a real-life Pinkerton agent. Given his history as a retrieval specialist, bodyguard, occasional government operative, and mercenary who now helps take down the Corrupt Corporate Executive of the week (at least one of whom he worked for in the past), the comparison is appropriate.
• In Season 13 of Murdoch Mysteries, Robert Parker is introduced as a Pinkerton detective who is tracking down the killer of his brother, also a Pinkerton. When he and Murdoch discover this was a False Flag Operation, and arrest the Pinkerton responsible, Parker gets fired for bringing the agency into disrepute.
• In Book Two of North and South (U.S.), Orry Main enlists an ace Pinkerton detective to find his stray wife. Eventually, the gumshoe chafes at what is becoming a full-time assignment.
• One of the main characters of the short lived series Peacemakers (basically CSI IN THE OLD WEST!) was a former Pinkerton agent. One episode also featured a legendary Pinkerton agent gone rogue as the perp.
• The Pinkertons naturally centers around these, featuring their founder Allan Pinkerton in the pilot, while one of the main characters is his son William. Incidentally the actor playing Pinkerton, Angus MacFadyen, has the same background as his character, both having been born in Glasgow, Scotland.
• In the Timeless episode "Mrs. Sherlock Holmes", the Lifeboat crew travels to 1919. When a cop confronts Rufus and Flynn at a crime scene, Rufus claims that they're Pinkerton detectives named John McClane and Hans Gruber. Flynn ruefully smiles at being given the name of the (European) bad guy. The cop then addresses them as a "couple of dicks", causing Rufus to take offense, only for Flynn to acknowledge that they're indeed a "couple of detectives".

Newspaper Comics

• In the Funky Winkerbean storyline in which Summer investigates the historic mystery surrounding silent comedy star "Butter" Brickle (which starts off looking like a No Celebrities Were Harmed "Fatty" Arbuckle, before going off in a completely bizarre direction), her interviewee, Cliff Anger, says the Pinkertons investigated, including Dashiel Hammett, but what they found wasn't conclusive.

Tabletop Games

• In Deadlands, the Pinkertons are the original Men in Black organisation, eventually becoming the Agency. (Real Life Writes the Plot on this one: once the writers discovered that the Pinkerton agency was still around and active, although as a private security company, they wrote a name change Retcon to avoid legal issues).
• Not actual Pinkertons in Rocket Age, but the Wolfgang & Long Detective Agency shares similarities with them, running investigations across the solar system for nations who can't readily reach criminals.

Video Games

• After the End: A Post-Apocalyptic America: The Pinkertons have survived six centuries after the Apocalypse, albeit in an unusual form: they've since become a mercenary army that can be hired by feudal lords.
• Booker DeWitt, the protagonist of BioShock Infinite, is a former Pinkerton Agent who was apparently expelled from the organization due to "behavior beyond the acceptable bounds of the Agency".
• Pinkerton Agents appear as skilled shooters armed with six-shot carbines in the 1866 Western-themed mod for Mount & Blade.
• Three Pinkerton agents are hired to support the player character in the first side-mission of the video game Hard West. They are interchangable characters simply named A., B. and C. Persons.
• In the computer game Post Mortem (2002), the player-character Gus McPherson is mentioned as being a former member of Pinkerton, and depending on the player's actions, sends telegraphs to the agency for research.
• Red Dead Redemption II has Andrew Milton as one of the game's antagonists, who pursues the Van Der Linde gang. He does state that he's been seconded to the U.S. Government, but in reality, he's working for Leviticus Cornwall. Pinkerton Agents appear throughout the game as Mooks. The game also establishes that Edgar Ross was Milton's protégé before becoming a Bureau Of Investigation agent and he appears alongside Milton, rarely speaking until after Milton's death.
  • Securitas AB attempted to sue Take-Two for royalties over the use of the Pinkerton name in Red Dead Redemption 2, but Take-Two filed a countersuit over "using trademark law to own the past" and Securitas dropped it.

Webcomics

• The Dreadful's universe has the Jackson Detective Agency standing in for the Pinks.
• In High Moon, a werewolf Western webcomic series by David Gallaher and Steve Ellis, the protagonist Matthew 'Mac' Macgreor is a Pinkerton detective.

Western Animation

• Inch High, Private Eye works at the "Finkerton" Detective Agency, an obvious pun on "Pinkerton". His boss constantly threatens to fire him.
• The security goons in Project G.e.e.K.e.R. are all named "Pinkers," a likely reference to the Pinkertons.

Real Life

• Dashiell Hammett, author of Red Harvest, The Thin Man, and The Maltese Falcon, was a Pinkerton detective. His experience working for the Pinkertons led him to develop communist sympathies, eventually getting involved in left-wing politics full-time later in life. Ironically, both Pinkertons and communist sympathizers are both known as "Pinks".^note The latter nickname/slur being because a full-on communist is a "Red".

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