The Pinkerton's Detective Agency, quite fascinating..
Allan Pinkerton was born in the Gorbals in Glasgow, not a nice place then or now..
And they are still going..
https://pinkerton.com/our-story/history
Bit of a review:
This book is a well researched history of the Pinkertons. It seems to objectively report bad times as well as good. This country had no national police force until the early 1900's. The Pinkertons filled the need for a national and international data base and even helped set up the FBI's data collection.
Good detective stories and plenty of back ground on the Pinkertons' development of many of the methods they worked out to fight crime. These methods are still used today.
I purchased to book because I watched a movie about the nation's first train robbery and how the Pinkertons tracked down the Reno brothers, the first of several family gangs. The movie was about average but the Pinkertons handling of the case was an eye-opener. None of this was in my American history classes, high school or college. The history books jump from carpet baggers to a small mention of the Spanish-American war and then to World War 1 and the roaring 20's. This book fills in many of the historical gaps from the Civil War to the 1960's. It also shows the links between the robber barons of the late 1800's and the Pinkertons.
Ps: I saw it from £10 - £37 quid on Amazon....
