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Allan Pinkerton, founder of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, is probably most familiar to those with an interest in criminal justice or the business institutions which developed in the mid-nineteenth century. Pinkerton is credited with the establishment of the Secret Service, with thwarting an assassination plot against Lincoln (Pinkerton, 1868), with implementing a Rogues Gallery which was the forerunner of the FBI's Criminal Identification Bureau, and with serving as a prototype for the present day FBI as well as establishing contacts with foreign police forces, presaging Interpol. At the present, his agency is primarily involved in providing security services to its corporate clientele (Horan, 1967).
Pinkerton was born August 25, 1819, in Glasgow, Scotland, the eldest son of William Pinkerton, a jailer, and his second wife. William had three daughters and four sons (two of whom died in infancy) by his first wife. Allan was always the “good son,” assuming the role of standard bearer for his father while his half-brothers and younger brother Robert became a disappointment to him. Robert remained a fairly shadowy figure, living most of his adulthood in Allan's home: he is not mentioned in accounts of Allan's life aside from fleeting references.
When Allan was about ten years old, his father was severely beaten by a jail inmate, sustaining injuries from which he died two years later (Horan, 1967). Prior to his father's death, Allan had been forced to work as an apprentice for a patternmaker to help out with the family's everyday needs (Lehrman, 1956). One wonders about the effect of having to work at such a young age on his fantasy work since it is through that modality that children gain some