![]() In addition to making history as the first woman detective in the United States, Warne likely saved Abraham Lincoln’s life by helping to uncover-and thwart-a plot to assassinate him ahead of his March 1861 inauguration. Warne’s argument worked, and later that night, Pinkerton decided to take a chance on his unconventional applicant. Kate Warne, who'd posed as the disguised president-elect's sister, left the group after successfully delivering Lincoln to Baltimore. “What I love in that moment is she basically comes right at him and says, ‘I can see things and hear things that you’re not going to see and hear,’” explains Brad Meltzer, co-author of the 2020 bestseller The Lincoln Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill America’s 16th President-and Why It Failed.ĭepiction of Abraham Lincoln, detective Allan Pinkerton and bodyguard Ward Hill Lamon arriving in Washington, D.C. “Women have an eye for detail and are excellent observers,” she reportedly said to Pinkerton. She could infiltrate places easily, as no one would expect a woman to be an undercover detective, and befriend the wives and girlfriends of suspected criminals. No American detective agency had hired a woman investigator before. But Kate Warne, a 23-year-old widow and recent transplant from New York, had a different role in mind: She wanted to be his newest detective. He assumed she’d misunderstood a job posting by his firm, the Chicago-based Pinkerton National Detective Agency.Īs Pinkerton told the visitor, he wasn’t looking for a secretary. Ten of them were hanged on a single day, June 21, 1877, in Pottsville, Pennsylvania.On a hot summer day in 1856, detective Allan Pinkerton looked up from his desk and greeted the young woman standing in front of him. The Pinkerton investigation ultimately led to the arrest and execution by hanging of 19 Mollies. ![]() Business owners and Scranton’s political leaders believed these organizations led the strike efforts and were responsible for the violence. ![]() The Molly Maguires operated independently within the A.O.H., though the latter eventually disavowed any connection with the so-called Mollies. In response, the Pinkerton Agency used paid informants to infiltrate the Molly Maguires, a secretive Irish-American labor organization, and the Ancient Order of Hiberians, an Irish-American fraternal and benevolent organization that formed in New York City in 1836 and subsequently founded chapters, or “divisions”, in other states. Sporadic violence continued into the Fall. On August 1, a deadly confrontation erupted between strikers, townspeople, and the Scranton militia. In Scranton, Pennsylvania a general strike began on July 23. Laborers in several related industries, including mining, also struck in solidarity with the railroad workers, resulting in the first nationwide strike in the country’s history. ![]() In 1877, in the midst of a crippling national depression that saw significant wage and price deflation, railway workers initiated a nationwide strike. ![]() In response to increasing labor unrest in the post-Civil War period, several corporations in the mining, railroad, and steel industries hired the Pinkerton agency, which Allan Pinkerton had founded in 1850, to surveil, infiltrate, and undermine labor organizations and break strikes. This collection consists primarily of a special report by the Pinkerton National Detective Agency from its investigation of the Scranton, Pennsylvania general strike of 1877. ![]()
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