The Pinkerton Detective Agency | Behind The Brand | 4

Allan Pinkerton started the Pinkerton National Detective Agency to catch robbers, counterfeiters and spies. For a time, Pinkerton detectives enjoyed their good image, carefully crafted by Pinkerton himself. But, that image tarnished as the Pinkertons increasingly took on paid work breaking up strikes for Gilded Age industrialists. Today, Lindsay is joined by S. Paul O’Hara, an Associate Professor of History at Xavier University, to discuss Allan Pinkerton’s determination to build the company brand and cultivate his own mythology. O’Hara is the author of, Inventing the Pinkertons. 

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