Pinkerton agents were also hired to track western outlaws Jesse James, the Reno brothers, and the Wild Bunch, including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The federal Anti-Pinkerton Act of 1893 continues to prohibit an "individual employed by the Pinkerton Detective Agency, or similar organization" from being employed by "the Government of the United States or the government of the District of Columbia." In the aftermath of the Homestead Riot of 1892, several states passed so-called "anti-Pinkerton" laws restricting the importation of private security guards during union strikes. During the union unrest in the US in the late 19th century, industrialists would hire Pinkerton agents as undercover operatives to infiltrate and disrupt union activity or serve as armed guards for factories. Some early private investigators provided armed guards to act as a private militia. Ī larger role for this new private investigative industry was to assist companies in labor disputes. Allan Pinkerton hired Kate Warne in 1856 as a private detective, making her the first female private detective in America. At the height of its existence, the number of Pinkerton National Detective Agency active agents and reserves rivaled the number of active soldiers and reserves in the United States Army. Pinkerton's agents performed services which ranged from undercover investigations and detection of crimes, to plant protection and armed security. Pinkerton became famous when he foiled a plot to assassinate then President-elect Abraham Lincoln in 1861. In the United States, Allan Pinkerton established the Pinkerton National Detective Agency – a private detective agency – in 1850. Logo of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency Although little-remembered today, Pollaky's fame at the time was such that he was mentioned in various books of the 1870s and immortalized as "Paddington" Pollaky for his "keen penetration" in the 1881 comic opera, Patience. In 1862, one of his employees, the Hungarian Ignatius Paul Pollaky, left him and set up a rival agency. Field became a friend of Charles Dickens, and the latter wrote articles about him. In the United Kingdom, Charles Frederick Field set up an enquiry office upon his retirement from the Metropolitan Police in 1852. He is also credited for philanthropic pursuits – he claimed he never informed on anyone who had stolen for real need. His form of anthropometrics is still partially used by French police. He created indelible ink and unalterable bond paper with his printing company. He made the first plaster casts of shoe impressions. Vidocq is credited with having introduced record-keeping, criminology, and ballistics to criminal investigation. He was sentenced to five years and fined 3,000 francs, but the Court of Appeals released him. Vidocq later suspected that it had been a set-up. In 1842, police arrested him in suspicion of unlawful imprisonment and taking money on false pretences after he had solved an embezzlement case. Official law enforcement tried many times to shut it down. Much of what private investigators did in the early days was to act as the police in matters for which their clients felt the police were not equipped or willing to do. In 1833, Eugène François Vidocq, a French soldier, criminal, and privateer, founded the first known private detective agency, "Le Bureau des Renseignements Universels pour le commerce et l'Industrie" ("The Office of Universal Information For Commerce and Industry") and hired ex-convicts. 1859 illustration of Vidocq arresting a robber after tracking him down
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