Researching Pinkerton Agents

When I started researching the Pinkerton National Detective Agency for the hero of a story, I had no idea what was a reasonable amount of time for an agent to spend on a case. Or if traveling from Rhode Island to Texas was believable. First, I consulted non-fiction titles that detailed Allan Pinkerton’s personal detective history that led into creating his agency. One book I read, Inventing the Pinkertons by S. Paul O’Hara was really slanted toward the economic and political conditions of the times. (rather dry) Then I read The Pinks by Chris Enss, which showcased the famous female detectives and the types of roles they performed for the company.

Allan Pinkerton circa 1861 credit Wikipedia

I dug deeper and, to my delight, discovered that Allan Pinkerton himself published reports of various cases. A first-hand account of events is always the most reliable and valuable source for research. The added bonus is that these reports read like fiction. Possibly he learned his writing skills because he released a couple dime novels based on cases. But he also wrote factual accounts of the timelines, events, agents involved, and the methods used. I was so surprised at how dedicated he was to fulfill the clients’ needs.

One story I read is titled The Spiritualists and The Detectives, and it related how two agents went undercover and worked for weeks to gain the confidence of the spiritualist who had a lawsuit against their client, hoping she’d admit the case was a fraud. The woman who read palms and gave séances claimed the rich client promised to divorce his wife and marry her. She sued him for breach of promise. When the spiritualist suspected someone was watching her, (which was happening because she’d rented rooms in her house to the two men who posed as salesmen) she jumped on a westbound train and ended up in Missouri, when another lawsuit was pending. The agents followed her on the train, but replacements took over surveillance once she settled in Missouri.


Something spooked her again and she set off, meandering through Illinois and Indiana. A sheriff attempted to serve her with a subpoena to appear in one state’s court and she successfully avoided touching the document until the riverboat reached mid-river and she was within another state’s jurisdiction. The replacement agents suspected she was headed back to Rochester New York where the original ones first met her and advised they return. In total, the surveillance lasted almost four months before the court date was close enough the agents could serve her with an order to appear and keep her in town. She lost.


If you’re interested in reading about real cases, I also found these titles by Allan Pinkerton: The Somnambulist and the Detective, the Murderer and the Fortune Teller; The Spy of the Rebellion: Being a True History of the Spy System of the United States; Bucholz and the Detectives. The best thing is the books are part of the project where out-of-print titles are scanned and made available free.

I used the research in writing my novella titled Taming A Scandal, book 14 of Lockets and Lace series. Socialite Mercia Saunders is traveling to her brother’s Texas ranch to let the gossip settle from a Philadelphia scandal. Pinkerton agent Dominic Prentice is pairing surveillance on the spoiled lady and hunting down stolen jewelry. Will the confinement of a cross-country train ride toss them together and ignite sparks?



Connect with Linda

Blog   http://blog.lindacarroll-bradd.com

Facebook  https://www.facebook.com/linda.carrollbradd

Twitter  https://www.twitter.com/lcarrollbradd

Newsletter  http://eepurl.com/bjKueH

What Drove the Creation of Time Zones?

While researching a recent novella, I learned about the official adoption of the different time zones in the United States (and by default, Canada and Mexico).


In my story, Taming A Scandal, which is part of the Lockets and Lace series, I needed to move my characters from Rhode Island to central Texas, with a side-trip to Chicago and St. Joseph, Missouri. That train trip covered lots of miles, transported them along the rails owned by a variety of railroad companies offering a variety of services, and moved them from dense to moderate to sparse population. As you can imagine, reading those historical timetables for travel across the distances was confusing when arrival and departure times from the same city didn’t follow a logical progression.

I like to be as accurate as possible with the historical details included in my plots. I didn’t want to state that the heroine stepped onto the Fall River Steamboat in the bright sunshine when in reality, the only time the steamboat sailed from Newport, RI, was at 8:15 at night so the passengers arrived in New York by 7 in the morning. Many cities used their own time standard, and the Library of Congress estimates that at one point following the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, at least 300 local sun-times existed!

The railroad owners knew a better system needed to be put in place to allow people to use their railways to travel with the least delay. Railroad managers instituted 100 standard zones. But that short-term solution didn’t solve the problem. The railroad operators formally adopted using four standard time zones in the continental United States on November 18, 1883. (The Time Standard Act of 1918 made the zones official for the US)  In 1884, the International Meridian Conference with representatives from two dozen nations was held, and Greenwich was established as the prime meridian and Greenwich Mean Time as the world’s standard. The prime reason was because Britain had more ships and shipping companies using Greenwich than all the other shipping lines combined. A case of majority rules.


Even with only 4 zones in the US, I always have to stop and calculate when I’m supposed to be at an online meeting at a certain time. Anyone miss a flight or train connection because of a miscalculation?

Connect with Linda Carroll-Bradd on her author Facebook page or through her occasional newsletter