IT may have been missed in all the voluminous correspondence I receive, but I haven’t noted an invitation to celebrate the bicentenary of the birth of one of the most influential Scotsmen to immigrate into 19th century USA.

If all that Allan Pinkerton had done was to save the life of Abraham Lincoln from a plot to kill him on the way to his presidential inauguration, he would be remembered for that. Yet the Glaswegian did so much more, and is rightly considered the father of the various US intelligence services as well as founding the world’s most famous detective agency.

It’s frankly appalling that so little, if anything, is being done to mark the bicentenary of Pinkerton’s birth which took place on August 25, 1819, in the Gorbals area of Glasgow. I feel that Pinkerton has been the victim of revisionism as a man who was an ardent social reformer and anti-slavery campaigner but whose later career that involved smashing strikes and labour unions has come to overshadow his remarkable achievements.

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The son of a policeman who died when Pinkerton was still a young boy, this unusual Scot – he was a lifelong atheist in a time of religious ferment – started his working life as an apprentice barrel maker in the McCauley Cooperage Works.

He became involved with the Chartists, a working-class movement for political reform, and while never a leading figure as he was only 19 when Chartism in Scotland was re-organised at a meeting of delegates in Glasgow in 1830, the young Pinkerton’s name was well known to the authorities which were intent on crushing the movement.

Pinkerton fell in love with a singer from Edinburgh, Joan Carfrae, and they married in March 1842. They had an unusual honeymoon – Pinkerton was told on his wedding day that the police were on their way to arrest him for his political activities and the newlyweds had to flee the country, heading for Canada and the US where they alighted in Chicago.

They eventually made their way to Dundee Township in Kane County, Illinois, some 50 miles away from Chicago, where Pinkerton set up in trade as a cooper. True to his Chartist beliefs, he became involved in the anti-slavery movement and his cooperage was part of the “underground railroad” that helped escaping slaves to reach safety.

While out cutting wood for his business, Pinkerton stumbled upon a gang of counterfeiters and managed to have them all captured, a feat that saw him elected as deputy sheriff of Kane County. In 1849, he was appointed to be the first full-time detective in Chicago as deputy sheriff of Cook County, a task to which he took like a natural.

Pinkerton soon realised that there was a huge gap in the market for a properly organised private detective group, and in 1850 he resigned to set up the Pinkerton National Detective Agency with the aim of tracking down and capturing the gangs who terrorised the railway companies in particular. The US Post Office had given him a contract, and the agency had immediate success. With its slogan “we never sleep” and the symbol an unblinking eye, Pinkerton’s was soon gaining headlines – the term “private eye” was coined in the press and comes from that symbol.

Pinkerton’s reputation grew apace as his new detection methods – he was the first to devise surveillance techniques and developed the first rogue’s gallery – brought success. That his men were all trained in shooting handguns and rifles and were experts in survival and tracking over long distances brought them an unmatched reputation for toughness.

Pinkerton was employed by Abraham Lincoln as his bodyguard and it was in that role that the agency foiled the so-called Baltimore Plot to kill the newly elected president while on his train journey to the inauguration ceremony. A female undercover agent Kate Warne alerted Pinkerton to the plot – the agency often used undercover staff to infiltrate potential enemies.

Lincoln was so impressed that when the Civil War began, he made Pinkerton his chief of intelligence, and while he often erred on the side of caution, there was no doubting Pinkerton’s bravery – he made several undercover forays into the south disguised as a Major EJ Allen. His Union Intelligence Service was the forerunner of all the US Government’s security intelligence services.

After the war he went back to managing and expanding the agency, with his two sons assisting, while he also took to writing novels and accounts of detection to boost publicity.

The Pinkerton Agency was hugely involved in rounding up the infamous Reno Gang of bank and train robbers, but their success was forgotten when most of the gang, including the Reno brothers, were lynched by vigilantes.

The Pinkertons failed in their long-running attempt to capture Jesse James, and they lost a lot of public support when the agency was employed by big companies to break up strikes and smash trades unions – in contrast to Pinkerton’s own radical past.

Allan Pinkerton died of a bizarre accident. At the age of 65, he fell and badly cut his tongue which turned gangrenous, and he may also have suffered a stroke. He died on July 1, 1884.