Frank PinkertonThe Scottish-American spy, investigator, and founder of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, Allan Frank Pinkerton (1819-1844), was the father of Allan Frank Pinkerton, who gained notoriety in the middle of the 19th century. A. Frank, like many oher writers of the era, based his highly sensationalized and widely read novels on the Pinkerton cases on his father's work and the agency's archives. Allan Pinkerton, a Scottish immigrant and the father of Frank Pinkerton, met Chicago attorney Edward Rucker in a nearby Masonic Hall in the 1850s. The North-Western Police Agency, later known as the Pinkerton Agency, was founded by the two men. Pinkerton drew clients and started expanding the business by using his spying abilities. "By the middle of the 1850s, a few businessmen realized they needed more control over their employees and formed a private detective system," writes historian Frank Morn. After conferring with six railways in the Midwest, Allan Pinkerton established such an organization in Chicago in February 1855." Read More Read Less