BODY SNATCHERS

While much was made of body snatching in the British media, it would be easy to think it was a largely British problem. The reality was very different: it was far from a British phenomena, as the need for cadavers in medical research was as great in America as it was in Europe. While the exploits of body snatchers like Burke and Hare were known to American audiences (as shown by the example below from the records of the Wood Detective Agency), 'ghouls' and 'resurrectionists' were also active in the U.S., and did not escape the attention of the big publications of the day, including the National Police Gazette.

Smithsonian Magazine wrote how "Baltimore became a center of “resurrections”—as grave robbers referred to their business—because a half-dozen medical schools in the city needed a steady supply of corpses. It also helped that the Maryland’s largest population center was located in a temperate zone that often allowed digging in winter when the ground in New England and in the Midwest froze solid.... Grave robberies and body trafficking for profit were distinctly Anglo-Saxon phenomena; in Central Europe, the authorities usually distributed unclaimed corpses to medical schools. No such mechanism existed in the United States, England, or Scotland. So medical schools needing dissection material acquired corpses the best way they could—by sending janitors, students, and medical doctors to rob fresh graves."

Prestigious institutions were not adverse to being involved either. At Harvard University, according to History.com, "anatomy students were permitted to dissect executed criminals, but that yielded perhaps one body a year, not enough to meet demand. In response, some universities hired body snatchers known as “resurrection men” to supply them with cadavers. But in some cases, students were forced to literally dig up their class work.... [After the Civil War] Harvard Medical School was forced to import its corpses from New York City, where the bribing of public officials and cemetery employees allowed the practice of grave robbing to endure."
 

"Body Snatchers Trapped." National Police Gazette, 23 Dec. 1882

"Stealing 'Stiffs'." National Police Gazette, 3 Jan. 1880

'Burke and Hare.' Murderers. n.d. TS Wood Detective Agency Records, 1865-1945: Series VII. Criminal Accounts and Articles Compiled by James Rodney Wood, Jr., 1816-1934 Box 12, Folder 8. Harvard University Law Library

"Gunning for Ghouls." National Police Gazette, 13 Sept. 1879
 

PINKERTON NATIONAL DETECTIVE AGENCY

Allan Pinkerton emigrated from Scotland to the United States in 1842, when he was 23 years old; he soon settled in the town of Dundee, northwest of Chicago. By the beginning of the 1850s, Pinkerton and a partner had established the North-Western Police Agency, which had its offices at Washington and Dearborn Streets in Chicago. One of the first private detective agencies in the United States, this company worked for the Illinois Central and other railroads. By late 1850s, Pinkerton employed 15 operatives. During the Civil War, the company provided intelligence to the Northern armies that was not particularly accurate. After the war, promoting itself with the slogan “we never sleep,” the company opened offices in New York City and Philadelphia. Much of its business came from banks and express companies, who wanted to deter robberies. Starting in the 1870s, Pinkerton detectives also began to work for industrial companies as spies and strikebreakers, and they quickly became despised by American labor. The company's most infamous strike-busting operation came in 1892, when 300 Pinkerton employees fought with workers at the Homestead, Pennsylvania, steel plant owned by Andrew Carnegie. When the two sides exchanged gunfire, nine strikers and seven Pinkerton agents were killed. By the time Allan Pinkerton died in 1884, his sons William and Robert Pinkerton were leading the company, which had about 2,000 full-time employees and several thousand “reservists.” (Adapted from http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/2813.html)

This archive contains many works by Allan Pinkerton himself, as well as archive files from the agency. These documents give a valuable insight into the working of America's most noted detective agency, and into Pinkerton's own views and approaches to various types of crimes, illustrating the role crime--and what crimes--were at the forefront of American concerns.
 

Pinkerton, Allan. General Principles of Pinkerton's National Police Agency. Geo. H. Fergus, Printer, 1867

Pinkerton, Allan. The Expressman and the Detective: by Allan Pinkerton. W. B. Keen, Cooke & Co., 1874

General Principles of Pinkerton's National Detective Agency. Jones Printing Company, 1878

Pinkerton, Allan. The Bankers, Their Vaults, and the Burglars: by Allan Pinkerton. Fergus Printing Company, 1873