Author: Pinkerton, Allan
Title: Thirty Years a Detective. A Thorough and Comprehensive Expose of Criminal Practices of All Grades and Classes. Containing Numerous Episodes of Personal Experience in the Detection of Criminals and Covering a Period of Thirty Years’ Active Detective Life
Description: New York, G.W. Carleton & Co. Publishers, 1884. Hardcover. First edition, sold only by subscription; 8 x 5 1/2; pp. 616; embossed pebbled brown cloth over boards; title and decorations in gilt and black; rubbed spots and fraying to tips of spine and corners; illustrated with 24 steel engraved plates, including frontis (plates numbered according to illustrations' index and corresponding facing page with plate 280 erroneously numbered 279) and vignettes at beginning of each chapter; hinges strong; signatures slightly shaken (still firmly attached); overall very good-. The wondrous story of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency and its founder Allan Pinkerton (1819 - 1884). Born in Scotland, he emigrated to the US in 1842 and by 1849 was appointed as the first detective of Chicago. In the early 1850s he established his detective agency with the trademark insignia of a wide open eye with the caption "We never sleep" (a gilded image of which illustrates the front board of the current book). He was credited with inventing several investigative techniques, still used today, including "shadowing" of suspects and undercover surveillance. He was also remembered for his involvement in the Abolitionist Movement with his house in Dundee, Illinois being a stop on the Underground Railroad. Ill.: 0. 2.

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