![]() ![]() As such, he requested permission to continue the investigation, but to shift focus to an assassination plot he believed was being planned by Baltimore secessionists against president-elect Abraham Lincoln. But when Pinkerton himself went to Baltimore to investigate, he found that the danger was much bigger than either he or Felton had initially thought. ![]() In hopes of uncovering potential threats to his railroad, Felton brought in Pinkerton, the leading private detective agency at the time. Felton, the president of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad, heard rumors of secessionist activity in Maryland. It was in this role that Warne would get the case that would come to define her personal career, and forever change the way female detectives were regarded in the U.S. Having proved the value that a female perspective can offer to an investigation, Pinkerton set up a new Female Detective Bureau-and put Warne in charge-in 1860. Through her friendship with his wife, Warne was able to get the evidence needed not only to convict the expressman, but to secure the return of the remaining $39,000. Warne was sent in undercover, and became close friends with the wife of the lead suspect, an expressman from Montgomery, Alabama who they believed had stolen more than $50,000 from the company. Warne was eager to prove herself as a detective, and got her chance in 1858 when the Pinkerton Detective Agency was tapped by the Adams Express Company to investigate embezzlements. In fact, working her way into places she wasn’t supposed to be ended up being one of Warne’s greatest strengths. Warne had no interest in what was customary. Pinkerton, who later described her as “a commanding person” whose intellectual and honest features made her seem like a good confidante, hired Warne, making her the first female detective in the U.S. In fact, working her way into places she wasn’t supposed to be ended up being one of Warne’s greatest strengths.Īccording to Pinkerton’s later accounts, Warne made a convincing argument she spoke “eloquently,” and noted that women could be “most useful in worming out secrets in many places which would be impossible for a male detective.” Warne pointed out that a woman would be able to befriend the wives and girlfriends of suspected criminals and gain their confidence, adding that men often brag around women and that women have a better eye for detail and observation. According to Pinkerton in his book The Spy of the Rebellion(1883), his response was that employing women in this type of role was not “customary”-but what he would come to realize, is that Warne had no interest in what was customary. Though boss Allan Pinkerton assumed she was there for clerical work, Warne quickly explained that she was, to his surprise, responding to a newspaper advertisement for detectives. It all started when Warne, a young widow, walked into the Pinkerton Detective Agency’s Chicago office seeking a job. Yet women may have never been welcomed into law enforcement if it were not for Warne herself, who at just 23 years old became the country’s first female detective and spy-and a feminist icon who opened up an entire field to women like herself. Today, they represent more than a tenth of all United States law enforcement-still a small percentage, but representation in a field where it was once unheard of. By 1987, women would account for more than 7% of the force. ![]()
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