This is believed to be the only photograph of Kate Warne, America’s first female detective  (standing behind Allan Pinkerton.)  

"She was above the medium height, slender, graceful in her movements, and perfectly self-possessed in her manner. I invited her to take a seat, and then observed that her features, although not what would be called handsome, were of a decidedly intellectual cast. Her eyes were very attractive, being dark blue, and filled with fire. She had a broad, honest face, which would cause one in distress instinctively to select her as a confidante, in whom to confide in time of sorrow, or from whom to seek consolation. She seemed possessed of the masculine attributes of firmness and decision, but to have brought all her faculties under complete control."

Kate Warne soon proved herself to be indispensable. In 1858 the Pinkerton Agency was hired by Adams Express in Montgomery, Alabama, to capture a thief who had stolen $40,000 from a locked pouch somewhere between Montgomery and Augusta, Georgia. Warne contributed to the case by gaining the confidence of Mrs. Nathan Maroney, wife of the suspected thief and obtaining information from her. The thief was convicted and all but $400 of the stolen money was recovered. The story was published by Pinkerton as The Expressman and the Detective, the first of series of books based on Pinkerton’s cases.

Kate Warne’s most important case was “The Baltimore Plot” to assassinate President Lincoln. The Pinkertons had been hired by the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad, to investigate the possibility of sabotage by secessionist groups. Warne was one of five agents sent in February 1861 to Baltimore, a hotbed of secessionist activity. Posing as a wealthy southern belle, Kate Warne was able to infiltrate social gatherings. She acquired information confirming not only the secessionist’s plan to sabotage railroads but an imminent plot to assassinate the president in Baltimore.

President-elect Lincoln would be traveling from his home in Springfield, Illinois to Washington, D.C. for his inauguration. The trip involved changing trains in Baltimore, traveling about a mile by carriage between stations. This is when the assassins planned to strike. Dubious at first, the president was finally convinced by Pinkerton of the danger, but because of scheduled public ceremonies in Harrisburg and Philadelphia, he did not want to change his travel plans.

A new plan was put into place by the Pinkertons, including code names for the principals—Pinkerton was “Plums,” Lincoln was “Nuts,” Kate Warne used two aliases, Mrs. M. Barley (M.B.) and Mrs. Cherry. Warne made arrangements for the president, incognito, to take a different train from Philadelphia. President Lincoln disguised himself as an invalid, and Kate Warne posed as his sister. They had adjoining berths in the sleeping car out of Philadelphia. Warne remained awake and alert all night until the train reached Washington. Legend says that the Pinkertons’ motto “We Never Sleep,” was inspired by Kate Warne’s sleepless train ride.

Warne was an effective Union spy during the Civil War, and after the war continued as an active detective, as well as managing Pinkerton’s female detectives. Kate Warne and Allan Pinkerton would often pose as husband and wife during investigations, and it was rumored that they were also clandestine lovers. Kate Warne died suddenly of pneumonia in on January 28, 1868, with Pinkerton by her bedside. She was buried in Pinkerton’s family plot in Chicago’s Graceland Cemetery.

• American Civil War Espionage. Memphis: Books LLC, 2011.
• Mackay, James A.. Allan Pinkerton: the first private eye. New York: J. Wiley & Sons, 1997.
• Pinkerton, Allan. The expressman and the detectives. New York: G.W. Carleton, 1886.
• http://www.pimall.com/nais/pivintage/katewarne.html

A fresh young fellow went into a popular New Orleans, La., music hall the other evening as soon as he had taken his seat began to guy the performers. He became so offensive that finally one of the soubrettes got a whip and going down the aisle gave him a good lashing while the audience applauded.

National Police Gazette, March 4, 1899.

The way they do it on Rockaway sands—How beauty and skill conspire to make the rural heart and the rural pocket-book sicker and realize the old song, “Beware; Take care; She’s fooling thee!” [more]

A Lovely Law-Breaker.

A three-card monte man plied his illegitimate craft near the steamboat landing at Rockaway on Wednesday, attracting quite a crowd. From time to time he would cast a malevolent glance up the footway and make some remark about a swindling game up there. This attracted a Police Gazette reporter’s attention to another crowd gathered some hundred feet away, which upon close inspection proved to be collected about a woman who was carrying on a thimble-rig game after the most approved fashion. She was a woman of thirty, with a handsome face, but a hard mouth and keen, quick eyes; solitaires sparkled in her ears and on the fingers with which she deftly manipulated the tools of her trade flashed several valuable gems. Her attire was in the latest style and of costly material, and she wore it with the nonchalance of one accustomed to such sumptuary gorgeousness.

A couple of cappers, one an elegantly dressed young fellow, with a three-carat solitaire in his shirt front and its match on his left little finger, and the other an elderly individual in a black suit of a clerical cut, with white cravat and broad brimmed felt hat assisted her. Trade was dull, however, and in spite of the fascination of the rigger and the encouragement of her supporters, only one victim advance to the sacrifice of a $5 note. He went away after creating quite a disturbance, and the three tricksters after a brief colloquy departed toward the nearest hostelry with a negro boy carrying the stand on which the illusive balls had rolled about under the deceptive cups. An ancient personage who smelled too strongly of fish to be mistaken for anything but a native, observed to the reporter:

“It’s just too rich for anything. I was expecting a fight all along, for its bound to come.”

“That countryman did end up rather rough,” assented the reporter.

“Countryman be blowed.” Responded the native, “It’s the monte man down thar I’m talkin’ about. They’s been a row brewin atween them all summer and just wait if you want to see the hair fly.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why his and the woman’s, both. You see they used to be partners, accordin’ to the laws of the State of New York, but she got mashed on that young chap you seen with her. Her and the old man had no end of rows, and last month I seen him lay her out with an umbreler up in the saloon there. The she left him, and the next I knowed was working the thimble game. I guess she done it more to spite him than anything else. She gets as close to where he sets up as she can, and the sight off a woman dealing such a game, tracts the people from him right along. You’d just die laughing to see how mad he gets sometimes. He just rears around, and once he went for the young chap and gev him a turrible whaling. Never seen a man worse laid out, but lo and behold, he came out the next day, all tied up in rags, and they kep’ the game up as lively as ever. It’s as good as a circus and don’t cost noting either unless you’re sucker enough to bet your eyes against her fingers. In which case it’s your own fault and nobody else’s.”

Among the knowing ones at the beach the feud is spoken of with much humor. Rockaway enjoys this year the attention of quite a crop of these speculators on the capital of public credulity whose operations are not sanctioned by the law, and the actors in this little drama are well known to all of them. The fair professor of the thimble rig is said to be an ex-business woman of the class not acknowledged in polite society, who retired to private life some years ago to share her savings with a well-known small gambler upon whom she had chosen to lavish her favor. This gentleman, like all of his class, no sooner found himself prosperous than he proceeded to waste his property after the fashion known to him and this year found it necessary to resume trade or starve. His benefactress backed him in a monte game, with which he opened the season at Rockaway only to find himself supplanted there by a detested rival. The Gazette representative found him on Wednesday afternoon, recuperating for a renewal of his labors on roast clams and beer, and with him he entered into a conversation upon his grievance.

“He’s welcome to her,” he said in conclusion. “Lord knows he’s got all the bad temper and clear cussedness any man need to have for his own benefit. But what I despise is that I taught her the rig itself. I was the boss rigger in this country till I had these her fingers shot off out in Deadwood, and if it hadn’t been for me she wouldn’t know one ball from another. Never you do a good act to any body, especially a woman, young feller. Gemme another beer and a tooth pick.”

Reprinted from the National Police Gazette, October 15, 1881

Pittsburg, Pa., has a unique organization known as the Artificial Leg Baseball Club. [more]The club is composed entirely of members who wear artificial legs, and it has issued a challenged to play any one legged club in America for any amount of money. W. P. Chambers of No. 909 Penn Avenue, Pittsburg is the manager.

From The National Police Gazette, October 7, 1893

Reprinted from The Cincinnati Enquirer, February 9, 1896.

A few mornings since a terrible accident occurred; In the Long Island Brewery, on Powers, near Bergen street. by which Frank Gilram, an employee in the establishment, had his head blown to pieces by the explosion of a beer barrel. Gilram and Michael Quinn were engaged In cleaning barrels, which Is done by filling the vessel with hot water and slacked lime and then rolling it about in order to generate the gases. While they were thus engaged, a barrel which they were rolling exploded with a loud report and hurled the fragments in every direction. One of the pieces struck the head of Gilram, severing it from the body, and dashing it against the beams of the room so violently that it was crushed into a mass of blood, flesh and bone. Quinn was hurled to the distance of about twenty feet, where he laid in an insensible condition, but was not seriously injured. Gilram resided at No. 64 Union street, and leaves a wife and children.

Illustrated Police News, January 25, 1872.

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