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Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency.

[Cover title:] Confidential Property of Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency : 1. [Mug book featuring photographs of race touters, con men, thieves, etc.]

Primarily Boston, 1930s–1950s. Folio (17” x 6.125”), gilt-stamped faux brown leather over boards, unfolding into three columns of photos mounted in flip-up windows. 152 original photographs. CONDITION: Very good.

A volume of over 150 criminal portraits—with personal and arrest details—compiled by the detective agency that invented the mug shot and, with the help of the first female private eye, foiled the first assassination attempt against President Lincoln.

The photos in this volume document criminal activity in Boston—many subjects wear a “Boston Police” sign with a number and date around their necks—as well as New York City, New Jersey, Washington D.C., Pittsburgh, Louisville, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and elsewhere. The men—mostly white, but including a few African Americans—range in age from fresh-eyed (apparent) teens to bespectacled elderly men, and eye the camera with a variety of expressions, from smug, shrewd, and defiant to weary and defeated. On the versos of the photos are forms, either tipped on or printed in pink ink and filled out in type, indicating name, alias, birthplace, residence, occupation and “criminal occupation,” physical details, including “Peculiarities and Remarks” (e.g., Albert F. Mancino, alias Fred Ferano, is noted to have a “Scar on left cheek about 2 inches long”), and arrest details. Many of the arrests pertain to “touting” or “race touting,” reflecting the Pinkerton Agency’s focus, in the period represented here, on crime within the horse racing industry.

Among the group are a horse trainer (“ConMan–Tout” charged with being a “Vagabond”); a groom, a jockey, a dental technician, and a bartender (listed as “touts” or “race tout[s]” and charged as such); a salesman (“Bookmaker,” charged with “Larceny”; a clerk (“tout–Swindler,” arrested for “Forgerly GL”); a laborer and a Boston hotel manager (charged with “SP Larc[eny,” one “from person” and the other “by trick”), and more. “Broadway Mike” Amento, a New York City salesman, was charged with grand larceny; Nathan Apel, known as “Melvin Fields” and “N G Lewis,” was charged with “G[rand] T[heft] Bunco,” i.e., the dice game; Sidney “Sid” Beckerman, a salesman (i.e., “swindler”), committed “Forg.–Gr. Larc.”; and Roy “Hard Rock” Allen and Daniel Brice, alias “Philip Okin,” were both charged with “Race track payoff,” having evidently invented a fake race in Los Angeles and collected $1000. Two mugshots of Brice appear in the lot taken over a decade apart, the later one noting that he had been “Ejected” from several race tracks (Dade Park, Jamaica, Keeneland) in 1950, ’51, and ’52.

The Pinkerton National Detective Agency, founded in about 1850 by Scottish immigrant and abolitionist Allan Pinkerton (1819–1884), was America’s first private detective agency. Its motto, “We Never Sleep,” and its logo—an unblinking eye—gave rise to the term “private eye.” Pinkerton, who worked in as a barrel-maker in Chicago and who had come to prominence by accidentally exposing a gang of counterfeiters, built the agency into a force that protected President-elect Abraham Lincoln, provided intelligence to Union forces during the Civil War, and pioneered modern investigative practices such as criminal photography and undercover work. The firm hired Kate Warne, the first female detective in the US, in 1856, who went undercover during the Civil War, worked on numerous high-profile cases, and established a norm in the firm of hiring female detectives.

By the late 1800s, the agency’s role had expanded beyond detective work to strikebreaking, with Pinkerton agents often clashing violently with organized labor—and earning the firm more than two million dollars in 1938. They changed their tack, however, following the passage of the Wagner Act, which classified the investigation of labor activities as illegal interference with the right of workers to organize. The agency therefore turned its focus to the horse racing industry. By the 1960s, it had shifted its attention again, away from detective work and towards private security services, escorting the Mona Lisa herself across the Atlantic for her visit to New York in 1963.

A visually compelling collection of mug shots, compiled by a pioneering American detective agency.

Item #9303

Price: $2,500.00

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