When I started this blog (actually a book! See the chapters over on the right) four months ago, I had waited until I had scrounged up a little perspective on the photographs featured here. Some chance purchases evolved into an adventure, and I was sharing it play-by-play with my readers. I had no idea it was only just beginning. I thought I understood what was unfolding in front of me... if you read the entries below you will see that a zillion things were swimming in my head...
About the time that I was kicking back and getting mentally (and financially!) fatigued with this whole saga, hoping it was winding down... I turned another page into THE REAL STORY. A single tintype was SCREAMING, trying to tell me what it was all about... and I was dubious... but I am now convinced that this entire collection of extraordinary antique images was originally in the files of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. What I have here, now over a hundred tintypes, are the remnants of their HUGE, famous rogues gallery. And that explains why I had found so many images of Civil War spies early on ...
Perhaps the most famous of all Pinkerton detectives, Charlie Siringo was ready to leap out of the pile and ride right into my collection! Back in the day, the obsolete Pinkerton photo-files were occasionally cleared out to make room, and they disposed of many decades of images, unscrupulously collected in the worlds largest criminal file... No doubt somebody made a haul around a half-century ago, when such things were only dark curiosities... and acquired this huge image file, or at least part of it, and then they failed to provide an index to the present owner...
I had been pondering one tintype of a group of derby'd men- and thought one was very possibly a famous Pinkerton agent from Texas. I did not buy it, as I could not identify any of the others, and it would have been hard to authenticate... The Pinkertons were not that high-profile, in fact they forbade any literary profiteering by agents, (except by the owners) retired or otherwise, from writing their memoirs. Few photographs of their active agents were ever put into circulation, for obvious reasons. The tintype above of Charlie Siringo (known well only because he disregarded the Pinkerton's rule!) and his associates, was quite possibly the rarest of them all, but there was no way to compare it to try and validate it.
THEN, I encountered another intriguing tintype in this same collection, this time with Siringo and one of his bosses, probably Robert Pinkerton, and then another, and another... I have since acquired perhaps a dozen Pinkerton images, including one of Allan Pinkerton, William Pinkerton, James McParland, "the Great Detective," and Robert Linden.
Then came a shower of images of the true rogues, outlaws and gunslingers and a few more lawmen came marching by, and THIS was my favorite subject... and I just quit blogging for awhile and concentrated on the find of lifetime!
What I have acquired, among all the various suspicious and nefarious characters, is an astonishing collection, unpublished, never-before seen images of the men and some women who were the most wanted criminals in the world... and a few "lawmen" who may have worked on both sides of the law... Here are just a smattering of my purchases with comparisons offered of known likenesses of them. OMG!
Oliver Perry was a cunning and daring train robber... His mistake was committing his crimes in the east... so he never got much attention and died in prison...
This RARE antique image kept showing up in a collection where I had been purchasing tintypes... I wondered if they might be Pinkerton Detectives, as the elderly man in the middle on the front row looked hauntingly like an elderly Charlie Siringo, the famous "Cowboy Detective."
I have managed to identify, to my satisfaction, four of the six Pinkerton men in the photo.
Perhaps the most famous of all Pinkerton detectives, Charlie Siringo was ready to leap out of the pile and ride right into my collection! Back in the day, the obsolete Pinkerton photo-files were occasionally cleared out to make room, and they disposed of many decades of images, unscrupulously collected in the worlds largest criminal file... No doubt somebody made a haul around a half-century ago, when such things were only dark curiosities... and acquired this huge image file, or at least part of it, and then they failed to provide an index to the present owner...
I had been pondering one tintype of a group of derby'd men- and thought one was very possibly a famous Pinkerton agent from Texas. I did not buy it, as I could not identify any of the others, and it would have been hard to authenticate... The Pinkertons were not that high-profile, in fact they forbade any literary profiteering by agents, (except by the owners) retired or otherwise, from writing their memoirs. Few photographs of their active agents were ever put into circulation, for obvious reasons. The tintype above of Charlie Siringo (known well only because he disregarded the Pinkerton's rule!) and his associates, was quite possibly the rarest of them all, but there was no way to compare it to try and validate it.
James McParland, "the Great Detective" who exposed the "Mollie Maguires."
Three of my Pinkerton images...
Then came a shower of images of the true rogues, outlaws and gunslingers and a few more lawmen came marching by, and THIS was my favorite subject... and I just quit blogging for awhile and concentrated on the find of lifetime!
My image of "Black Bart" (on the left) is perhaps the only known image of him as a
mid-aged man when he committed his robberies. Before now we have only seen him after his prison term.
Nuff said... mine is the large sepia-toned one in the middle... incredible find.
Actually Henry Starr was far more successful than most other train robbers...
Before "Wild Bill" went Hollywood...
One of the very first Train robbers
VERY RARE! Bob Dalton's paramour and accomplice...
O. Henry- My favorite short story writer... started out as a convicted embezzler... Three images!
Just two of twenty Irishmen hung for a rash murders in the Pennsylvania coal region.
Once a lawyer, Jennings turned to a life of crime and after being paroled from prison by President Roosevelt, tried preaching and acting in western movies...
There are a bunch more...
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