March 11, 2022 – Theme Week Day 5

We’ve come to the end of our theme week on 5 Fearless Females. Our 5th and final fearless female is Kate Warne, the first female detective in the United States!
Not a lot is known about her early life, except that she was born in Chemung County and was a widow by the time she was 23. In 1856, she walked into the Pinkerton Detective Agency office in Chicago. She explained that she was answering an advertisement she had seen in a local newspaper. Pinkerton assumed she was looking for clerical work, but was surprised to learn that she was actually interested in becoming a detective. A female detective was unheard of at the time. But Kate made her case, arguing that a woman could be useful in befriending wives and girlfriends of suspected criminals to gain their confidence, and also noted how women have an eye for detail and are extremely observant. Her arguments swayed Pinkerton, and she was hired as the first female detective at his firm and the first in the U.S.
One of the first cases she was involved in was an embezzlement case in 1858. She was able to befriend the wife of the prime suspect, gaining valuable knowledge that helped lead to the husband’s conviction. By 1860, she was the head of Pinkerton’s new Female Detective Bureau.
Her biggest case was the so-called “Baltimore Plot”. In 1861, Pinkerton was hired to investigate secessionist activities and threats to the railroad in Maryland. During their investigation, however, they discovered something even more serious – evidence of a plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln on his way to Washington D.C. to take office. Assuming several aliases, Warne was able to infiltrate the group of secessionists, track suspicious movements, and collect many important details about the assassination plot, which she passed over to Pinkerton. When it came time, Lincoln was disguised as an invalid, with Warne posing as his sister and caregiver on an overnight train to D.C. They were able to travel through Baltimore undetected, evading the possible assassins.
During the Civil War, Warne continued her detective work with Pinkerton. Their detective skills were used for covert war intelligence gathering for the Union, because Warne could easily assimilate herself into Southern social gatherings to gain important information. She died in 1868 of pneumonia, at the age of 35, and was buried in the Pinkerton family plot in Chicago. Learn more here.