Charlie Siringo
| Charlie Siringo | |
|---|---|
Charlie Siringo, circa 1890
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| Born |
February 7, 1855 Matagorda County, Texas |
| Died | October 18, 1928 (aged 73) Altadena, California |
| Nationality | Irish, Italian-American |
| Known for | Lawman, Pinkerton detective |
Charles Angelo Siringo (February 7, 1855 – October 18, 1928), was an American lawman, detective and agent for the Pinkerton National Detective Agency during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Siringo was born in Matagorda County, Texas, to an Irish immigrant mother and an Italian immigrant father from Piedmont. He attended public school until he was 15, when he started working on local ranches as a cowboy.
In March, April and May 1877, Siringo was in Dodge City, Kansas, during an alleged confrontation between Clay Allison and Wyatt Earp, who was a deputy marshal at the time. Earp later claimed, after Allison's death in 1887, that he and Bat Masterson had forced Allison to back down from an impending confrontation. Siringo, however, later gave a written account of that incident which contradicted Earp's claim, stating that Earp never came into contact with Allison, and that two businessmen, cattleman Dick McNulty and the owner of the Long Branch Saloon, Chalkley Beeson, in Dodge City actually defused the situation.
After taking part in several cattle drives, Siringo stopped herding to settle down, got married in 1884 and opened a merchant business in Caldwell, Kansas. He began writing a book titled A Texas Cowboy; Or Fifteen Years on the Hurricane Deck of a Spanish Pony. A year later, it was published, to wide acclaim, and became one of the first true looks into life as a cowboy written by someone who had actually lived the life.
In 1886, bored with the mundane life of a merchant, Siringo moved to Chicago, where first-hand observation of the city’s labor conflict (which he attributed to foreign anarchism) moved him to join the Pinkerton Detective Agency, using gunman Pat Garrett's name as a reference to get the job, having met Garrett several years before. With 2,000 active agents and 30,000 reserves, the forces of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency were larger than the nation’s standing army in the late 19th century. The Pinkertons provided services for management in labor disputes, including armed guards and secret operatives like Charles A. Siringo.
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