Activists and Agents: Pinkerton, Bly, and Bismuth

With a high school graduate in the house, the topic of career choice has received a fair amount of attention in recent months. The picture books draw attention to three individuals with uncommon careers, at least for their time. Allan Pinkerton established the famed detective agency, which was at the height of its power from the 1870s to the 1890s. Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland numbered among the very few female journalists in the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries.

The Eye that Never Sleeps: How Detective Pinkerton Saved President Lincoln, by Marissa Moss, ill. Jeremy Holmes (Abrams, 2018, 48 pp., ages 6–12) The eye-catching illustrations and creative integration of text and image drew my attention to this book as much as its mention of the famed detective. I knew little of the Scotsman, but Moss reveals that his early pursuits were driven by a concern for justice. After attracting unwanted attention from authorities, Pinkerton discovered his eye for detail was well suited to catching criminals. Moss and Holmes’s title focuses on Pinkerton’s scheme for thwarting a plan by southern dissidents to assassinate Lincoln on his inaugural tour. Back matter details his abolitionist bent and his recruitment by Lincoln to operate the country’s first intelligence agency. Holmes’s note describes how the artist achieved his distinctive, period-appropriate  scratchboard-style effect.

Nellie vs. Elizabeth: Two Daredevil Journalists’ Breakneck Race around the World, by Kate Hannigan, ill. Rebecca Gibbon (Calkins Creek, 2022, 43 pp., ages 7–10) The fictional Phineas Fogg circled the world in eighty days in Jules Verne’s 1872 novel, but two real-world women beat his time in 1890. Bold New York World reporter Nellie Bly and the refined Cosmopolitan writer Elizabeth Bisland both set off on short notice on the same day, heading in opposite directions, and completed their circumnavigations in seventy-two and seventy-six days, respectively. Author-illustrator team Hannigan and Gibbon celebrate the two women’s feat, recounting stops along their route, seasick voyages, and unanticipated delays. Gibbon’s angular style conveys the energy and determination of the two very different women. Quotes from periodicals of the day add contemporary color and convey the interest the women’s undertaking commanded.

Incidentally, last week our family watched a stunning teen production of “Newsies.” The musical showcases an 1899 strike by newsboys carrying Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World and William Hearst’s New York Journal. By that time Bly had left the World and was running her husband’s steel barrel manufacturing business. Biographer Brooke Kroeger wrote: “She ran her company as a model of social welfare, replete with health benefits and recreational facilities.”

Sadly, Bly was not as adept with finances as with words; the company went bankrupt and Bly returned to reporting. She reported on the women’s suffrage movement and was a foreign correspondent in WWI. While covering Europe’s Eastern front she was once mistaken for a British spy and arrested.