Yesterday's post was a brief story about a Pinkerton detective's involvement in the Haymarket affair. Today's is about how that story came together. Even though it was a short piece (310 words), I had to do about an hour's worth of research.
The idea for the story started while watching the Travel Channel's Mysteries at the Museum vignette on the Reno Gang. In it the Pinkertons set a trap for the gang during an attempted train robbery. This stoked my curiosity about the Pinkertons and their role in US history, so I started reading the above Wikipedia link.
When I reached a section mentioning their involvement in strike breaking efforts, that led me to think about the Haymarket massacre and its place in America's labor struggles. I didn't even know if the Pinkertons were linked to that particular incident, and was ready to switch venues if their link to the incident was too tenuous.
Technically, the Pinkertons aren't officially linked to the massacre, but some theories suppose they were embedded within the crowd to foment a riot and turn the public's opinion against the labor movement. Considering that I wanted to write a story about an infiltrator in the labor movement, this fit my use case well.
Luckily, many of the other details that helped me shade the story were available - weather, timing of the events, description of the bomb used, etc. I had to spend some time researching clothing and facial hair styles for men in 1886, but didn't have to dig too deep. Still, it was fun to attach the story to a historical event and pay attention to the fine points of the day in question rather than ignore them completely.
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