He saw the notice in the newspaper and did not hesitate.
She went to 80 Washington Street in Chicago, knocked on the door and introduced herself: she was a widow and she wanted to work as a detective.
Allan Pinkerton, founder of what would be one of the largest private agencies in the field in the United States, wrote about that 23-year-old girl who, in 1856, applied for a job so unexpected for her gender: “I observed that her features, although they were not what I would call beautiful, they were of a decidedly intellectual cast.
Her eyes were very attractive, dark blue and full of fire.
She had a broad, honest face, which might make someone in distress instinctively choose her as a confidant."
That's what Kate Warne believed.
When who would be her boss asked her what she thought she could do in that position,
She replied that because of her status as a woman, she could obtain secrets and information in places that male detectives would not have access to.
She was hired and more than fulfilled her mission.
She managed to get men to brag to her about her criminal exploits and the wives and girlfriends of the suspects, whom she befriended, to confide in her the secrets and adventures that her partners revealed to them between the sheets. .
Warne used to adopt false identities to do her work.
So efficient was it that Pinkerton created a Female Detective Bureau and put it in charge.
The peak of her career, and what made her go down in history, was the operation in which she managed to save the life of none other than Abraham Lincoln.
For that she became the sister of the then president-elect of the United States,
who traveled incognito on the train that took him from his native Illinois to Washington DC to take office.
Thus, the plot to assassinate him mounted in Baltimore, in the slave state of Maryland, one of the stops on the planned journey, was thwarted.
Before, disguised as Mrs.Cherry, Kate had found out the details of the murderous plan.
At age 35, pneumonia cut short her life, and her brilliant career.