This collection, numbering approximately 200 items, contains primary documents, correspondence, photographs, and news clippings concerning the career of Pryce Lewis, an employee of Pinkerton's Detective Agency during and after the Civil War. In addition, it contains publication and research materials written by Dr. Harriet Schoen about Pryce Lewis.
Old Capital Prison.
Collection Overview
Pryce Lewis was born in 1835 in Newton, Wales, where his father owned a woolen mill on the River Severn. He emigrated to the United States in 1856. During the Civil War, he was employed by Pinkerton's Detective Agency and worked as a Union spy in Richmond. Captured and sentenced to be hanged, he managed to escape death because of his British citizenship. After his release, he served as bailiff and special detective officer of Old Capitol and Carroll prisons until the end of the war.
In 1868, he married Maria Thwaites, and they had two children: Mary and Arthur. During this period of his life he was working in Chicago in a detective agency which he had founded with William H. Scott. Later, Lewis and Scott moved their operation to New York City, where they continued to operate until Scott's death. Lewis became embroiled in the A.T. Stewart case, working first for one side, then for the other because his first employer failed to pay him.
Lewis finally went to work for the Equitable Life Assurance Society. A few years later, a shake-up occurred in the business and he lost his job causing him to live a hand-to-mouth existence, supported largely by friends. He was not eligible for a pension because he had never become an American citizen. Efforts were made to get him a room at the Soldiers Home at Kearney, N.J., but there were difficulties with that because being a spy, he had not actually been a member of the armed forces. Finally, on December 6, 1911, Pryce Lewis committed suicide by jumping 365 feet from the top of the Pulitzer Building.