“The Policy of Secrecy:” Parents, Administrators, and Spies Investigating Sexual Violence Before UWPD

There was snow on the ground when a Madison police officer and a Pinkerton agent arrived on campus in February 1911 to investigate the rape of a sorority house mother. Agents kept arriving over the coming months as more reports of sorority break-ins and sexual harassment of students rolled in. It was the dead of summer by the time the investigation wrapped up and the (at least) eight private detectives called in from The Pinkerton National Detective Agency and their rival, the William J. Burns International Detective Agency, returned to Chicago.