Baldwin–Felts Detective Agency

The Baldwin–Felts Detective Agency was a private detective agency in the United States.

The agency was founded in the early 1890s by William Gibbony Baldwin as the Baldwin Detective Agency.

Baldwin, the senior member of the firm, was a native of Tazewell County, Virginia. An avid reader of detective novels in his youth, Baldwin was a small storekeeper in his early days. He then studied dentistry, but left that profession in order to become a detective. He began his career in 1884 with the Eureka Detective Agency in Charleston, West Virginia. After founding the Baldwin Detective Agency, he then moved to Roanoke to oversee security operations in the Norfolk & Western Railroad’s coalfield district, later being appointed chief special agent (a position he held until his retirement in 1930).

Thomas Lafayette Felts was a native of Galax, Virginia who was educated as a lawyer, and a member of the Virginia bar association. In 1900, he joined the Baldwin Detective Agency as a partner who could provide legal advice to the firm. In 1910, the name of the agency was changed to the Baldwin–Felts Detective Agency, headquartered in Bluefield, West Virginia.

Originally, the company provided investigative services to railroads for train robberies and other crimes. Little is known about this chapter in the history of Baldwin–Felts, but it is known that the company provided security guards for the railway and mine payrolls, as well as to accompany coal trains into the coalfields. The company investigated train wrecks, robberies, and thefts. By the early 1900s the agency had also undertaken detective work for both federal and state government agencies.

The agency became known for crime-busting after it successfully tracked down members of the Allen family wanted in a shootout in 1912 at the Carroll County Courthouse in Hillsville, Virginia, that left the judge, the sheriff, the prosecutor, a juror, and a witness dead or dying. Though two of the Allens fled the state, the Baldwin–Felts detectives (led by Thomas Felts) managed to locate and arrest all of the fugitives within six months.

By 1913, railroad crimes and associated banditry had decreased, and Baldwin–Felts turned to other fields, in particular the provision of private security forces for mining companies. At the time, public law enforcement and the maintenance of order in labor-management disputes was often left to the company owners. Baldwin–Felts supplied guards and detectives that were used by the mining industry to suppress strikes, to collect intelligence on the movement of union operatives, to prevent labor organizers from entering company grounds, and even to evict workers in company-owned housing who had joined a union, gone on strike, or failed to pay rent. This work soon brought the agency into conflict with labor and labor unions. Baldwin–Felts is today best known for its violent confrontations with labor union members in such places as the Pocohantas Coal Field region of West Virginia and in Las Animas County in southern Colorado. Among union members, the agency was regarded as nothing more than union busters and hired thugs. A former Attorney General of West Virginia, Howard B. Lee, who knew both William Baldwin and Thomas Felts, recalled that the men were the "two most feared and hated men in the mountains."

Agents generally carried their own privately-purchased firearms. William Baldwin was reportedly an excellent marksman and normally used a S&W New Model No. 3 revolver in .38–44 caliber. He also had a Mauser 1878 revolver, possibly chambered in 10.6mm caliber, that he used in at least one gunfight.

Both Baldwin and Felts were also involved in banking, and William Baldwin later served as president and member of the board of directors of several banks. Felton was later elected to two terms as a state senator of Virginia.