The
Molly Maguires was a 19th-century
secret society of mainly
Irish and
Irish-American coal miners. Many historians believe the "Mollies" were present in the
anthracite coal fields of
Pennsylvania in the United States from the time of the
American Civil War
until a series of sensational arrests and trials from 1876−78. Members
of the "Mollies" were accused of murder, arson, kidnapping and other
crimes, in part based on allegations by
Franklin B. Gowen and the testimony of a
Pinkerton detective,
James McParland (also known as
James McParlan), a native of
County Armagh, Ireland.
Fellow prisoners testified against the defendants, who were arrested by
the Coal and Iron Police, who served Gowen, who acted as a prosecutor
in some of the trials.
[1]
The
trusts
seem to have focused almost exclusively upon the Molly Maguires for
criminal prosecution. Information passed from the Pinkerton detective,
intended only for the detective agency and their client — the most
powerful industrialist of the region — was apparently
[vague] also provided to
vigilantes who ambushed and murdered miners suspected of being Molly Maguires, as well as their families.
[2]
Molly Maguire history is sometimes presented as the prosecution of an
underground movement that was motivated by personal vendettas, and
sometimes as a struggle between organized labor and powerful industrial
forces. Whether membership in the Mollies' society overlapped union
membership to any appreciable extent remains open to conjecture.
[3]
The Molly Maguires originated in Ireland, where secret societies with names such as
Whiteboys and
Peep o'Day Boys were common beginning in the 18th century and through most of the 19th century. In
Making Sense of the Molly Maguires, historian Kevin Kenny traces "some institutional continuity" from the Molly Maguires, back to the
Ribbonmen, and previously, to the
Defenders. Another organization — the
Ancient Order of Hibernians
(AOH), with which the Molly Maguires have been associated — was founded
in the United States, and is properly described as a fraternal
organization. Although some believe that the
Molly Maguires,
Ribbonmen, and
Ancient Order of Hibernians
are different names for the same organization, Kenny has cast some
doubt on such linkages, describing the practice of conflating these
names as a
strategy which "provided an important rationale for
[the Molly Maguires'] eventual destruction". Kenny observes that most of
the Ireland-based equivalents of the AOH were secret societies, some of
which were violent. Kenny describes a process of leaders from
north-central and northwestern Ireland "[adapting] their AOH lodges to
classic '
Ribbonite' purposes".
[4]
Although there was a specific organization called the Society of Ribbonmen, the term
Ribbonism became a catchall expression for rural violence in Ireland. The
Ancient Order of Hibernians
was extended to Ireland by the Ribbonmen, according to the official
history of the AOH. Kenny believes, "If the AOH was a transatlantic
outgrowth of Ribbonism, it was clearly a peaceful fraternal society
rather than a violent conspiratorial one". In some areas the terms
Ribbonmen and
Molly Maguires
were used interchangeably, i.e. conflated. The main distinction between
the two appears to be that the Ribbonmen were regarded as "secular,
cosmopolitan, and protonationalist", with the Molly Maguires considered
"rural, local, and
Gaelic".
[5]
Agrarian rebellion in Ireland can be traced to local concerns and
grievances relating to land usage, particularly as traditional
socioeconomic practices such as small-scale potato cultivation were
supplanted by the fencing and pasturing of land. Agrarian resistance
often took the form of fence destruction, night-time plowing of
croplands that had been converted to pasture, and killing, mutilating,
or driving off livestock. In areas where the land had long been
dedicated to small-scale, growing-season leases of farmland, called
conacre,
opposition was conceived as "retributive justice" that was intended "to
correct transgressions against traditional moral and social codes". The
Mollies claimed to be carrying out "a just law of their own in
opposition to the inequities of landlord law, the police and court
system, and the transgressions of land-grabbers." The Mollies' reaction
to "land-grabbers" of the 1840s — surreptitiously digging up the land to
render it useful only for conacre — followed similar practices by
Whiteboys in the 1760s, and by another group called the
Terry Alts in the 1820s and early 1830s.
[6]
One area of Molly Maguire activity was
County Donegal where they practiced
rundale,
in which land was divided for tenant usage by the tenants themselves,
rather than according to the landowner's dictates. For example, the
concept of "a cow's grass" acted as a measure of the land which was
necessary to sustain one cow through summer grazing and winter fodder.
The subdivision of land took into account the quality of grazing, and
while some lots of land were frequently subdivided generationally among
family members, other land was
held in common.
Although such practices had existed from "time immemorial", there were
no written leases to protect the tenants. As landlords implemented new
ways of using the land, such as "highly disruptive" experiments with
intensive sheep farming, some tenants in Donegal and elsewhere were
moved to resistance.
[7]
Most landlords and their agents were
Protestant, while the Mollies were
Roman Catholic
— an exacerbating factor that complicated relations. The victims of
agrarian violence were frequently Irish land agents, middlemen, and
tenants. Merchants and millers were often threatened or attacked if
their prices were high. Landlords' agents were threatened, beaten, and
assassinated. New tenants on lands secured by evictions also became
targets.
[6]
Local Molly Maguires leaders were reported to have sometimes dressed as
women, i.e., as mothers begging for food for their children. The leader
might approach a storekeeper and demand a donation of flour or
groceries. If the storekeeper failed to provide, the Mollies would enter
the store and take what they wanted, warning the owner of dire
consequences if the incident was reported.
[8]
Kevin Kenny,
an author who has written extensively on the Molly Maguires, believes
the most likely explanation is simply the practice of men dressing up
like women and taking a female name both as a disguise and simple form
of social transgression. While the Whiteboys were known to wear white
linen frocks over their clothing, the Mollies blackened their faces with
burnt cork. Kenny noted similarities — particularly in face-blackening
and in the donning of women's garments — with the practice of
mummery,
in which festive days were celebrated by mummers who traveled from door
to door demanding food, money, or drink as payment for performing. The
Threshers, the
Peep o'Day Boys, the
Lady Rocks, and the
Lady Clares also sometimes disguised themselves as women.
[9]
Mollies in the United States
Some historians (such as Philip Rosen, former curator of the Holocaust Awareness Museum of the Delaware Valley
[10]) believe that Irish immigrants brought a form of the Molly Maguires organization into
America in the 19th century, and continued its activities as a clandestine society. They were located in a section of the anthracite
coal fields dubbed the Coal Region, which included the Pennsylvania counties of
Lackawanna,
Luzerne,
Columbia,
Schuylkill,
Carbon, and
Northumberland.
Irish miners in this organization employed the tactics of intimidation and violence used against Irish landlords during the "
Land Wars" yet again in violent confrontations against the
anthracite, or
hard coal mining companies in the 19th century.
[citation needed]
Historians disagree about the Molly Maguires
A legitimate self-help organization for Irish immigrants existed in the form of the
Ancient Order of Hibernians
(AOH), but it is generally accepted that the Mollies existed as a
secret organization in Pennsylvania, and used the AOH as a "front".
However,
Joseph Rayback's 1966 volume,
A History of American Labor, claims the "identity of the Molly Maguires has never been proved".
[11]
Authors who accept the existence of the Mollies as a violent and
destructive group acknowledge a significant scholarship that questions
the entire history. In
The Pinkerton Story, authors James D.
Horan and Howard Swiggett write sympathetically about the detective
agency and its mission to bring the Mollies to justice. Yet they
observe:
"The difficulty of achieving strict and fair accuracy in relation
to the Mollie Maguires is very great. Sensible men have held there never
even was such an organization... We do believe, however, that members
of a secret organization, bound to each other by oath, used the
facilities and personnel of the organization to carry out personal
vendettas..."[12]
Such disagreements during a period when "labor was at war with
capital, Democrat with Republican, Protestant with Catholic, and
immigrant with native"
[13] notwithstanding, the prevailing view is that the Maguires did exist and were affiliated with the AOH.
[citation needed]
History
During the mid 19th century, "hard coal" mining came to dominate northeastern Pennsylvania,
[14]
a region already afforested twice over to feed America's insatiable
appetite for energy. By the 1870s, powerful financial syndicates
controlled the railroads and the coalfields. Coal companies had begun to
recruit immigrants from overseas willing to work for less than the
prevailing local wages paid to American-born employees, luring them with
"promises of fortune-making". Herded into freight trains by the
hundreds, these workers often replaced English-speaking miners who,
according to George Korson
[who?]:
"...were compelled to give way in one coal field after another,
either abandoning the industry altogether for other occupations or else
retreating, like the vanishing American Indian, westward..."[15]
Frequently unable to read safety instructions, the immigrant workers: "
...faced
constant hazards from violation of safety precautions, such as they
were. Injuries and deaths in mine disasters, frequently reported in the
newspapers, shocked the nation."
[15]
22,000 coal miners worked in
Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania. 5,500 of these were children between the ages of seven and sixteen years,
[16]
who earned between one and three dollars a week separating slate from
the coal. Injured miners, or those too old to work at the face, were
assigned to picking slate at the "breakers" where the coal was crushed
into a manageable size. Thus, many of the elderly miners finished their
mining days as they had begun in their youth.
[17] The miners lived a life of "
bitter, terrible struggle".
[18]
Disaster strikes
Wages were low, working conditions were atrocious, and deaths and
serious injuries numbered in the hundreds each year. On September 6,
1869, a
fire at the Avondale Mine in
Luzerne County, took the lives of 110 coal miners. The families blamed the coal company for failing to finance a secondary exit for the mine.
[19]
...the mine owners without one single exception had refused over
the years to install emergency exits, ventilating and pumping systems,
or to make provision for sound scaffolding. In Schuylkill County alone
566 miners had been killed and 1,655 had been seriously injured over a
seven year period...[20]
The miners faced a speedup system that was exhausting. In its November 1877 issue,
Harper's New Monthly Magazine published an interviewer's comments:
"A
miner tells me that he often brought his food uneaten out of the mine
from want of time; for he must have his car loaded when the driver comes
for it, or lose one of the seven car-loads which form his daily work." [21]
As the bodies of the miners were brought up from the Avondale Mine disaster, John Siney, head of the
Workingmen's Benevolent Association (WBA), climbed onto a wagon to speak to the thousands of miners who had arrived from surrounding communities:
[22]
Men, if you must die with your boots on, die for your families,
your homes, your country, but do not longer consent to die, like rats in
a trap, for those who have no more interest in you than in the pick you
dig with.[22]
He asked the miners to join the union, and thousands of them did so that day.
[22] Some miners faced additional burdens of prejudice and persecution. In the 1840s, 1850s, and 1860s, some 20,000
Irish workers had arrived in Schuylkill County.
[22] It was a time of rampant beatings and murders in the mining district.
[23]
Panic of 1873
The period from 1873-79 (see
Panic of 1873)
was marked by one of the worst depressions in the nation's history,
caused by economic overexpansion, a stock crash, and a decrease in the
money supply. By 1877 an estimated one-fifth of the nation's workingmen
were completely unemployed, two-fifths worked no more than six or seven
months a year, and only one-fifth had full-time jobs.
[24]
Labor angrily watched "railway directors (riding) about the
country in luxurious private cars proclaiming their inability to pay
living wages to hungry working men."[16]
Mine owners move against the union
Franklin B. Gowen, the President of the
Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, and of the
Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company and "the wealthiest anthracite coal mine owner in the world", hired
Allan Pinkerton's services to deal with the Mollies. Pinkerton selected
James McParland (sometimes called McParlan), a native of
County Armagh, to go undercover against the Mollies. Using the alias "James McKenna", he made
Shenandoah
his headquarters and claimed to have became a trusted member of the
organization. McParland's assignment was to collect evidence of murder
plots and intrigue, passing this information along to his Pinkerton
manager. He also began working secretly with a Pinkerton agent assigned
to the
Coal and Iron Police for the purpose of coordinating the eventual arrest and prosecution of members of the Molly Maguires.
[25] Although there had been fifty "inexplicable murders" between 1863 and 1867 in Schuylkill County,
[26] progress in the investigations was slow.
[27]
There was "a lull in the entire area, broken only by minor shootings".
McParland wrote: I am sick and tired of this thing. I seem to make no
progress.
[28]
The union had grown powerful; thirty thousand members — eighty-five
percent of Pennsylvania's anthracite miners — had joined. But Gowen had
built a combination of his own, bringing all of the mine operators into
an employers' association known as the Anthracite Board of Trade. In
addition to the railroad, Gowen owned two-thirds of the coal mines in
southeastern Pennsylvania. He was a risk-taker and an ambitious man.
[29] Gowen decided to force a strike and showdown.
[27]
Union, Mollies, and Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH)
One of the burning questions for modern scholars is the relationship
between the Workingmen's Benevolent Association, the Mollies, and their
alleged cover organization, the
Ancient Order of Hibernians.
Historian Kevin Kenny notes that the convicted men were all members of
the AOH. But "the Molly Maguires themselves left virtually no evidence
of their existence, let alone their aims and motivation."
[30]
Relying upon his personal knowledge before commencing an investigation,
McParland believed that the Molly Maguires, under pressure for their
activities, had taken the new name, "The Ancient Order of Hibernians"
(AOH). After beginning his investigation, he estimated that there were
about 450 members of the AOH in Schuylkill County.
[31]
While Kenny observes that the AOH was "a peaceful fraternal society",
he does note that in the 1870s the Pinkerton Agency identified a
correlation between the areas of AOH membership in Pennsylvania, and the
corresponding areas in Ireland from which those particular Irish
immigrants emigrated. The violence-prone areas of Ireland corresponded
to areas of violence in the Pennsylvania coalfields.
[32] In his book
Big Trouble, which traces McParland's history, writer Anthony Lukas has written: The WBA was run by
Lancashire
men adamantly opposed to violence. But [Gowen] saw an opportunity to
paint the union with the Molly brush, which he did in testimony before a
state investigating committee ... "I do not charge this Workingmen's
Benevolent Association with it, but I say there is an association which
votes in secret, at night, that men's lives shall be taken... I do not
blame this association, but I blame another association for doing it;
and it happens that the only men who are shot are the men who dare
disobey the mandates of the Workingmen's Benevolent Association."
[33]
Of the 450 AOH members that Pinkerton Agent McParland estimated were in Schuylkill County, about 400 belonged to the union.
[31] Molly Maguireism and full-fledged trade unionism represented fundamentally different modes of organization and protest.
[34]
Kenny noted that one contemporary organization, the Pennsylvania Bureau
of Industrial Statistics, clearly distinguished between the union and
the violence attributed to the Molly Maguires. Their reports indicate
that violence could be traced to the time of the Civil War, but that in
the five-year existence of the WBA, "the relations existing between
employers and employees" had greatly improved. The Bureau concluded that
the union had brought an end to the "carnival of crime". Kenny notes
the leaders of the WBA were "always unequivocally opposed" to the Molly
Maguires.
[35]
Most Irish mine workers belonged to the WBA and roughly half the
officers of its executive board in 1872 bore Irish names. But, in
addition to the WBA, there existed a loosely organized body of men
called the Molly Maguires, whose membership appears to have been
exclusively Irish ... Both modes of organization... tried to improve
conditions of life and labor in the anthracite region. But the strategy
of the trade union was indirect, gradual, peaceful, and systematically
organized across the anthracite region, while that of the Molly Maguires
was direct, violent, sporadic, and confined to a specific locality.[36]
Kenny notes there were frequent tensions between miners of English
and Welsh descent, who held the majority of skilled positions, and the
mass of unskilled Irish laborers. However, in spite of such differences,
the WBA offered a solution, and for the most part "did a remarkable
job" in overcoming such differences.
[37]
All mine workers, regardless of craft status, national origin, and
religious background, were eligible to join the WBA. As a result, many
of its rank and file were members of the AOH, and there is evidence that
some disgruntled trade union members favored violence against the
wishes of their leaders, especially in the climactic year of 1875. But
there were no Mollys among the leaders of the WBA, who took every
opportunity they could to condemn the Molly Maguires and the use of
violence as a strategy in the labor struggle. While the membership of
the trade union and the secret society undoubtedly overlapped to some
extent, they must be seen as ideologically and institutionally distinct.[38]
Vigilante justice
F.P. Dewees, a contemporary and a confidant of Gowen, wrote that by
1873 "Mr. Gowen was fully impressed with the necessity of lessening the
overgrown power of the 'Labor Union' and exterminating if possible the
Molly Maguires." In December, 1874, Gowen led the other coal operators
to announce a twenty percent pay cut. The miners decided to strike on
January 1, 1875.
[27]
Edward Coyle, a leader of the union, and of the Ancient Order of
Hibernians, was murdered in March. Another member of the AOH was shot
and killed by the Modocs (a rival Welsh gang operating in the anthracite
coalfields) led by one Bradley, a mine superintendent. Patrick Vary, a
mine boss, fired into a group of miners and, according to the later
boast by Gowen, as the miners "fled they left a long trail of blood
behind them". At Tuscarora, a meeting of miners was attacked; one miner was killed and several others wounded.[17]
A Pinkerton agent, Robert J. Linden, was brought in to support McParlan while serving with the
Coal and Iron Police.
[39]
On August 29, 1875, Allan Pinkerton wrote a letter to George Bangs,
Pinkerton's general superintendent, recommending vigilante actions
against the Molly Maguires: "The M.M.'s are a species of Thugs... Let
Linden get up a vigilance committee. It will not do to get many men, but
let him get those who are prepared to take fearful revenge on the
M.M.'s. I think it would open the eyes of all the people and then the
M.M.'s would meet with their just deserts." On December 10, 1875, three
men and two women were attacked in their home by masked men. Author
Anthony Lukas wrote that the attack seemed "to reflect the strategy
outlined in Pinkerton's memo".
[40]
The victims had been secretly identified by McParlan as Mollies. One
of the men was killed in the house, and the other two supposed Mollies
were wounded but able to escape. A woman, the wife of one of the reputed
Mollies, was shot dead.
[28]
McParlan was outraged that the information he had been providing had
found its way into the hands of indiscriminate killers. When McParlan
heard details of the attack at the house, he protested in a letter to
his Pinkerton supervisor. He did not object that Mollies might be
assassinated as a result of his
labor spying
— they "got their just deserving". McParlan resigned when it became
apparent the vigilantes were willing to commit the "murder of women and
children", whom he deemed innocent victims.
[2] His letter stated:
Friday: This morning at 8 A.M. I heard that a crowd of masked men had
entered Mrs. O'Donnell's house ... and had killed James O'Donnell alias
Friday, Charles O'Donnell and James McAllister, also Mrs. McAllister
whom they took out of the house and shot ... Now as for the O'Donnells I
am satisfied they got their just deserving. I reported what those men
were. I give all information about them so clear that the courts could
have taken hold of their case at any time but the witnesses were too
cowardly to do it. I have also in the interests of God and humanity
notified you months before some of those outrages were committed still
the authorities took no hold of the matter. Now I wake up this morning
to find that I am the murderer of Mrs. McAllister. What had a woman to
do with the case—did the [Molly Maguires] in their worst time shoot down
women. If I was not here the Vigilante Committee would not know who was
guilty and when I find them shooting women in their thirst for blood I
hereby tender my resignation to take effect as soon as this message is
received. It is not cowardice that makes me resign but just let them
have it now I will no longer interfere as I see that one is the same as
the other and I am not going to be an accessory to the murder of women
and children. I am sure the [Molly Maguires] will not spare the women so
long as the Vigilante has shown an example.[41]
There appears to be an error in the detective's report (which also
constituted his resignation letter) of the vigilante incident: he failed
to convey the correct number of deaths. Two of the three men "were
wounded but able to escape".
[2]
In the note, McParlan reported that these two had been killed by
vigilantes. Such notes, possibly containing erroneous or
as-yet-unverified information, were forwarded daily by Pinkerton
operatives. The content was routinely made available to Pinkerton
clients in typed reports. Pinkertons reportedly had been spying on
miners in Scranton on behalf of the mine owners after two WBA miners
were allegedkly killed by W.W. Scranton's men in the Strike of 1871.
[42][43]
McParlan believed his daily reports had been made available to the
anti-Molly vigilantes. Benjamin Franklin, McParlan's Pinkerton
supervisor, declared himself "anxious to satisfy [McParlan] that [the
Pinkerton Agency has] nothing to do with [the vigilante murders.]"
McParlan was prevailed upon not to resign.
[44] [45]Frank Wenrich, a first lieutenant with the
Pennsylvania National Guard,
was arrested as the leader of the vigilante attackers, but released on
bail. Another miner, Hugh McGeehan, a 21-year-old who had been secretly
identified as a killer by McParlan, was fired upon and wounded by
unknown assailants. Later, the McGeehan family's house was attacked by
gunfire.
[46]
Union leadership imprisoned
The state militia and the
Coal and Iron Police
patrolled the district. Union leaders were "excoriated by the press",
and were "denounced from altar and pulpit". On May 12, John Siney, the
union leader who had addressed miners at the Avondale disaster, and who
favored arbitration and had opposed the strike, was arrested at a mass
meeting called to protest the importation of strike breakers. An
organizer for the miners' national association by the name of "Xingo
Parkes" was also arrested, along with twenty-six other union officials,
all on conspiracy charges. Judge John H. Owes instructed the jury:
"...any
agreement, combination or confederation to increase or depress the
price of any vendible commodity, whether labor, merchandise, or anything
else, is indictable as a conspiracy under the laws of Pennsylvania."[47]
When he sentenced two of the union officials, Judge Owes addressed
them: I find you, Joyce, to be president of the Union, and you, Maloney,
to be secretary, and therefore I sentence you to one year's
imprisonment.
[47]
The strike fails
The union was nearly broken by the imprisonment of its leadership and
by attacks conducted by vigilantes against the strikers. Gowen "deluged
the newspapers with stories of murder and arson" committed by the Molly
Maguires. The press produced stories of strikes in Illinois, in Jersey
City, and in the Ohio mine fields, all inspired by the Mollies. The
stories were widely believed.
[47]
In Schuylkill County the striking miners and their families were
starving to death. A striker wrote to a friend: Since I last saw you, I
have buried my youngest child, and on the day before its death there was
not one bit of victuals in the house with six children.
[47] In his history of the American coal miner, Andrew Roy
[who?]
recorded: Hundreds of families rose in the morning to breakfast on a
crust of bread and a glass of water, who did not know where a bite of
dinner was to come from. Day after day, men, women, and children went to
the adjoining woods to dig roots and pick up herbs to keep body and
soul together...
[47]
After six months the strike was defeated and the miners returned to
work, accepting the twenty percent cut in pay. But miners belonging to
the Ancient Order of Hibernians continued the fight.
[48]
McParlan acknowledged increasing support for the Mollies in his
reports: Men, who last winter would not notice a Molly Maguire, are now
glad to take them by the hand and make much of them. If the bosses
exercise tyranny over the men they appear to look to the association for
help.
[49]
Lukas observes that the defeat was humiliating, and traces the roots of
violence by the Mollies in the aftermath of the failed strike: Judges,
lawyers, and policemen were overwhelmingly Welsh, German, or English ...
When the coalfield Irish sought to remedy their grievances through the
courts, they often met delays, obfuscation, or doors slammed in their
faces. No longer looking to these institutions for justice, they turned
instead to the Mollies ... Before the summer was over, six men—all Welsh
or German—paid with their lives.
[50]
Authors Richard O. Boyer and Herbert M. Morais argue that the killings weren't one-sided:
Militant miners often disappeared, their bodies sometimes being found later in deserted mine shafts.[48]
McParlan penetrates the "inner circle"
After months of little progress, McParlan reported some plans by the
"inner circle". Gomer James, a Welshman, had shot and wounded one of the
Mollies, and plans were formulated for a revenge killing. But the
wheels of revenge were grinding slowly. And there was other violence:
November was a bloody month what with the miners on strike ... In the
three days around November 18, a Mollie was found dead in the streets
of Carbondale, north of Scranton, a man had his throat cut, an
unidentified man was crucified in the woods, a mining boss mauled, a man
murdered in Scranton, and three men of [another Molly Maguires group]
were guilty of a horror against an old woman, and an attempt to
assassinate a Mollie by the name of Dougherty, followed and [Dougherty]
at once demanded the murder of W.M. Thomas, whom he blamed for the
attempt.[51]
On the last day of the month, with Gowen's strikebreakers pouring in,
the Summit telegraph office was burned, a train derailed, and McParlan
advised [his Pinkerton supervisor] to send in uniformed police to
preserve order.[51]
A plan to destroy a railroad bridge was abandoned due to the presence
of outsiders. The Irish miners had been forbidden to set foot in the
public square in
Mahanoy City,
and a plan to occupy it by force of arms was considered then abandoned.
In the meantime a messenger reported that [W.M.] Thomas, the would-be
killer of one of the Mollies, had been killed in the stable where he
worked. McParlan himself had been asked to supply the hidden killers
with food and whiskey, according to the detective. According to Horan
and Swiggett:
The probability is that as a man, "Bully Bill Thomas", a Welshman,
was no better than his enemies, but he was remarkable in other ways. His
killers, leaving him for dead in the stable door, were not aware until
two days later that he had survived.[52]
Another plan was in the works, this one against two night watchmen, Pat McCarron and
Yost, a Tamaqua Borough Patrolman.
Jimmy Kerrigan and Thomas Duffy were said to despise Yost, who had
arrested them on numerous occasions. Yost was shot as he put out a
street light, which at that time necessitated climbing the lamp pole.
Before he died, he reported that his killers were Irish, but were not
Kerrigan or Duffy. McParlan recorded that a Mollie named William Love
had killed a Justice of the Peace, surnamed Gwyther, in
Girardville. Unknown Mollies were accused of wounding a man outside his saloon in
Shenandoah.
Gomer James was killed while tending bar. Then, McParlan recorded, a
group of Mollies reported to him that they had killed a mine boss named
Sanger, and another man who was with him. Forewarned of the attempt,
McParlan had sought to arrange protection for the mine boss, but was
unsuccessful.
[53]
While there was concern whether enough evidence was collected on
reprisal killings and assassinations that sufficient arrests of the
Mollies could be made, McParlan's true identity had been uncovered.
[how?][54]
The trials
When Gowen first hired the Pinkerton agency, he had claimed the Molly
Maguires were so powerful they had made capital and labor "their
puppets".
[55] When the trials of the alleged puppet-masters opened, Gowen had himself appointed as special prosecutor.
[56]
The first trials were for the killing of John P. Jones. The three
defendants, Michael J. Doyle, Jimmy Kerrigan and Edward Kelly, had
elected to receive separate trials. Doyle went first, with his trial
beginning January 18, 1876, and a conviction for first-degree murder
being returned on February 1. Before the trial completed, Kerrigan had
decided to become a state's witness and gave details about the murders
of Jones and Yost. Kelly's trial began on March 27 and ended in
conviction on April 6, 1876.
[57]
The first trial of defendants McGeehan, Carroll, Duffy, James Boyle,
and James Roarity for the killing of Yost commenced in May 1876. Yost
had not recognized the men who attacked him. Although Kerrigan has since
been described, along with Duffy, as hating the night watchman enough
to plot his murder,
[58]
Kerrigan became a state's witness and testified against the union
leaders and other miners. However, Kerrigan's wife testified in the
courtroom that her husband had committed the murder. She testified that
she refused to provide her husband with clothing while he was in prison,
because he had "picked innocent men to suffer for his crime". She
stated that her speaking out was voluntary, and she was only interested
in telling the truth about the murder. Gowen cross-examined her, but
could not shake her testimony. Others supported her testimony amid
speculation that Kerrigan was receiving special treatment due to the
fact that McParlan was engaged to his sister-in-law, Mary Ann Higgins.
[59]
This trial was declared a mistrial due to the death of one of the
jurors. A new trial was granted two months later. During that trial
Fanny Kerrigan did not testify. The five defendants were sentenced to
death. Kerrigan was allowed to go free.
[citation needed]
The trial of Tom Munley for the murders of Thomas Sanger, a mine
foreman, and William Uren, relied entirely on the testimony of McParlan,
and the eyewitness account of a witness. The witness stated under oath
that he had seen the murderer clearly, and that Munley was not the
murderer. Yet the jury accepted McParlan's testimony that Munley had
privately confessed to the murder. Munley was sentenced to death.
[60]
Another four miners were put on trial and were found guilty on a charge
of murder. McParlan had no direct evidence, but had recorded that the
four admitted their guilt to him. Kelly was being held in a cell for
murder, and he was reputedly quoted as saying: "I would squeal on Jesus
Christ to get out of here." In return for his testimony, the murder
charge against him was dismissed.
[61]
In November, McAllister was convicted. McParlan's testimony in the
Molly Maguires trials helped to send ten men to the gallows. The defense
attorneys repeatedly sought to portray McParlan as an agent-provocateur
who was responsible for not warning people of their imminent deaths.
(Kenny, pp. 232–33) For his part, McParlan testified that the AOH and
the Mollies were one and the same, and the defendants guilty of the
murders.
[62] Many years later in preparation for a different trial, McParlan told another witness, a
confessed mass murderer named
Harry Orchard,
that "Kelly the Bum" not only had won his freedom for testifying
against union leaders, he had been given one thousand dollars to
"subsidize a new life abroad". McParlan had been attempting to convince
Orchard to accuse the
leadership of an entirely different union, the
Western Federation of Miners (WFM), of
conspiracy to commit another murder.
[63]
Unlike the Mollies, the WFM's union leadership was acquitted. Orchard
alone was convicted, and spent the rest of his life in prison.
The executions
On June 21, 1877, six men were hanged in the prison at
Pottsville, and four at
Mauch Chunk, Carbon County.
A scaffold had been erected in the Carbon County prison. State militia
with fixed bayonets surrounded the prisons and the scaffolds. Miners
arrived with their wives and children from the surrounding areas,
walking through the night to honor the accused, and by nine o'clock "the
crowd in Pottsville stretched as far as one could see." The families
were silent, which was "the people's way of paying tribute" to those
about to die. Thomas Munley's aged father had walked more than ten miles
(16 km) from
Gilberton
to assure his son that he believed in his innocence. Munley's wife
arrived a few minutes after they closed the gate, and they refused to
open it even for close relatives to say their final good-byes. She
screamed at the gate with grief, throwing herself against it until she
collapsed, but she was not allowed to pass. Four (
Alexander Campbell,
John "Yellow Jack" Donahue, Michael J. Doyle and Edward J. Kelly) were
hanged on June 21, 1877 at a Carbon County prison in Mauch Chunk
(renamed
Jim Thorpe
in 1953), for the murders of John P. Jones and Morgan Powell, both mine
bosses, following a trial later described by a Carbon County judge,
John P. Lavelle, as follows:
The Molly Maguire trials were a surrender of state sovereignty. A
private corporation initiated the investigation through a private
detective agency. A private police force arrested the alleged defenders,
and private attorneys for the coal companies prosecuted them. The state
provided only the courtroom and the gallows.[citation needed]
Campbell, just before his execution, allegedly slapped a muddy
handprint on his cell wall stating "There is proof of my words. That
mark of mine will never be wiped out. It will remain forever to shame
the county for hanging an innocent man." Doyle and Hugh McGeehan were
led to the scaffold. They were followed by Thomas Munley, James Carroll,
James Roarity, James Boyle, Thomas Duffy, Kelly, Campbell, and "Yellow
Jack" Donahue. Judge Dreher
[64]
presided over the trials. Ten more condemned, Thomas Fisher, John
"Black Jack" Kehoe, Patrick Hester, Peter McHugh, Patrick Tully, Peter
McManus, Dennis Donnelly, Martin Bergan, James McDonnell and Charles
Sharpe, were hanged at Mauch Chunk, Pottsville, Bloomsburg and Sunbury
over the next two years. Peter McManus was the last Molly Maguire to be
tried and convicted for murder at the
Northumberland County Courthouse in 1878.
[65]
Rhodes's account of the Mollies
Many accounts of the Molly Maguires that were written during, or
shortly after, the period offer no admission that there was widespread
violence in the area, that vigilantism existed, nor that violence was
carried out
against the miners. In 1910, industrialist and historian
James Ford Rhodes published a major scholarly analysis in the leading professional history journal:
[66]
The aftermath
When organized labor helped elect
Terence V. Powderly as mayor of
Scranton, Pennsylvania two years after the Molly Maguire trials, the opposition vilified his team as the "Molly Maguire Ticket".
[67] In 1979, Pennsylvania Governor
Milton Shapp
granted a posthumous pardon to John "Black Jack" Kehoe after an
investigation by the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons. The request for a
pardon was made by one of Kehoe's descendants. John Kehoe had proclaimed
his innocence until his death. The Board recommended the pardon after
investigating Kehoe's trial and the circumstances surrounding it. Shapp
praised Kehoe and the men called 'Molly Maguires" as "martyrs to labor"
and heroes in the struggle to establish a union and fair treatment for
workers.
[68]
In Scranton during the 1871 and 1877 strikes five striking miners
were killed and an unknown number injured by militia and vigilantes.
[69] In the "Lattimer Massacre", nineteen striking miners were shot dead and as many as fifty injured
[70]
Miners' unions officially advocated such non-violent tactics as strikes
and work stoppages, although during strikes some miners resorted to
crimes against property and the beating of replacement workers.
[71]
Mine owners continued to use vigilantism, wage suppression,
rigged-courts, spying and propaganda to break unions and self-help
groups like the AOH.
[72]
Taken from and footnotes on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Maguires [21.06.2013]
