Molly Maguires

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For the movie, see The Molly Maguires (film).

Location of the counties of the Molly Maguires, in northeastern Pennsylvania

1 Mollys in Ireland
2 Mollys in USA
- 2.1 James McParlan
- 2.2 Franklin B. Gowen
3 In popular culture
4 Further reading
5 External links

[edit] Mollys in Ireland

The Molly Maguires originated in Ireland, where their semi-legendary vigilante organization fought Irish landlords for tenants' rights. The group named itself after a widow, Molly Maguire, who was possibly a mythical figure. According to legend, Molly was killed by her landlord Billy Kilgannon, who instructed her to get out of town, and when she refused to vacate the premises, he levelled the house she was in.^[1] Tales of that incident incited violent anti-landlord agitations in the 1840s. The organization was established officially in 1843.

In the 1880s, the Molly Maguires in Ireland slowly merged with a newly evolving society, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, becoming a secret society retaining the second front name of The Molly Maguires, or The Mollies. They spread under the cloak of the Hibernians and with the approval of the Irish Parliamentary Party, expanded into every Irish county. Their strongest opponents were the All-for-Ireland League. The Mollies radicalized the Irish political scene with sectarian violence and intimidation until the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and were thought by some to have contributed to the ultimate partition of Ireland^{[citation needed]}.

[edit] Mollys in USA

In the nineteenth century, Irish immigrants transplanted a form of their Molly Maguire organization into America and continued its activities as a clandestine society. Irish miners in this organization employed the tactics of intimidation and violence previously used against Irish landlords in a violent confrontation against the anthracite, or hard coal mining companies in the 19th century. They were located in a section of the anthracite coal fields dubbed the Coal Region.

"The Mollys" were found in the counties of Lackawanna, Luzerne, Columbia, Schuylkill, Carbon, and Northumberland County, Pennsylvania.

This Irish coal-mining heritage contributed to their wave of violence, and continued well over ten years in the late 19th century in the United States. Although a legitimate self-help organization for Irish immigrants existed in the form of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, the Molly Maguires existed as a secret organization behind this front. Both groups fought discrimination against Irish and Catholics. In the case of the Mollies, the fight took the form of violence and destruction, mimicking the attacks against English landlords in Ireland, and the later sectarian intimidation of political and religious opponents in the first decades of the 20th century.

In 1910, industrialist and historian James Ford Rhodes published a major scholarly analysis in the leading professional history journal: ^[2]

Many of the Mollies were miners and the mode of working the mines lent itself to their peculiar policy. Miners were paid by the cubic yard, by the mine car, or by the ton, and (in the driving of entries) by the lineal yard. In the assignment of places, which was made by the mining boss, there were "soft" jobs and hard. If a Molly applied for a soft job and was refused, his anger was aroused and not infrequently in due time the offending boss was murdered. If he got employment, there was a constant chance of disagreement in measuring-up the work and in estimating the quality of the coal mined, for it was the custom to dock the miners' wages for bad coal with too much slate and dirt, and a serious disagreement was apt to be followed by violence. Little wonder was it that, as the source of the outrages was well understood, mining bosses refused to employ Irishmen, but this did not ensure their safety, as they might then be murdered for their refusal. A good Superintendent of any colliery would, in his quality of superior officer, support an efficient mining boss and would thus fall under the ban himself. John T. Morse, Jr., who made a contemporaneous study of the Molly Maguires, wrote in his vivid account of their operations: "The superintendents and 'bosses' in the collieries could all rest assured that their days would not be long in the land. Everywhere and at all times they were attacked, beaten, and shot down, by day and by night; month after month and year after year, on the public highways and in their own homes, in solitary places and in the neighborhood of crowds, these doomed men continued to fall in frightful succession beneath the hands of assassins." ^[3]

The murders were not committed in the heat of sudden passion for some fancied wrong: they were the result of a deliberate system. The wronged individual laid his case before a quasijudicial tribunal demanding the death, say, of a mining boss and urging his reasons. If they were satisfactory, as they usually were, the murder was decreed; but the task was not assigned to the aggrieved person or to any one in his and the victim's neighborhood: perhaps directly-aggrieved parties might be tempted to use more force or more cruelty than necessary. Two or more relatively disinterested Mollies from a different part of the county or even from the adjoining county were selected to do the killing because, being unknown, they could the more easily escape detection. Refusal to carry out the dictate of the conclave was dangerous and seldom happened, although an arrangement of substitution, if properly supported, was permitted. The meeting generally took place in an upper room of a hotel or saloon and, after the serious business, came the social reunion with deep libations of whiskey.

In attempting to give precise figures, some writers have undoubtedly exaggerated the number of murders by this order from 1865 to 1875; but no one can go through the evidence without being convinced that a great many men were killed to satisfy the vengeful spirit of the Molly Maguires. Some of the victims were men so useful, so conspicuous, and so beloved in their communities that their assassinations caused a profound and enduring impression. In some cases, so Dewees (who has written a very useful story ^[4]) asserts, robbery was added to murder: superintendents, who were carrying the money for the monthly pay of the miners and laborers, were waylaid as they drove along some lonely road in the desolate country. While the murders were numerous, still more numerous were the threats of murder and warnings to leave the country written on a sheet of paper with a rude picture of a coffin or a pistol and sometimes both. One notice read: "Mr. John Taylor — We will give you one week to go, but if you are alive on next Saturday you will die." Another, to three bosses, charged with "cheating thy men" had a picture of three pistols and a coffin and on the coffin was written, "This is your home."^[5] In other mining districts and in manufacturing localities, during strikes and times of turbulence similar warnings have been common and have been laughed at by mining bosses, superintendents, and proprietors; but, in the anthracite region between 1865 and 1876 the bravest of men could not forget how many of his fellows had been shot and suppress a feeling of uneasiness when he found such a missive on his doorstep or posted up on the door of his office at the mine. Many a superintendent and mining boss left his house in the morning with his hand on his revolver, wondering if he would ever see wife and children again.

The young men of the order were selected for the commission of murder; above them were older heads holding high office and, in a variety of ways, displaying executive ability. They were quick to see what a weapon to their hand was universal suffrage, and, with the aptitude for politics which the Irish have shown in our country, they developed their order into a political power to be reckoned with. Numbering in Schuylkill county only 500 or 600 out of 5,000 Irishmen in a total population of 116,000^[6], the Molly Maguires controlled the common schools and the local government of the townships in the mining sections of the county. They elected at different times three county commissioners and came near electing one of their number, who had acquired twenty thousand dollars worth of property, Associate Judge of the Court of Oyer and Terminer. In one borough a Molly was Chief of Police; another in Mahanoy township, Jack Kehoe, was High Constable^[7]. In the elections were fraudulent voting, stuffing of the ballot-boxes and false returns; in the administration of the offices, fraud and robbery. In Mahanoy township, $60,000 were drawn for the schools and eleven-twelfths of it stolen. Exorbitant road taxes were a fruitful means by which township officials robbed the taxpayers and put the money in their own pockets. In August 1875 an ex-county commissioner, a Molly, and two commissioners then in office, not actually belonging to the order but in sympathy with it, had been convicted of stealing the county funds and each had been sentenced by a full bench [September 6] to two years' imprisonment. At the fall election for governor in this year [1875] the Molly Maguires, who were naturally Democrats, foresaw Republican success and sold their vote in Schuylkill and Luzerne counties to the Republicans for a certain amount of money in hand and an implied agreement that these convicted commissioners and other criminals who were called by a leading Molly "our men" should be pardoned.^[8] It is hardly to be supposed that the Republican politicians who made this bargain were aware of the thoroughly criminal nature of the Molly Maguires, for they had astutely covered themselves with a virtuous cloak, securing from the Legislature in 1871 a charter for the Ancient Order of Hibernians whose motto was "Friendship, Unity and Christian Charity." On October 10, 1875, in a letter to the Shenandoah Herald Jack Kehoe denied with indignation that the Molly Maguires were synonymous with the Ancient Order of Hibernians, which latter was "composed of men who are law abiding and seek the elevation of their members."^[9] Kehoe was crafty enough to see the advantage of throwing dust in the eyes of the public and, when the outside world was bargained with, the A.O.H. was put forward; but, as matter of fact, it was the old story of ravening wolves in sheep's clothing.^[10]

^ THC Classroom Episode: The True Story of the Molly Maguires. Retrieved from The History Channell Website 6:00, March 13, 2007.[1]

^ Originally published in American Historical Review. (April 1910), copyright expired.

^ Amer. Law Review, Jan. 1877, 233

^ The Molly Maguires, F. P. Dewees, of Pottsville, a member of the Schuylkill county bar, 1877

^ Dewees, 367 et seq.; see also 123.

^ Census of 1870, Gowen. The 5000 is an estimate of those of a voting age from census data.

^ "In Carbon county two Mollies have at different times held the office of County commissioner and a Molly also succeeded in being elected to the legislature." Dewees, 32 n.

^ Elections in Pennsylvania were much closer then than now [1909]. In 1875 Hartranft's majority for governor over Judge Pershing, Democrat, was only 12,000 in a vote of 596,000. Although the returns show normal Democratic majorities in Schuylkill and Luzerne counties, Dewees has no doubt that the Molly vote was sold and delivered; what Pershing lost in the Molly strongholds was counterbalanced by gains elsewhere. Dewees feels sure that Hartranft was ignorant of the transaction, 222 et seq. On March 16, 1876, the three commissioners were pardoned. Pa. Legislative docs., 1877, ii. 1252

^ Dewees, 380.

^ Passage from History of the United States from Hayes to McKinley 1877 - 1896

– James Ford Rhodes , ''History of the United States from Hayes to McKinley 1877 - 1896 Volume 8 of the series History of the United States of America, From the Compromise of 1850 to the McKinley-Bryan Campaign of 1896 published October, 1919, The Macmillian Company, New York. Chapter II, pp 52 - 58

The Mollys were forced to disband in 1877 after being in existence for about thirty years because, in an effort commissioned by Reading Railroad president Franklin B. Gowen (who was also at the time the most influential mine owner in the area), Pinkerton National Detective Agency agents infiltrated the organization and informed on the activities of the members.

Pinkerton Detective Agency detective James McParlan, seen here some time in the 1880s

Although they are viewed unfavorably by traditional history, there are those who contend that the Molly Maguires, manifesting in the United States as a direct response to wage disputes with the coal industry, are more accurately described as a labor organization than a group of vigilantes, and that the allegations of their more violent crimes were baseless and without evidence. Howard Zinn mentions the Molly Maguires in Chapter 10 of his A People's History of the United States, citing them as an example of labor organization in response to the frequent, gross exploitation of workers by industry in the Depression-ridden days after the Civil War. Zinn mentions Philip Foner as someone who, after careful study of the evidence available, concludes the 19 members executed were done so for the simple reason that they coordinated strikes whenever wages were reduced. Foner points to the coal mine owners' own words in the Miners' Journal essentially admitting to this as their chief motive in using the law to pursue the Maguires.

[edit] James McParlan

One agent, James McParlan (a native of County Armagh) using the alias of James McKenna, became a trusted member of the organization. On February 10, 1875, Captain R.J. Linden, a fellow Pinkerton operative with McParlan, captured Thomas Munley at his home in Gilberton. Charles McAllister was apprehended at the same time. McAllister demanded a separate trial and George Kaercher, Esq., the District Attorney, elected to try Munley first.

McParlan testified in numerous Molly cases, and his evidence 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 232-33) McParlan testified that the AOH and the Mollys were one and the same, but most historians disagree. (Kenny 234-5)

Franklin B. Gowen (1836-1889), District Attorney for Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, president of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad

[edit] Franklin B. Gowen

District Attorney for Schuylkill County

The address of Mr. Gowen, and those of General Charles Albright, Hon. F.W. Hughes, and Guy E. Farquhar, Esq., added just the argument which the jury required to find a just verdict of "guilty of murder in the first degree".

In November McAllister was convicted. Munley was hanged in the Pottsville jail on August 16, 1876; and McAllister was hanged later.

About twenty members of the group were hanged after being convicted of complicity in the murders of about twenty-four mine managers.

From 1865 to 1875, post-war recession combined with a crime wave in the Coal Region to create a decade marred by murder, assault, and arson.

Four members of the Molly Maguires, Alexander Campbell, John "Yellow Jack" Donohue, Michael Doyle and Edward Kelly, were hanged on June 21, 1877 at a Carbon County, Pennsylvania prison in Mauch Chunk (renamed Jim Thorpe in 1953), for the murder of mine bosses John P. Jones and Morgan Powell, following a trial that was 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.

A " coffin notice", allegedly posted by Molly Maguires in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania. It was presented by Franklin B. Gowen, along with other similar coffin notices, as evidence in an 1876 murder trial.

[edit] In popular culture

A movie based on these events called The Molly Maguires, starring Sean Connery and Richard Harris, was released in 1970.
The Sherlock Holmes novel The Valley of Fear is partly based on the Molly Maguires.
George Korson, a folklorist and journalist whom became fascinated with the livelihood of Pennsylvania's miners, wrote several songs and other writings regarding the topic -- best showcased in his composition "Minstrels of the Mine Patch", which has a section specifically on the Molly Maguires: "Coal Dust on the Fiddle".
Irish folk band The Dubliners refer to the Molly Maguires in one of their songs, "Molly Maguires".
Irish-American Folk Band "The Irish Balladeers" wrote and recorded "The Sons of Molly" based on this history. This song was later covered by the Irish-Canadian band "The Peelers".
The Irish folk music/ska band Molly from Sweden was originally called "Molly Maguire".
A popular Irish/Bluegrass/Cajun band in Liverpool, UK 1990 were named after The Molly Maguires.

[edit] Further reading

[edit] Scholarly secondary sources

Adams, Sean Patrick. "The US Coal Industry in the Nineteenth Century." EH.Net Encyclopedia, August 15 2001 scholarly overview
Broehl, Jr., Wayne G. The Molly Maguires. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1964; excellent scholarly study
Gudelunas, Jr., William Anthony, and William G. Shade. Before the Molly Maguires: The Emergence of the Ethnoreligious Factor in the Politics of the Lower Anthracite Region: 1844-1972. New York: Arno Press, 1976. on local politics and ethnic conflicts
Kenny, Kevin. Making Sense of the Molly Maguires (1998)
Kenny, Kevin, "The Molly Maguires in Popular Culture," Journal of American Ethnic History (1995) 14(4): 27-46. Looks at 8 novels and a film to show how popular depictions have moved from negative to positive.
Kenny, Kevin. "The Molly Maguires and the Catholic Church," Labor History 1995 36(3): 345-376. Reports the bishops vigorously attacked the Mollies and the AOF (Hibernians) to expel violence from the Irish community and make it law-abiding.
Morn, Frank. The Eye that Never Sleeps: A History of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency ;;(1982)
James Ford Rhodes, History of the United States of America, From the Compromise of 1850 to the McKinley-Bryan Campaign of 1896: Vol 8: 1877-1896 (NY: Macmillan, 1919) Chapter 2. online version
Bimba, Anthony, "The Molly Maguires. New York: International Publishers, 1970
Foner, Phillip, "A History of the Labor Movement in the United States." 4 vols. New York: International Publishers, 1947-1964.

[edit] Popular books

Samuel P. Orth, The Armies of Labor (1920)-Chapter 4 has a good overview of late 19th century labor history.
Zinn, Howard, "A People's History of the United States (1492-Present)" (1980; 2003)

[edit] Primary sources

Dewees, Francis P. The Molly Maguires: The Origin, Growth, and Character of the Organization (1877; 1964)

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../m/o/l/Molly_Maguires_6ffc.html"