A secret organization of (primarily Irish) miners, involved in industrial disputes in Pennsylvania during the 1870s. The prosecution of their leaders led to hangings and imprisonments, which crushed the group.
For the movie, see The Molly Maguires (film).Mollys in Ireland
The Molly Maguires originated in Ireland, where their semi-legendary vigilante organization fought Irish landlords for tenant's rights. The group's name supposedly came from a widow named Molly Maguire, who after being evicted by her landlord led violent anti-landlord agitations in the 1840s. Maguire may have been a mythical figure.
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 Molly Maguires, or The Mollies. They spread under the cloak of the Hibernians and with the approval of the Irish Parliamentary Party into every Irish county.
Mollys in USA
The following history is drawn from James Ford Rhodes, the president of the American Historical Association, in an article in the then leading scholarly journal, the American Historical Review. (April 1910), copyright expired.
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.
"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.
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. 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.
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.
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. In some cases, so Dewees (who has written a very useful story) 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. 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.
Only young men of the order were chosen to commit murder; Numbering in Schuylkill county only 500 or 600 out of 5,000 Irishmen in a total population of 116,000, the Molly Maguires controlled the common schools and the local government of the townships in the mining sections of the county. In one borough a Molly was Chief of Police;
The elections were marred by fraudulent voting, ballot-box stuffing, and false returns, the administration of the offices by fraud and robbery. In August 1875 an ex-county commissioner, a Molly; 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. 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."
They 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.
James McParlan
One agent, James McParlan (a native of County Armagh) using the alias of James McKenna, became a trusted member of the organization.
McParlan testified in numerous Molly cases, and his evidence helped to send ten men to the gallows. Gowen
District Attorney for Schuylkill County
The address of Mr. Gowen, and those of General Charles Albright, Hon.
In November McAllister was convicted.
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. Lavelle, as follows:
The Molly Maguire trials were a surrender of state sovereignty.
A " coffin notice", allegedly posted by Molly Maguires in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania.
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