Molly Maguires

MOLLY MAGUIRES, an Irish American secret society which maintained numerous branches in the anthracite coal regions of Pennsylvania, U.S.A., from 1854 to 1877, and perhaps later.

The name was imported from Ireland, where it had been used to designate one of the Ribbon societies that devoted its energies to intimidating and maltreating process servers and agents of land lords. The Irish society of Molly Maguires seems to have been organized in 1843, and its membership to have been confined to the very lowest classes. The Molly Maguires of Pennsylvania consisted of similar classes of Irishmen, but there seems to have been no connection between the two societies. Every member of the American organization was also a member of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, an association organized for benevolent purposes, and having branches in the United States and Great Britain.

In the mining districts of Pennsylvania the organization fell under the control of a lawless element, which created the inner order of "Molly Maguires," with the object, it appears, of intim idating the Welsh, English and German miners, and of ridding the region of mine superintendents, bosses and police who should make themselves in any way objectionable to members of the order. Any member having a grievance might lay a formal com plaint before his "body master," who thereupon conferred with the officers of the neighbouring divisions and secured members from a distance to make away with the offending person. Under

this system the crimes in a given district were always committed by strangers. The society grew in strength during the Civil War.

By

1875 it completely dominated the coal miners and forced a gen eral strike. After repeated efforts to bring the criminals to justice had failed, Franklin B. Gowen (1836-1889), president of the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company, sent James McParlan, an Irish Catholic and a Pinkerton detective to the mining region in 1873; he joined the order, and even became sec retary of one of the most notoriously criminal lodges. The evi dence he secured led to the arrest, conviction and execution or imprisonment of many members during the years 1876-77, and subsequently the outrages ceased and the society was disbanded. See F. P. Dewees, The Molly Maguires (Philadelphia, 1877) ; Allan Pinkerton, The Molly Maguires and the Detectives (1877) ; E. W. Lucy, The Molly Maguires of Pennsylvania; The Common wealth versus John Kehoe et al. (Pottsville, Pa. 1878) ; and an article by J. F. Rhodes in Amer. Hist. Review April, 191o.