40 Fun Facts About Molly Maguires

Which mark, said to be left by condemned Molly Maguire Alexander Campbell, still draws visitors to a jail cell wall?

A handprint in cell 17 of the old Carbon County jail is said to be the mark Campbell left to proclaim his innocence before he was hanged in 1877. The jail is now a museum.

Which fictional detective's final novel, The Valley of Fear, borrowed its backstory from the Molly Maguires?

Sherlock Holmes meets a man whose past recalls the real undercover detective's years among the miners. Arthur Conan Doyle's novel first ran as a magazine serial in 1914 and 1915.

Mauch Chunk, where four Molly Maguires were hanged in 1877, was later renamed in honour of which Olympic athlete?

Jim Thorpe never set foot in the town while he was alive. Two neighbouring boroughs merged and took his name after the athlete's death in 1953, and built his tomb there.

Which grim object gave its name to the warning notices Molly Maguires were accused of sending to mine bosses?

A coffin, roughly drawn on the page, warned a mine boss to leave the area or die. Irish miners had brought the practice of sending such notices from home.

Which private detective firm did railroad president Franklin B. Gowen hire to plant a spy among the Molly Maguires?

The Pinkerton agency sent an operative into the coal fields under a false name, and his testimony later helped convict ten of the men who were hanged.

In rural Ireland, leaders of the Molly Maguires were reported to carry out some raids wearing which disguise?

Women's clothing let a leader pose as a mother begging food for her children. A shopkeeper who refused the demand could expect to have his store emptied.

Which courtroom role did railroad president Franklin B. Gowen take at the murder trials of the Molly Maguires?

Special prosecutor was a post the mine owner arranged for himself, so he argued murder cases built by detectives his own company had hired.

Which James Bond actor played the Molly Maguires' leader in the 1970 film co-starring Richard Harris as a detective?

Sean Connery and Richard Harris headline a film whose opening runs almost fifteen minutes before anyone speaks a word of dialogue.

How did Philadelphia's Catholic archbishop respond to the Molly Maguires, a secret society of Irish Catholic miners?

Archbishop James Wood excommunicated its members and refused them burial in Catholic cemeteries, yet the secret society carried on regardless.

In collieries of the Molly Maguires era, what name was given to the children who picked slate from crushed coal?

Breaker boys, some as young as seven, earned one to three dollars a week. About 5,500 children worked at the mines of Schuylkill County alone.

In which state's coal fields were twenty alleged Molly Maguires hanged for murder and other crimes during the 1870s?

Pennsylvania hanged ten of the men on a single June morning in 1877, six at one county prison and four at another, with state militia ringing both scaffolds.

Which grade of coal did the Irish miners of the Molly Maguires' home region dig?

Anthracite, or hard coal, has the highest carbon content and the fewest impurities of any coal, so it gives more heat and less smoke than soft coal.

Besides Ireland and the United States, in which English port city were the Molly Maguires active during the 1850s?

Liverpool had Molly Maguire clubs whose members paid into a mutual defence fund, though the branch was known for gangsterism rather than for helping Irish immigrants.

Which nationwide labor upheaval broke out in July 1877, only weeks after ten Molly Maguires were hanged in one day?

The Great Railroad Strike began at Martinsburg, West Virginia, after the Baltimore and Ohio cut its workers' wages by ten percent, and it spread until federal troops were sent in.

Franklin B. Gowen, chief accuser of the Molly Maguires, was president of which railroad that also owned vast coal lands?

Philadelphia and Reading is the line remembered on the Monopoly board as the Reading Railroad. Its sister coal and iron company gave Gowen control of most of the area's mines.

Which union, founded in 1890, later organised the Molly Maguires' old coal fields and led the great strike of 1902?

The United Mine Workers won a 10 percent raise after Theodore Roosevelt became the first president to step into a labor dispute as a neutral arbitrator.

Early Civil War violence blamed on the Molly Maguires was tied up with resistance to which federal measure?

The military draft met such resistance among Irish miners in Schuylkill County that the Secretary of War sent troops to enforce it.

Which Irish-born detective lived among the Molly Maguires undercover and later testified as a surprise trial witness?

James McParland offered his resignation in 1875 after vigilantes, apparently armed with his secret reports, raided a suspect's home and killed members of the household.

Which alleged leader of the Molly Maguires, nicknamed 'Black Jack', received a posthumous state pardon in 1979?

John Kehoe, high constable of his mining town, protested his innocence until he was hanged. A descendant's request led the state pardons board to reopen his case a century later.

Which Irish Catholic fraternal body, founded in New York in 1836, was accused of being the Molly Maguires' front?

The Ancient Order of Hibernians condemned the Molly Maguires at its 1876 national convention and reorganised its lodges in the coal counties.

Which financier's bank failed in September 1873, starting the depression that framed the Molly Maguires' wage battles?

Jay Cooke, who had helped finance the Union war effort, sank his bank into Northern Pacific Railway bonds that it found it could not sell.

Which future Knights of Labor leader ran for mayor of Scranton on what opponents called the 'Molly Maguire Ticket'?

Terence Powderly won anyway, served three two-year terms as mayor from 1878, and led the Knights for fourteen years.

In which county seat, home of America's oldest brewery, were six Molly Maguires hanged on one morning in 1877?

Pottsville's prison was ringed by militia with fixed bayonets while miners' families, who had walked through the night, stood outside in silence.

Which elected Schuylkill County office had Franklin B. Gowen held over a decade before the Molly Maguires trials?

District attorney from 1862 to 1864, Gowen was, by his biographer's account, doing too well in private practice to bother much with pursuing criminals.

The Modocs, a gang that fought the Molly Maguires in the coal fields, were drawn from miners of which nationality?

Welsh and English miners held most of the skilled jobs and boss positions, leaving Irish labourers the hard, low-paid work and feeding the feud.

Which name do historians give the 1875 coal walkout whose collapse came just before the Molly Maguires arrests?

The Long Strike ran from January to June 1875 and ended with hungry miners accepting a 20 percent pay cut and their union in ruins.

Which grim nickname, alongside 'Black Thursday', was given to 21 June 1877, when ten Molly Maguires were hanged?

Day of the Rope is the name that stuck in the coal region, where ten more convicted men followed the first group to their deaths over the next two years.

In Ireland, the Molly Maguires reportedly blackened their faces for night raids using which everyday substance?

Burnt cork hid the raiders' faces, a disguise that echoed the mummers who went from door to door on Irish festive days.

Which older Irish agrarian secret society, a predecessor of the Molly Maguires, took its name from smocks worn on raids?

The Whiteboys levelled fences at night to defend tenant farmers' land rights, so the authorities usually called them Levellers.

By an 1894 account, the Molly Maguires' local lodge chiefs nearly always kept which kind of business near the mines?

A saloon gave a lodge chief a ready meeting place, and the same account claims no autocrat ever held freer power than he did over his territory.

The Molly Maguire Historic Park in Mahanoy City centres on a statue of a miner standing on which structure?

A gallows supports the hooded figure by sculptor Zenos Frudakis, which the borough put up in 2010, 133 years after the mass hangings.

Which hamlet gave its name to the December 1875 vigilante raid on a household of suspected Molly Maguires?

Wiggans Patch was raided before dawn by masked men, and the undercover detective who had named the household in his reports offered to resign over the killings.

Which governor granted a posthumous pardon in 1979 to the hanged man once called King of the Molly Maguires?

Milton Shapp called the men hanged as Molly Maguires martyrs to labour and heroes of the struggle for a union and fair treatment of workers.

Which title did the Molly Maguires give the chief officer of a local lodge, who handed out its signs and passwords?

The bodymaster answered to a county delegate and, by an account from the 1890s, ordered the crimes that the lodge had decided upon.

Which Schuylkill County mining town did the undercover detective make his base while infiltrating the Molly Maguires?

Shenandoah was where he rented a room from a miner who later testified against the accused men at their trials.

Which mining village, now a state museum, stood in for an 1870s coal town in the 1970 film The Molly Maguires?

Eckley had changed so little since the 1870s that the crew mainly had to take down television antennas and bury the electric wiring.

Under which false name did the detective who infiltrated the Molly Maguires live among the miners of the coal fields?

James McKenna let the miners believe he had committed nearly every crime going, murder included, and that his ready money came from counterfeiting.

Which 1869 mine fire in Luzerne County killed 110 workers and drove thousands of miners to join a union that day?

Avondale had a single shaft as its only way in or out, so the fire trapped the men below. Two of the dead were rescuers.

Which 1840s catastrophe sent waves of Irish emigrants toward the coal fields where the Molly Maguires later emerged?

The Great Famine and land seizures drove the exodus, and some 20,000 Irish workers reached Schuylkill County alone between the 1840s and the 1860s.

Which Irish folk group first performed the Phil Coulter and Bill Martin song 'The Molly Maguires' in 1969?

The Dubliners sang it a year before the Hollywood film of the same name reached cinemas, and it became a well-known Irish trad song.