June 21, 1877: Penna. hangs ten “Molly Maguires”

Depending on your view, the Molly Maguires were either an early labor advocacy group or a terrorist organization. Founded in Ireland in the early 19th century, members of this secret society intimidated, threatened, and enacted violence against employers they found unscrupulous, along with anyone who disagreed with them.

By the 1870s, anti-Irish fever had long run high in America, and jobs were hard to come by for expats (think “no Irish need apply”). Many Mollies had found their way to the coal mines of northeast Pennsylvania; between the animosity with Welsh and English workers and the confrontational strategy of the area’s largest mine owner, the region soon rivaled the wild west in terms of violence.

On this day in 1877, ten Molly Maguires were hanged – after trials that one judge later disparaged as “a surrender of state sovereignty”.

Franklin B. Gowen, president of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, had amassed nearly 150 square miles of coal lands – two-thirds of Pennsylvania’s output at the time – despite a state law prohibiting railroad ownership of mines.

But as the Mollies were giving him trouble, Gowen hired the Pinkerton agency to infiltrate the secret society and obtain evidence. The Coal and Iron Police, a private force paid by the mining companies, made the arrests, and Gowen himself acted as special prosecutor.

John P. Lavelle, a Carbon County judge, later noted: “The state provided only the courtroom and the gallows.”

Six men were hanged at Pottsville, and four at Mauch Chunk (later renamed Jim Thorpe, as seen on Thursday’s Jeopardy! episode).

Of note: The fourth and final Sherlock Holmes novel, The Valley of Fear, revolves around the murder of a Pinkerton agent who had posed as a Molly Maguire.

Image: a “coffin notice” (with colors inverted) used as evidence against the Molly Maguires, via Cultured Carbon County