Justice Trembling in the Balance

Part 4 of 4: All the Machinery of the Pinkerton Agency

Attorney William Foyle of Towanda used all his persuasive power in December 1878 to convince Pennsylvania Governor John Hartranft to re-open the case of John Kehoe. Against all odds—including false rumors of his death—Kehoe’s wife Mary Ann had located a witness who could testify on her husband’s behalf.

“The witness is worthy of credit,” Foyle told Hartanft of witness Patrick McHugh’s deposition.

Foyle related that McHugh identified himself as collector of taxes for Carbon County's Banks Township at the time of the Langdon killing. McHugh "went over to Audenried the night of the affair, saw Jack Kehoe at William’s Tavern at the time the killing occurred or within five minutes of the time the alarm was given, and afterwards saw him running to the scene of the murder.”

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The Philadelphia Times picked up the case and questioned McHugh’s testimony. Foyle again wrote to Hartranft. The attorney’s frustration streamed through his second letter to Pennsylvania’s governor.

“I shall not doubt the integrity of witness McHugh until some reasonable proof is given that he has sworn falsely produced in some other form than newspaper ‘squibs’ for which no one claims responsibility,” Foyle told Hartranft.

“[A]s I understand it from pamphlets sent me some time since with the compliments of Franklin B Gowen containing the trial of Munly [sic] … it took the Commonwealth aided by that astute lawyer and with all the machinery of Pinkertons Detective agency about fourteen years to obtain the evidence to establish the guilt of Kehoe meager as it was … is it too much to ask that Kehoe should have at least two years to look up evidence to prove his innocence?”

The attorney concluded with a plea: “Asking your pardon for having trespassed so much upon you and with no other apology than a desire to advance the cause of justice and truth in behalf of a condemned man whose life is now trembling in the balance.”

The New York Times reported the subsequent hearing called to discuss McHugh’s testimony. Kehoe’s attorney, Samuel Garrett, made a strenuous effort. Garrett sought to convince the board, through use of a map of the murder scene, of Kehoe’s movements on the night of Langdon’s killing.

“He had expected to bring the map and accompanying documents with him from Pottsville this morning, but they were found to be missing from the court records when he went to get them,” The Times reported. But nothing prevented Garrett from telling the pardon board that from 1876 to 1877 "there was not a fair trial in Schuylkill County; that the jury wheel did not contain the names of four Irishmen.”

Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Internal Affairs and pardon board member General William McCandless, a powerful Democratic state operative, summarily dismissed Garrett’s efforts. “‘If this man Kehoe is not guilty of murder in the first degree, he is guilty of nothing, and I have not changed my opinion as to his guilt,’” McCandless told Garrett. The general told a reporter: “‘We have refused to reopen the case. That’s how the matter stands. Kehoe will swing.’”

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A carefully rigged Board of Pardons. A false statement regarding the death of a defense witness. Important documents placed in evidence during Kehoe’s trial for murder, gone missing from the file.

When it came to procuring a signed death warrant for John Kehoe, it seems nothing was left to chance.

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Coming December 15 - A Message for December: Love Guides the Whole Design

Justice Trembling in the Balance

Part 3 of 4: The Witness is Worthy of Credit

While John Kehoe “languished in durance vile” in Pottsville Prison for two and a half years, the witness who could prove his innocence lived 90 miles away from Kehoe’s hometown. For General Charles Albright, the Lehigh and Wilkes-Barre Coal Company attorney who served as a special prosecutor during the “Molly Maguire” trials—dressed in full Civil War regalia—had circulated the false rumor that Patrick McHugh was dead.

“His brother died in 1874 & Gen’l Albright supposing it to be the witness conveyed a strong impression to the friends of Kehoe,” Towanda attorney William Foyle told Pennsylvania’s Governor John Hartranft ten days before Kehoe’s scheduled execution. “The General was acquainted with the witness and his impressions were incorrect in regard to his death.”

Albright’s incorrect “strong impression” allowed valuable time to slip by, while editors, attorneys and politicians wrangled over the signing of Kehoe’s death warrant.

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“McHugh is shure [sic] Jack Kehoe was not present at the murder of Langdon. McHugh is a man of good character and I believe truthful in every respect,” Foyle told Hartranft urgently. “His affidavit is not trumped up to meet the emergency but in my judgment is entitled to great weight in the final disposition of the case. The witness can produce certificates of character without any trouble.”

Foyle stated Kehoe's case to Hartranft plainly: “I drew the affidavit at the request of Mrs. Kehoe who came into my office yesterday and have no further connection with the case and no interest in it except to see that justice is done. I know this new evidence will withstand the utmost scrutiny and will vindicate your action ... and must satisfy even the Philadelphia Times which is craving for Jack Kehoe’s blood innocent or guilty. It makes no difference to me pecuniarily or otherwise whether Jack Kehoe is hung or not, but it does make a difference to all of us and especially to you Governor as chief executive of the State whether an innocent man shall be hanged in the face of the discovered evidence establishing his innocence.”

“Kehoe’s wife left for Pottsville last night to place the affidavit in the hands of his counsel,” Foyle advised Hartranft, “and I suppose you will be furnished with a certified copy very soon of the affidavit. My object in addressing you is to assure you and the other members of the Court that this affidavit is reliable, and McHugh the witness is worthy of credit. As to myself I am well known to all the people of my county and would not attempt to misrepresent the case in any respect.”

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Coming December 8 - Part 4 of 4: All the Machinery of the Pinkerton Agency

Justice Trembling in the Balance

Part 2 of 4: Lieutenant Governor Latta Falls From a Train

An April 1878 meeting of Pennsylvania’s Board of Pardons, reported The New York Times months later, resulted in a unanimous decision to commute the death sentence of Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH) leader John Kehoe to imprisonment for life.

The Times did not report where it received this information. When the board’s decision came down that April, it was kept well-hidden from the newspapers.

Pennsylvania’s four-man board, newly constructed in 1874, consisted of four appointees: the commonwealth’s secretary, its attorney general, its secretary of internal affairs and its lieutenant governor.

In April 1878 all four of those officers, reported The New York Times eight months later, had voted in favor of Kehoe’s request for commutation of his death sentence.

That ring of support unraveled before it could again rule on Kehoe’s behalf.

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By September 1878 the Machiavellian legal arena that had secured the signed death warrants for 16 AOH defendants was well in place. Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court had denied all requests for relief for these Irish Catholic defendants. Those too poor to have their evidence printed for that court’s review simply went to the gallows without even the appearance of effective due process of law.

By fall 1878 the issue of John Kehoe’s request for commutation had become a political football. This was an election year.

But Franklin Gowen had matters well in hand for the pardon board’s September 1878 hearing. He knew he could rely on the support of William McCandless, secretary of internal affairs. And Matthew Quay had taken a leave of absence from his office of secretary for the commonwealth. Quay’s replacement, John Linn, could also be relied upon to vote against Kehoe’s request.

That left Attorney General Lear and Lieutenant Governor Latta. Both these men showed a stubborn insistence on voting in Kehoe’s favor. But if the board deadlocked again in a two-two tie, that would favor the commonwealth, not the defendant.

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The board met on September 4 to reconsider Kehoe’s case. “Several hours were consumed in deliberation,” reported a Harrisburg paper, “when the board decided to refuse to recommend the commutation of his death sentence to imprisonment for life.” As expected, both Latta and Lear voted in Kehoe’s favor.

Latta then boarded a train for his home in Greensburg.

“A rather serious accident befell Hon. John Latta, Lieut. Governor … on Wednesday night, on his return from Harrisburg, where he was attending the meeting of the Board of Pardons,” reported a Pittsburgh paper. “[I]n stepping off the train … he was thrown down with such violence as to fracture his right arm above the elbow.”

“Lieut. Gov. Latta was very seriously injured at Greensburg last night,” reported a Bloomsburg paper. “He sustained a dislocation of the shoulder and is suffering from concussion of the brain. Considerable anxiety is felt at his recovery.”

Latta’s unfortunate accident did not end his efforts on John Kehoe’s behalf. Latta did recover from his injury. And he continued to side with Kehoe in ongoing pardon board deliberations.

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Coming December 1 - Part 3 of 4: The Witness is Worthy of Credit

Justice Trembling in the Balance

Part 1 of 4: The Stacking of Pennsylvania’s Board of Pardons

“To hang Jack Kehoe in the light of this newly discovered evidence would be a piece of judicial murder,” attorney W. M. Foyle of Towanda wrote to Pennsylvania's governor, John Hartranft, on December 10, 1878, eight days before John Kehoe’s execution as the alleged “King of the Molly Maguires.”

“I think the death warrant ought to be revoked, and further action in the case postponed by the board of pardons till this newly discovered testimony is fully presented to the board, which should in my judgment procure a commutation of the death penalty if not a full pardon,” Foyle continued. “This would be an act of simple justice to the accused awaiting more.”

Foyle’s “newly discovered testimony” came from a newly discovered defense witness named Patrick McHugh. Less than two weeks before Kehoe’s scheduled date of execution, his wife Mary Ann traveled 90 miles from Girardville to Towanda to locate McHugh and have him deposed.

Kehoe, Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH) delegate for Schuylkill County, had by this time spent two and a half years in Pottsville Prison. He stood convicted, among other crimes, for the first-degree murder of Frank Langdon, a mine foreman killed at Audenried in 1862.

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The attorney Foyle’s attempt to help Kehoe came after years of political maneuvering that kept Pennsylvania’s Board of Pardons well stacked against both Kehoe and against all AOH defendants awaiting execution in Pennsylvania. In December 1878 The New York Times gave some details of the actions that tainted successive pardon hearings for these Irish Catholic defendants.

Kehoe’s April 1878 hearing before Pennsylvania’s Board of Pardons, reported The Times, “was unanimously in favor of commuting Kehoe’s sentence to imprisonment for life.” The Board deemed it “inexpedient, however, to take formal action then, as such a course would establish a bad precedent and affect the cases of the other Mollie Maguires.”

The Board evidently feared that a finding in Kehoe’s favor would affect the outcome of cases of other alleged “Molly Maguires.” The unanimous vote in Kehoe’s favor in spring 1878 did nothing to secure his relief.

On hearing the board’s stunning decision, Kehoe’s counsel suggested that his case be held over until other cases “had been disposed of.” By the time the board met again to consider Kehoe’s case, said The Times, “the opinion of one member of the board [had] been changed by newspaper clamor, and another member, Mr. Quay, retired by resignation of his position as Secretary of the Commonwealth, his successor, Mr. Linn, holding a different view regarding the guilt of Kehoe.”

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The chess board that constituted Pennsylvania’s Board of Pardons had been reordered. One member who favored Kehoe’s pardon, Matthew Quay, took a leave of absence from his office of secretary of the commonwealth to pursue the newly created position of recorder for the city of Philadelphia. And “newspaper clamor” had evidently changed the opinion of Secretary for Internal Affairs William McCandless.

John Linn took over Quay’s duties as secretary of the commonwealth. In a surprise to no one who followed the political antics of Pennsylvania’s “Molly Maguire” caseload, the newly appointed four-man board consistently deadlocked on Kehoe’s request for relief. The appointment of John Linn, said The Times, “has defeated every effort since made to secure a commutation of sentence or a rehearing” on Kehoe’s behalf.

Franklin Gowen, president of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad and a powerful Democratic political operative, served as chief prosecutor during the "Molly Maguire" trials. Whether Gowen’s long political arm also maneuvered Quay out of—and Linn onto—Pennsylvania’s Board of Pardons is not known.

Whatever chicanery took place, Linn’s presence defeated all subsequent attempts to obtain relief for Kehoe. But two pardon board appointees, Attorney General George Lear and Lieutenant Governor John Latta, remained steadfast in their support of Kehoe’s continuing requests for commutation.

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Coming November 22 - Part 2 of 4: Lieutenant Governor Latta Falls From a Train

"The Stories Were All Lies"

Pinkerton, McParlan and Sherlock Holmes Tell a Tale of the "Molly Maguires"

In the telling of Pennsylvania’s “Molly Maguire” history, fact and fiction collide brutally. A centuries-long trail of innuendo, half-truths, fiction and outright lies fogs the telling of this history.

Pivotal to this telling is the credibility of Pinkerton operative James McParlan. McParlan’s trial testimony helped execute 21 men—and sent scores more to prison. So much depended on the truth of McParlan’s statements.

Just how credible were those statements?

This post gives two versions of one significant issue.

The question at issue is this: How did McParlan first cultivate the Irish Catholic men he later helped execute as “Molly Maguires”? Did he seduce them with tales of murder, as he testified in court?

Or did he use another strategy?

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Both Allan Pinkerton and Arthur Conan Doyle spun McParlan’s trial testimony into lucrative fictional tales. McParlan first met Pennsylvania’s alleged “Molly Maguires” while working undercover as “James McKenna.” In reports from January 1874 filed with his supervisors, McParlan provided one version of his cultivation of numerous county officers of the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH).

Less than three years later, during trial testimony, McParlan gave a second version of his cultivation of these men. McParlan’s May 1876 testimony, given under oath, left out telling information from reports made to his supervisors two and a half years before.

Allan Pinkerton’s fictional 1877 work described McParlan's exploits in detail. It further clouded the trail.

And in 1915, incredibly, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mystery “The Valley of Fear” gave yet another fictionalized account of the “Molly Maguire” drama. In Sherlock Holmes’ case, McParlan appeared undercover as “Jack McMurdo,” aka “Birdy Edwards.” And AOH delegate John Kehoe, weighted down with diamonds and gold chains, was known both as “Councillor McGinty” and as “Black Jack McGinty,” the feared head of a “murder society.”*

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During the Yost murder trial in May 1876 McParlan testified in detail of his supposed cultivation of Schuylkill County’s alleged “Molly Maguires.”

“I … told them different tales,” McParlan testified. “Sometimes I told them I shot a man; sometimes I told them I counterfeited money … the stories were all lies.”

Pinkerton’s 1877 fiction reinforced McParlan’s claim. Titled “The Mollie Maguires and the Detectives,” it appeared less than a year after McParlan’s sworn testimony in the Yost trial.

Franklin Gowen, president of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad and head of the regional “Coal Combination,” likely commissioned this fictional work. Robert Linden, Pinkerton superintendent of Gowen’s private police force, distributed Pinkerton's new book to regional editors.

Published while “Molly Maguire” trials remained ongoing, it skewed justice for cases that lay pending before Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court and its Board of Pardons. Pinkerton’s book painted the alleged “Molly Maguires” as violent thugs. Its descriptions of drunken Irish depravity reinforced the vicious “Molly Maguire” label. It helped secure fast verdicts of “guilty” in ongoing trials. And it dovetailed closely with McParlan’s trial testimony.

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“The Detective Sings, Fights, and Dances Himself Into Popularity,” Pinkerton titled Chapter 8 of his “Molly Maguire” story. Studded with puerile Irish American dialect, it described McParlan’s introduction in late January 1874 to a Pottsville hotel called the Sheridan House, run by a former AOH man named Dormer.

“Dormer had given a hint … that the stranger [McParlan] was a hard case generally, and engaged in concealing himself from certain officials in Western New York, who were in search of him for having killed a man in Buffalo a year or so before,” Pinkerton’s narrative related breathlessly. “It was more than probable that [McParlan’s] reputation as a dealer in counterfeit money had also been discussed by the same worthies.”

Singing. Fighting. Jigging. Tales of counterfeiting, and of a murder committed in Buffalo. And, of course, drinking. According to Pinkerton, this was McParlan’s supposed tale of introduction—in January 1874—to the AOH men he hoped to cultivate.

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In 1915 Arthur Conan Doyle went Pinkerton's work one better. While the coal region struggled to recover from the historic trauma of 21 public executions and the killings that generated them, area residents reviewed the latest in a long line of works that painted McParlan as heroic.

Conan Doyle’s work clanged with negative stereotyping. Kehoe’s character “McGinty” was a “black-maned giant, bearded to the cheek-bones, and with a shock of raven hair which fell to his collar.” His eyes were “of a strange dead black,” his complexion “as swarthy as an Italian.” He had an “enormous hand, which was hairy as a gorilla's.”

In Sherlock Holmes’ Pennsylvania case, the Irishmen under “McGinty’s” command committed murder at his will. They swaggered and drank and fought. They beat an elderly newspaperman until his “white hair was dabbled with patches of blood.” And they swapped murders—and rewarded young men with a few dollars for committing their murders for them. In other words, Conan Doyle trotted out McParlan’s trial testimony almost verbatim.

These Irishmen invited McParlan’s character “McMurdo” to join them in their murderous society. They burned his arm with their society’s brand. And, as in Pinkerton’s work, “McMurdo” confided his criminal past to these savage Irishmen.

In Conan Doyle’s version “McMurdo” tells “McGinty” he has killed a man in Chicago, a man who helped him “shove the queer” [pass counterfeit bills]. “I just killed him and lighted out for the coal country,” McParlan’s character tells Kehoe’s character. Forty years after Schuylkill County’s first “Molly Maguire” arrests, the character of Schuylkill’s AOH men was again under direct assault—this time in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fiction.

But McParlan's lurid statements of murder and counterfeiting—given in person during trial testimony and glamorized by writers of fiction—had helped send 21 Irish Catholic men to the gallows. Those statements inflamed the ethnic hostility that allowed scores of “Molly Maguire” prosecutions to move forward.

Was McParlan’s trial testimony the truth, or was it fiction?

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Per Pinkerton’s fictional account, McParlan seduced Schuylkill County’s AOH men in January 1874 with sordid tales of counterfeiting and murder. Decades later, after meeting Pinkerton’s son William on a cross-Atlantic voyage, Conan Doyle seasoned Pinkerton’s tale even more highly—this time for international consumption, in a Sherlock Holmes tale.

But McParlan himself had given his Pinkerton supervisors another version of how he contrived to influence many of the AOH officers from Pennsylvania’s hard coal region. This did not take place in saloons. It did not take place on trains, or at the bottom of mine shafts. And it did not take place while “shoving the queer.”

According to McParlan’s own reports from January 1874, he gained the trust of many of the region’s AOH men in a week-long church mission in Pottsville.

And it was Schuylkill County AOH treasurer Christopher Donnelly, imprisoned later for alleged “Molly Maguire” crimes, who invited McParlan to attend these church services.

“In the evening,” McParlan’s report told supervisors, “the operative attended the mission at the church – being a sort of revival – attended by all from Pottsville & all parts from the County [of Schuylkill] and Cumberland & Luzerne Co. The operative intends attending this mission closely as he will meet with all the M.M.’s and the fact of his attendance will gain for him more friends and confidence than all else.” The mission, said McParlan, “will last until the middle of next week.”

McParlan returned to church services on Wednesday, and again on Thursday. On Friday he attended the mission “in all devoutness morning & evening & made some new acquaintances.” On Saturday, and on Sunday, despite stormy weather, McParlan “attended church faithfully.”

In McParlan’s own words, “the fact of his attendance” at these church services—not jigging, brawling, drinking, counterfeiting or murdering—would “gain for him more friends and confidence than all else.”

On his entry into the hard coal region as an undercover Pinkerton operative, McParlan attended church services for one week “in all devoutness morning & evening” to gain the confidence of Pennsylvania’s AOH hierarchy.

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No authoritative history of the “Molly Maguires,” no fictional account, no semi-fictional account, has ever described McParlan's use of his church attendance to cultivate regional AOH men. McParlan’s attendance at church services to secure the trust of these Irishmen accords with their membership in an Irish Catholic benevolent society that chose for its motto “Friendship, Unity and True Christian Charity.”

Two years later McParlan testified in court that he gained the confidence of regional AOH men with tales of murder and counterfeiting, in “stories that were all lies.”

Which version of McParlan’s story is the true version?

An unnamed correspondent to the Boston Pilot in 1876 stated matters succinctly. “Paid swearers will swear for pay, especially perjured ones, such as McParlan,” this writer said. “I would not hang a fly on his oath.”

In his defense of AOH treasurer Alex Campbell, attorney Daniel Kalbfus said to the jury of McParlan: “His testimony all writers admit, is of the most dangerous character. … If they would not accuse me on the other side of being a blackguard I would call him a liar. Coward! He abetted, he planned, he connived the killing of John P. Jones, and you know it.”

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Pinkerton’s 1877 “Molly Maguire” dime novel was one in a series he published during this time. It fit in with earlier works titled “The Detective and the Somnambulist” and “The Murderer and the Fortune Teller.” Like these tales, Pinkerton’s “Molly Maguire” story reads as lurid fiction. But so did McParlan’s trial testimony.

Eighty-seven years after Pinkerton’s book appeared, Wayne G. Broehl Jr. published his scholarly work titled “The Molly Maguires.” Broehl relied, in part, on Pinkerton’s fictional account for his telling of this history. This defining slice of the Irish American historical experience can trace its scholarly treatment to an 1877 dime novel version of events published by Allan Pinkerton, the head of a private detective agency with a commercial interest in the caseload—and in procuring verdicts of “guilty” in ongoing "Molly Maguire" trials.

If McParlan’s “Molly Maguire” trial testimony, like his sensationalized tales, was simply “stories that were all lies,” then the history that flowed from that testimony is fatally compromised.

What is the truth of McParlan’s trial testimony—of his character, his credibility?

What is the truth of Pennsylvania’s AOH men fingered by McParlan as “Molly Maguires?”

*Note: Materials offered in this blog are documented in the full-length work "Waking the Dead: The Myth of the "'Molly Maguires,'" pending publication.

This article has been revised.

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Coming August 15: “Hireling Spies and Paid Informers”: Pinkerton’s Baltimore Plot Against Lincoln (Part 1)

"Before I Die I Will Relate These Facts":

Patrick Hester's Dying Statement

Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH) officer Patrick Hester died in March 1878 on a gallows at Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. He died alongside AOH members Peter McHugh and Patrick Tully. All three Irishmen were convicted for the 1868 murder of Alexander Rea. All three protested their innocence. McHugh and Tully gave their statements at sentencing hearings.

By the time the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania executed these three Irish Catholic men, its hard coal region had convulsed in a carnival of ethnic hostility. Public executions in three counties on June 21, 1877, had dangerously charged the atmosphere and changed civic life forever. Many more executions were promised.

But with Hester’s effort in March 1878 to issue a dying statement, events took an especially degraded turn.

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Hester, a hotelkeeper, had served not just as AOH delegate for Northumberland County. Over the past decade or more, area voters had elected the Irishman as township supervisor, tax collector, school director and overseer of the poor. All four of his daughters had been schoolteachers. An area newspaper, with biting rhetoric, had crowned Hester “the great mogul of the Democratic party.”*

“[T]hey are after my life these good many years,” Hester told McHugh and Tully by letter just days before their executions in Bloomsburg. Rea’s murder, the charge against them, had taken place near Centralia ten years earlier. Rea was ambushed while watering his horse at a trough. A superintendent of the Locust Mountain Coal and Iron Company, Rea left behind a widow and six children.

The commonwealth initially prosecuted John Duffy, Thomas Donahoe and Michael Prior for Rea’s death. The first attempt to officially conflate the rising power of the AOH order with supposed “Molly Maguire” violence took place during the Rea trial in 1869. Hester served at that time as Northumberland County's AOH delegate. Defense witness Patrick McKenna brought forward the AOH constitution and bylaws to place in evidence during that trial. “These are the obligation constitution and by laws [sic] of the Ancient order of Hibernians,” McKenna told the court. “This is the order they accuse to be the ‘Molly M’Guires.’”

The 1869 trials of Donahoe, Duffy and Prior ended in acquittals. The commonwealth charged Hester, but released him without trial on an order of nolle prosequi. In other words, the commonwealth decided to proceed no farther in its case against Patrick Hester.

But eight years later, the trials of Donahoe, Duffy and Prior had long since faded from public memory. Prosecutors brought forward a brand new witness nicknamed “Kelly the Bum” to testify against Hester, McHugh and Tully.

“He is all he confessed to be in court—a notorious highway robber and scoundrel,” Hester told a Boston reporter of Kelly’s testimony against him. “I cannot say why he went against me unless … he was bribed.”

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“My Dear Friends,” Hester wrote to McHugh and Tully two days before the Bloomsburg executions. “I suppose [this] is about my last writing on this earth, as I believe our time in this world is short, and may God prepare us for the next and better world.”

Hester told of court proceedings against him in Bloomsburg in February 1877 during the second Rea murder trial. He described the testimony of three prosecution witnesses against him, concluding “every … one that swore against me at the February Court swore false.”

“The reason I write this,” Hester told his codefendants, “is to let you know that before I die I will relate these facts and the false perjury that has been sworn against me. I do declare and will declare that I am not guilty of the murder of A. W. Rea, that I never got up that job or plot that has been sworn against me and that both of you know.”

Hester had been a respected leader within the Irish Catholic community. This grandfather had credibility. If he issued a dying statement from the gallows, many would believe him.

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As Hester prepared his declaration, John Kehoe, alleged “King of the Molly Maguires,” was gathering momentum to stay the signing of his death warrant. With Hester’s published letter of innocence, Franklin Gowen risked losing even more support for his ongoing prosecutions.

If Hester gave a statement from the gallows, newspapermen would record it for publication. A wider populace might then give credence to what the regional Irish Catholic population already believed: that many, if not all, of the AOH men hanged as “Molly Maguires” were innocent of the crimes charged against them. Gowen’s “Molly Maguire” juggernaut might be halted.

A large crowd gathered for the Bloomsburg executions. Those who came to gawk at death by strangulation were fairly assured that event would take place not once, but three times. But even those spectators were likely unaware of the plan concocted to thwart Hester’s effort to issue his final statement.

A Philadelphia daily reported the scene from the gallows: “The priests recited the offertory rapidly, while from the window of the cell that McHugh had just left a party of young girls, admitted by a Coal and Iron policeman, laughed and chattered.”

“We do not know who they were nor do we wish to,” a Bloomsburg newspaper said of the women. “They were probably among those who are a disgrace to their sex.”

Whatever the occupation of the women admitted to McHugh's cell in Bloomsburg Prison by one of Gowen's private policemen, they made themselves useful as Hester spoke his last words. “The girls from the cell window chattered louder,” the Philadelphia paper reported. Whatever Hester tried to impart, no one in the crowd heard his words clearly. The commotion the women created succeeded. No newspaper could give a clear account of Hester’s dying statement.

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“[M]ay God direct every one to do what is right, and may God forgive them that is [sic] the cause of my being here,” Hester had written two days before to McHugh and Tully. “What I feel most sorry about is my poor family to be left desolate, poor and forlorn … And as for death, I am not afraid, for I am almost tired of this sinful world, for they are after my life these good many years. All that troubles me about dying is to die of what I am not guilty of, and that both of you know, and may God in His mercy do what is just and right to all.”

Of Hester’s last words, the Chicago Tribune recorded only this statement: “As God is my witness I am innocent.”

It is doubtful, given what Pennsylvania’s Irish Catholics had endured by this time, that even the use of the "chatter" of prostitutes to obscure Hester’s dying declaration would have surprised him.

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Coming July 15, 2011 — "The Stories Were All Lies": Pinkerton, McParlan and Sherlock Holmes Tell a Tale of the "Molly Maguires"

Franklin Gowen Argues:

"Men Were Not Created Equal"

Both the Miners’ Journal in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, and the Reading Eagle reported in full Franklin Gowen’s stirring words to an assembly at Pottsville in 1878: “The Declaration of Independence affirmed that all men are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”*

But Gowen, president of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, begged to differ with our country’s founders. “Men were not created equal,” this Irish Episcopalian said flatly. Only one distinction, he insisted, separated men: “the distinction between mind and matter, between the men who labored with their heads and those who labored with their hands.”

“There [are] two great classes of people in this world,” Gowen thundered, “men of genius, or intellectual men, and those who [are] not so, the men of labor."

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It was early April 1878 in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania. Pottsville’s town fathers—its self-proclaimed “white men”—were in the mood for a spring celebration.

The previous year had seen the execution of 11 Irish Catholic men, all officers or members of the “Ancient Order of Hibernians” (AOH), on the gallows in three counties for so-called “Molly Maguire” crimes.

Just the previous week had seen the hangings of four more AOH men, including three powerful county officers of the benevolent order. All four AOH men protested their innocence of the crimes charged against them.

Peter McHugh and Patrick Tully asserted their innocence at sentencing hearings. Patrick Hester declared his on the gallows, before God and man. Thomas Fisher, “as guiltless as an unborn child” of the crime charged against him, did the same.

The efforts of these AOH men had been aborted. The efforts of Gowen’s “Coal Combination,” the cartel of regional railroad and coal interests, against all populist organization—union, political and social—had succeeded brilliantly.

The commonwealth’s “Molly Maguire” prosecutions, based on evidence supplied by Pinkerton operatives in Gowen’s employ, had spread even to the western part of the state. Those prosecutions now disrupted the bituminous coal counties of Allegheny and Westmoreland.

Gowen’s prosecutions, engineered by private detectives and enabled by private police, had made a mockery of the constitutionally protected rights of Irish Catholic defendants. But not one attorney had successfully challenged Gowen’s autocratic abuse of the courts.

By April 1878 Gowen, generator of Pennsylvania’s “Molly Maguire” juggernaut, had cleared the field to make any assertion he wanted. To pursue his vendetta against the AOH men, the industrialist had set aside the U.S. Constitution.

He had already upended one protective icon of American liberties. He had no problem now shattering even the bedrock document of U.S. identity—its Declaration of Independence.

To Franklin Gowen, prosecutor of Pennsylvania’s “Molly Maguires,” the laws of the United States simply did not apply.

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Judge David Green introduced Gowen to the “large and brilliant audience” assembled that April evening for the Atheneum Anniversary at Pottsville’s Academy of Music. From the audience, Judge Cyrus Pershing applauded warmly. These two judges, along with Gowen, had helped send Schuylkill’s AOH men to the gallows.

Pottsville’s Atheneum, its gentlemen’s literary society, had been founded just one year before, amidst wholesale signings of death warrants for Irish Catholics convicted as “Molly Maguires.” Judges and prosecutors who secured those convictions joined now to celebrate their literary society’s first anniversary. They did so with Gowen’s speech. The Eagle subtitled it “ALLEGED EVILS OF TRADES UNIONS.”

Gowen gave this speech just four days after Thomas Fisher declared himself “guiltless as an unborn child” on the gallows. The night of the speech, Gowen strutted with self-importance, as he had as prosecutor in so many “Molly Maguire” trials. He confided to those assembled: “in the many conflicts he had had with Mollie Maguires, secret societies and investigating committees he had formed a very low opinion of his opponents, who had played the part of labor reformers.”

Exactly one week before, the executions of three powerful AOH men had convulsed the region. These Irishmen could no longer plague the Coal Combination with their challenges of collective bargaining, union solidarity, legislative investigations or benevolent associations.

The railroad president felt in the mood to crow. And crow he did, setting aside even the might of the icon of U.S. independence.

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Years before, Gowen had made clear his belief in the “five great races of men.” In Gowen’s personal—and peculiar—ideology, “the Celts” comprised a distinct and separate race. The role of Irish Catholics—to this aristocrat—was not to lead, but to serve.

And the “true happiness of every man,” Gowen puffed now to society members, “and especially of the laboring man, was to be accomplished only by individual effort, not by striving collectively.” Trade unions destroyed confidence between employer and employee by "making both subject to the domination of an irresponsible society led by inferior men.”

In a region where Irish Catholics comprised much of the “laboring class,” Gowen’s speech was a marvel of arrogance, drenched in thinly veiled bigotry. But 15 Irishmen were already dead on the gallows. Few would rise to challenge him now.

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The glittering assembly that heard Gowen’s speech held both members of the Atheneum society and stockholders of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad. Many enjoyed wealth due in part to the efforts of seven-year-old slate pickers.

St. Clair’s Hickory Colliery, just a few miles from Pottsville’s Academy of Music, employed some of these boys. They worked in conditions of unimaginable deprivation. By the time Gowen gave his Pottsville speech, no trade union remained to protect them. Gowen’s efforts, and those of the Coal Combination, had destroyed unionism in Pennsylvania’s anthracite region.

The gentlemen in Pottsville gave Gowen’s effort on the “ALLEGED EVILS OF TRADE UNIONS” a thunderous applause. They applauded too, Gowen’s subversion of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. That document lay in tatters under their feet. Their applause helped scatter its contents.

A few miles away, the desperate lives of the slate pickers continued, unchallenged by “labor reformers.”

And the next year and a half would see the death of six more AOH men on the gallows.

For in Pennsylvania’s coal fields, as Gowen assured Pottsville’s finest citizens, “Men were not created equal.”

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Coming July 1, 2011 — “Before I Die I Will Relate These Facts": Patrick Hester's Dying Statement