Word: mcparlan
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Agent Provocateur. The man who broke the Molly Maguires was Franklin Benjamin Gowen, president of the Philadelphia & Reading Coal & Iron Co., whose ancestors had come from Ireland's Protestant north; and he used another Irishman to penetrate the Mollies. His choice for the job was James McParlan, a gifted, gabby little Pinkerton detective who was as ready with his fists as with his wits...
Violence in the coal fields was actually diminishing at the time when Pinkerton Agent McParlan, posing as a murderer on the run from Buffalo police, wormed his way into the high councils of the Molly Maguires. It was later charged that McParlan acted as an agent provocateur and deliberately whipped up bloodshed. The attacks also changed character: from reprisals against brutal or dishonest mine bosses, the Mollies turned to capricious, Mafialike assaults on anyone who offended one of their band...
Docile Wave. When McParlan threw off his disguise in 1876, after three years as a Molly Maguire, he had enough evidence to send 20 men to the gallows. By this time, the Mollies were in a bad way, denounced by their Roman Catholic priests, shunned by decent citizens, swamped in a new wave of supposedly more docile immigrants from eastern Europe. The trials were swift and of doubtful legality. No Roman Catholic was allowed on a jury, and the prosecution was headed by Mine Owner Franklin Gowen himself. Several of the condemned men were almost certainly innocent; one was hanged...