Molly Maguires

Molly Maguires, an Irish secret society which during the ten years preceding 1877 terrorised the coal regions of Pennsylvania. The name was imported from Ireland, where it had been adopted by a branch of the Ribbonmen whose outrages by night were perpetrated in female disguise (cf. Trench's Realities of Irish Life, p. 82). The object of the organisation in Pennsylvania appears to have been to secure for its members, as far as possible, the exclusive political power in the eastern part of the state. Murders were committed in the open day, though much more usually by night; and the terror of the society was on all the coal country until, in 1876-77, a number of the leaders were convicted and executed, mainly by the evidence of a detective named McParlan, who had acted for three years as secretary of the Shenandoah division. See works by Pinkerton (New York, 1877) and Lucy (Lond. n.d.).