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women when on their raids.
    Philadelphians will find it interesting that in this last assumption, the Molly Maguires took on a form of the Irish practice of “mummery.” (During festivals, men would blacken their faces, wear women’s clothing and walk door-to-door demanding food, money or drink as payment for a performance.) 28
    In the coal region of Pennsylvania, a society of miners organized themselves in the same manner to intimidate the coal mine owners and bosses who they believed were abusing them and their sons in the mines. They tried to unionize legally and called strikes, but failed. They believed that seeking to present their grievances through the courts was a waste of time since judges, lawyers and policemen—who were mostly Welsh, German and English—deliberately caused delays and injustices because of their strong anti-Irish, anti-Catholic sentiments. As the miners became more frustrated, the Mollys’ activities became more violent, and the coal mine owners answered the violence in like manner.
    One Pinkerton agent, an Irish immigrant named James McParlan, went undercover in the Molly Maguires to spy on them. Based on his reports, and for the most part solely on his hearsay and testimony, twenty men were arrested and ten sent to the gallows.
    There isn’t much written about the Molly Maguires’ activities in Mauch Chunk, except that four men were convicted and hanged there in June 1877. They were convicted of killing two mine bosses. A Carbon County judge, Judge John P. Lavelle, later described the trial in this way:
    The Molly Maguire trials were a surrender of state sovereignty. A private corporation initiated the investigation through a private detective agency. A private police force arrested the alleged defenders, and private attorneys for the coal companies prosecuted them. The state provided only the courtroom and the gallows . 29
    On the day of the hangings, miners and their families gathered at the scaffold and stood in complete silence to show their support of the convicted men. Security was very high for these executions. The wife of one of the men who was to be hanged arrived just after the gates had closed, and despite the fact that she collapsed in sobs, begging to be allowed in, the guards would not allow it.
    No one knows for certain which of these men were truly guilty and which were “guilty by association.” Chances are good that both are true.
    One of the men hanged in Mauch Chunk that day was Alexander Campbell, a hotel owner and liquor distributor. He avowed his innocence throughout his trial. Campbell left his handprint on the wall of cell number seventeen in Mauch Chunk jail as he was being led to the gallows. He said that the handprint would remain forever as “proof of his words. That mark of mine will never be wiped out. It will remain forever to shame the county for hanging an innocent man.” After 130 years, the handprint still remains on the wall of the cell. According to several accounts, the wall has been painted over numerous times, yet the handprint reappears. To dispel the myth once and for all, the wall was torn down and rebuilt in 1920. When the sheriff went in to look at the new wall the next day, he was shocked to find the handprint had reappeared.
    The Slow Burn
    With other mines being opened and operated in the mountains of Pennsylvania and privately owned waterways being built to transport that coal, the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company needed to be competitive. After making the transportation of coal more practical on the Lehigh River, they had to convince the general public—especially Philadelphia society—to purchase it. They knew that once the prominent families of Philadelphia started using anthracite coal regularly, the rest of the region would follow.
    Anthracite coal was difficult to ignite and was inefficient as fuel in conventional fireplaces and stoves that had been designed to burn wood. Josiah White