FIGHT WITH TERRORISTS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12757, 29 September 1919, Page 2

FIGHT WITH TERRORISTS.

DETECTIVE’S WONDERFUL WORK. BREAKING UP THE MOLLY MAGUIRES* The death at Denver, United States of America, at the age of seven ty-fr»e, of James M’Parlan, the detective, recalls his wonderful work in breaking up the infamous Molly Maguire organisation in Pennsylvania in 187b. M’Parlan was an Ulsterman who emigrated to. America in 1863. and, having lost his Till in the Chicago lire of 1874, obtained a post as detective with Pinkerton's. The anthracite regions of Pennsylvania had been for some years completely terrorised by a secret society of desperadoes, known as Molly Maguires. Murder followed murder, dynamite, pistols, a falling pick, a dropping lift, a premature blast or a club were the methods used-- Superintendents fell at their posts almost- weekly, and railway and mine officials lived in terror of their lives and of tho lives of their wives and families. THIRTY THOUSAND ASSASSINS. The police were powerless, and at length Mr . Franklyn B. Qcrwen, the President of the Philadelphia and Beading Coal and Iron Company, invited M’Parlan to take a hand in breaking up the organisation, which had 30,000 members, with regnlar officers, assassination being their chief aim. His orders wore explicit. He was to discover the criminals who infested the coal regions. He was to leant of their inside workings, to give notice of intended outrages, to endeavour to warn those who were doomed, to point out tho offenders, and to give secret information which would secure their conviction.

Under the name of James M’Kenna, M’Parlan, a- slightly-built but muscular man of middle height, made his way to Pool Glutton. He tried to get a lodging at the village tavern, which appeared a promising starting-point for his investigations, but was thrown out as a tramp, and had to put up at a railway boarding-house. JOINED SECRET SOCIETY. He got a job running a train in the mines, and became one of tho Mollies. He gained everybody’s confidence; he was secretary for his local branch of the Maguires. He led mobs, fought fights; even once he led a gang of desperadoes against a colliery where bis own friends, the detectives, were waiting for them with loaded Winchesters —he did everything except be a detective, a least so far as the Mollies could gather. But day by day he got word back to headquarters. If he couldn’t get ink, he used the blue that his board-tng-house mistress had left front the week’s wash. He didn’t want to be seen buying ink. He kept Ids stamps in his boot leg for tho same safe reason. “MOLLIES” PASSWORDS. One day all over the country there a-ppeared the full ritual of the "Mollies and, all their signs and passwords. M’Parlan’s employers had deemed it wise to take the public into their confidence. Meanwhile, even the police were trying to trap the detective, whom, not knowing, they regarded as one of the leaders of the miscreants, and once he was severely clubbed for approaching too near Mr Go wen. His work was well done, and when the time came in 1876 there were seventy arrests, and M’Parlan gave his damning evidence. In the interval before the trial many attempts were • made on the detective’s me by mends of the prisoners, wno tried to poison him, throw hint down a mine-shaft, and to blow him up with dynamite as he stood in court. In the result eleven men were executed for murder, and many sentenced to imprisonment, while numbers fled tue country.

MINERS DASHED TO DEATH. ( t hen M ’ Parlan Appeared, but in 1594 he went to live in Denver, shattered m health and old before his time through the hardships ho had undergone. Nothing seemed less likelv than that ho should undertake detective v.ork again. But later a condition of things redrawing that, established by the Molly Maguires m Pennsylvania obtained in the Cmur d Aleno district of Idaho and m Colorado. There were frequent its. ss «■ Moo^*ss. , s?ib3j nT,fi Parlan ’ S services were enlisted Sh.ed G ! 'f Un , kramc a miner. He G b! tli admission to the inner circles of ors, and finally obtained a full confer “ from the Principal ringleader.