Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy - Eamon Javers [24]
Allan Pinkerton told Gowen that the operation had to be conducted with the utmost secrecy. He didn’t want anyone other than Gowen to read the Pinkerton reports, and he didn’t want the company to keep any records that would show it had hired the Pinkertons. He knew the Mollies had deep contacts inside the company, and might even be able to read Gowen’s own documents. Pinkerton began putting together a plan to infiltrate the Mollies with one of his own men. He knew he’d need an Irish-Catholic immigrant capable of passing as a hardened miner. And the recruit would have to be able to function even while fearing for his own life. Pinkerton settled on James McParland, a thin, red-haired twenty-nine-year-old immigrant from Ulster who had just begun work as a detective.
Pinkerton told McParland he could refuse the mission with no penalty to his career, but McParland agreed to the job. To keep up the secret, McParland left the Pinkerton service, and took the cover name “James McKenna.” Posing as an out-of-work immigrant, he made his own way to the coal country. He began to frequent local saloons, drinking heavily and spouting off publicly against English landlords. In Pottsville, Pennsylvania, he settled into the Sheridan House, where he bought a round of drinks and impressed the locals with his singing voice and dancing skill. The owner of the saloon, charmed, gave McParland a letter of introduction to Muff Lawler, who was the leader, or “body master,” of the Mollies in Shenandoah.
McParland told Lawler and his crew that he had been affiliated with secret societies in Ireland but had been out of contact for some time. He explained his ready access to cash by telling them it was the spoils from a murder in Buffalo, New York. And he covered his need to duck away frequently to meet with his Pinkerton supervisor by explaining that he was a counterfeiter and needed to meet a contact. He would show off real money to his new friends, telling them that it was his counterfeit stash and daring them to spot any imperfections.
Eventually, McParland landed a real coal mining job, hauling twenty tons of coal in each ten-hour day. And on April 14, 1874, McParland came up for formal initiation into the Molly Maguires. The local group met at Muff Lawler’s house, and McParland waited downstairs under supervision of a Molly officer. McParland couldn’t be sure that he was really there for an initiation at all. Could the Mollies have figured out that he was a spy? Could they have a spy of their own inside the sprawling Pinkerton organization? It was impossible to be sure. But shortly he was led into a room upstairs, where he knelt down, swore an oath, made the sign of the cross, and paid the treasurer $3.
McParland remained in the society, before long as elected secretary of his local chapter, through 1875, dodging requests that he kill or commit crimes, and narrowly escaping discovery. The brutal Mollies would surely kill him instantly if they discovered that he was a Pinkerton spy.
Tension rose as the company sent in scab labor to break a miners’ strike. McParland talked his fellow Mollies out of blowing up a railroad bridge across the Susquehanna River, but despite his efforts toward peace, agitators still managed to burn a telegraph office and derail a train. McParland sneaked off to meet his Pinkerton supervisor and advised him to send in a force of police to control the area. He had already requested that the Pinkertons have one man arrested—if only to keep him safe from the Mollies, who wanted him dead. McParland broke away for a trip to Chicago to debrief Pinkerton on the operation, which had now been under way for a year and a half.
McParland wasn’t able to prevent the Mollies from spiraling into an increasingly violent rampage. He could speak out against some proposed killings, but if he opposed every crime that was planned, he’d arouse the suspicion of the gang. Despite McParland’s best