Myths, Legends, Books & Coffee Pots: Five minute history - The Coal and Iron Police by Jennifer M. Lane

Five minute history - The Coal and Iron Police

By Jennifer M. Lane

My favorite thing about reading historical fiction is being inspired by little pieces of history that leap off the page. Quite often, I find myself launched into an unexpected, adjacent realm of research, like the time I was a teenage girl and found myself researching Napoleon's days in exile after reading about Waterloo.

As a historical fiction writer, I often find myself in an eddy of research that informs the work but doesn't end up on the page. Such was the case in Downriver - with the Coal and Iron Police.

Though the facts and town of Downriver are fictional, the circumstances and background that shape the story are rooted in fact. Safety and worker conditions and the history of worker uprisings are central to the plot of Downriver, and none of those things can be studied without mention of the Coal and Iron Police.

In 1868, Pennsylvania granted companies the right to create their own law enforcement to uphold their own rules. It seems strange by today's standard, that a state would allow a company to run its own law enforcement, but at the time, there were no state-level police efforts. Only counties and towns managed law enforcement. As coal patch towns popped up in the wilderness, it made sense to both the coal company and the state to allow for privatized law enforcement to protect company interests. But it was deadly for many workers. What emerged was the Coal and Iron Police (C&IP).

What looked good on paper was put to sinister use. Underpaid workers who faced horrible working conditions, whose livelihoods that were essentially indentured servitude, engaged in strikes. Coal bosses used the Coal and Iron Police for strike-breaking and to evict striking families from their homes. For example, in 1910, the C&IP were used as strikebreakers in Westmoreland, evicting workers from their houses and forcing them to live in tents for a winter. During the long strike, 16 people - miners and their wives - were shot and killed, some while sleeping in their tents while others were trampled by horses.

This endless fight for safety, workers rights, and fair pay would have framed much of Charlotte’s father’s life.

Twenty-three years before Downriver takes place, the Molly Maguires were tried for a years-long string of violence and murder in their actions against the coal bosses. Frank Morris would have been in his twenties when Jack Kehoe was hanged after being found guilty of leading the Molly Maguires on a deadly retribution spree.

And only three years before our story takes place, in 1897, the Lattimer Massacre occurred. An estimated 15,000 mine workers from coal companies throughout Luzerne, Carbon, and Schuylkill Counties protested dangerous working conditions, unpaid overtime, and high prices at the company store by marching, which led to a strike.

The Luzerne County sheriff declared a state of civil disorder and deputized 87 men - mostly managers in coal companies - and armed them with rifles and bullets. He warned the unarmed, striking workers of the Pardee Company not to march toward Lattimer - just west of modern-day Hazelton - but they did anyway.

When the 400 striking men arrived, they encountered a band of about 150 Coal & Iron Police and volunteers. After a brief scuffle, shots were fired. History disagrees about who fired first, but the 400 unarmed striking workers scattered while the sheriff's men shot them in their backs. Nineteen men were murdered, 38 severely wounded, and the massacre made headlines around the country.

It was this landscape into which I painted Frank Morris, a quiet man who stood on a soapbox and asked peacefully for workers’ rights in a time after violence failed. But we follow his firebrand of a daughter, part of the first generation after an era of violence, as she seeks to put right the wrongs in her path.

Downriver
By Jennifer M. Lane

Publication Date: May 28, 2024

Publisher: Pen & Key Publishing

Pages: 344 pages

Genre: Historical

A sulfur sky poisoned her family and her heart. Now revenge tastes sweeter than justice.

It’s 1900. In a Pennsylvania coal town tainted by corruption and pollution, Charlotte's world collapses when her parents meet a tragic end. Sent to a foster family in a Maryland fishing village, she’s fueled by grief and embarks on a relentless quest for justice against the ruthless coal boss, Nels Pritchard.

But Charlotte is no ordinary girl. She shares the fiery spirit of her father, whose powerful speeches inspired worker riots. With a burning desire for vengeance, she sets out to uncover the truth behind Pritchard's crimes, unearthing a shocking connection between the town's toxic air and the lifeless fish washing up on the shore of her Chesapeake Bay foster town.

To expose the truth, Charlotte builds a network of unexpected allies. There are gutsy suffragists, a literary society of teenage girls willing to print the truth… and Weylan. The captivating young man lost his own family to Pritchard’s poison. He offers support, but Charlotte questions his true motives when he lures her to break the law. Could she be falling into a dangerous trap, leading her to a fate worse than poison?

With her unwavering spirit and determination, Charlotte must forge alliances and navigate a web of treachery before Pritchard seeks his own ruthless revenge.

The newest book by award-winning author Jennifer M. Lane is perfect for fans of Jeannette Walls’ Hang the Moon and the fiery protagonist in The Hunger Games. Join Charlotte in this small town, coming-of-age dystopian historical saga as she finds resilience, courage, and triumph in her search for identity, independence, and her true home.

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Jennifer M. Lane

A Maryland native and Pennsylvanian at heart, Jennifer M. Lane holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Barton College and a master’s in liberal arts with a focus on museum studies from the University of Delaware, where she wrote her thesis on the material culture of roadside memorials.

Jennifer is a member of the Authors Guild and the Historical Novel Society. Her first book, Of Metal and Earth, won the 2019 Next Generation Indie Book Award for First Novel and was a Finalist in the 2018 IAN Book of the Year Awards in the category of Literary / General Fiction. She is also the author of Stick Figures from Rockport, and the six book series, The Collected Stories of Ramsbolt.

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