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Hellraisers Journal – February 6, 1914
Trinidad, Colorado – Mary Thomas Held in Filthy Cell
SINGING IN JAIL THROUGH BROKEN WINDOW
Mary Thomas, noted singer and resident of the Ludlow Tent Colony, was one of the women arrested on January 22nd, the day that General Chase tumbled from his horse and ordered his troops to “Ride Down the Women!” Soon her two little daughters, three and four, were brought to her, and the three of them were held in the filthy cold cell for eleven days.
Her crime was talking back to an officer who had ordered her to move off the sidewalk from where she had been watching the parade. She told him:
You go on and go wash your dirty clothes you have on before you order me off of the sidewalk.
The militiaman began to pull her and she fought back using her fingernails on him. She was taken to jail where she placed a call to Louie Tikas at the Ludlow Tent Colony to let him know of her arrest.
At night she stood at the broken window and sang beautiful arias to her supporters gathered outside in the ally. She gives this account:
Then the hundreds of men prisoners in the basement jail…joined in. It almost drove the police and military out of their minds. It caught on through town, and soon all you could hear was “Union Forever” throughout Trinidad. I continued this procedure daily. The crowds came, and grew bigger and bigger. Finally it got so that the police had to disperse them. This made them angry and they would break the jail windows. It was no use to replace the panes, for they would just be broken again the next day.
Apparently, the little girls also caused some trouble in the jail cell. Mrs. Thomas tells the story of her release:
In the middle of the night two officers came rattling the door. “What are you trying to do?” they yelled. I didn’t know what they were talking about having been wakened out of a sound sleep. Then I noticed that the place was swimming in water. My children must not have turned off the tap. A mopping crew came immediately, supervised by a guard.A few hours later the jailer and another man unlocked our door and said angrily, “Get out!” “What? Without notice?” I said jokingly. “Get out, and take that wrecking crew with you!” I lost no time in obeying that welcome command, and we headed for the union headquarters.
Note: Newsclip from The Rocky Mountain News of January 23, 1914.
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MARY THOMAS DESCRIBES COMPANY TOWN
Mary Thomas, the greet-singer at the Ludlow Tent Colony, came from Wales with her two little daughters last July. Her husband, Tom, picked her up at the Trinidad train depot, and on the way back to the Delagua mining camp, he warned her in a whisper, “Don’t talk about anything important within hearing of that stool pigeon driver for the company.” As they approached the camp he cautioned her, “Don’t be nervous if the mine guards question you. I’ll answer their questions.”
It was dark when they arrived at that camp, and two big guards shined their lights into the automobile, inspecting Mary and the two little girls. Tom was thoroughly interrogated and had to explain to the satisfaction of the mine guards that he was bringing his wife and children into the camp. Finally, they were permitted to enter.
Mary states that she was completely demoralized when she saw the tumbled down shack that was to be her home. The door opened directly onto the dirt street in front of the house. There was no front yard and no porch, only a block of wood for a step. The cupboard was broken, the chairs were rickety, and the walls were lined with thin cardboard, torn and sagging in several places. Should a fire ever get started, she thought, the shack would go up in flames like a tinderbox.
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SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote Mother Jones, Ladies Women, NYT p3, May 23, 1914
https://www.newspapers.com/image/20380177/
Jan 22 Trinidad CO Sabers Slash, Chase v Women, RMN p1, Jan 23, 1914
https://www.genealogybank.com/doc/newspapers/image/v2:12C601A5C4B97518@GB3NEWS-1478F605C13207C0@2420156-1477664960360860@0
Buried Unsung
Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre
-by Zeese Papanikolas
U of Nebraska Press, 1991
https://archive.org/details/buriedunsungloui0000papa/mode/1up?view=theater
-pages 172-3: Mary Thomas Arrested at parade for Mother Jones
after “Ride Down the Women”
https://archive.org/details/buriedunsungloui0000papa/page/172/mode/1up?view=theater&q=%22mary+thomas%22
Those Damn Foreigners
-by Mary T. O’Neal
Minerva Book, 1971
https://books.google.com/books/about/Those_Damn_Foreigners.html?id=5UN9AAAAMAAJ
See also:
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday January 24, 1914
Jan. 22-Trinidad, Colorado
-General Chase Orders Cavalrymen: “Ride Down the Woman!”
Feb 18, 1914 – The Rocky Mountain News
-re Testimony of Mary Thomas, states she was held in county jail x11 days.
https://www.genealogybank.com/doc/newspapers/image/v2:12C601A5C4B97518@GB3NEWS-147964BB6A4C75F0@2420182-1477B8E992D14A90@11-1477B8E992D14A90
Conditions in the Coal Mines of Colorado.
Hearings before a subcommittee of the Committee on mines and mining,
House of Representatives…pursuant to H. res. 387, a resolution authorizing and directing the Committee…to make an investigation…
p794: Testimony of Mary Thomas of Ludlow
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hj1e84&seq=808
Tag: Colorado Coalfield Strike of 1913-1914
https://weneverforget.org/tag/colorado-coalfield-strike-of-1913-1914/
Photograph Mary Hannah Thomas about 1914:
https://digital.denverlibrary.org/digital/collection/p15330coll22/id/35186/
Mary Hannah Williams Thomas O’Neal (1887 – after 1974)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Thomas_O%27Neal
For more on Mary Thomas O’Neal:
Mary Thomas O’Neal was one of the few Ludlow survivors who left a first-person account, published as Those Damn Foreigners in 1971. As Martelle observes in an end note, her memoir “differs radically” from the testimony she gave shortly after the massacre; Papanikolas had similar doubts about the reliability of her memory when he interviewed her; and the oral history comes with the caveat that she herself was aware that her memory was deteriorating. But there is no doubt that she was a coal miner’s wife (though she was separated from her husband during the strike); that she was active in the union cause, lending her talent as a singer to its recruiting parties; and that she was in Ludlow camp with her children the day of the massacre.
SOURCE
“Notebook: The Ludlow Massacre Revisited”
https://steamthing.com/2009/01/notebook-the-ludlow-massacre-revisited.html
Thomas (O’Neal), Mary (audio interview)
Berger Gluck, Sherna, interviewer
https://csulb-dspace.calstate.edu/handle/10211.3/217487
https://csulb-dspace.calstate.edu/handle/10211.3/217488
For more on the company towns of the Southern Colorado Coalfields, see:
Killing for Coal
-by Thomas G. Andrews
Harvard University Press, Sep 1, 2010
https://books.google.com/books?id=vaWiBwAAQBAJ
-re “closed camps,” see:
https://books.google.com/books?id=vaWiBwAAQBAJ&pg=PT139&dq=closed+camps+usually+encircled+by+barbed+wire+fences.+Camp+marshals+and+mine+guards+patrolled&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj-ytWN1ZeEAxXjm2oFHVrHDqIQ6AF6BAgQEAI#v=onepage&q=closed%20camps%20usually%20encircled%20by%20barbed%20wire%20fences.%20Camp%20marshals%20and%20mine%20guards%20patrolled&f=false
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