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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday May 20, 1914
Chicago, Illinois – Women of Ludlow Tell of Massacre of Tent Colony Citizens
From the Chicago Day Book, Last Edition, of May 19, 1914:
Note: The Ludlow Massacre was perpetrated by the Colorado state militia against the colonists on April 20th. The correct names of the three miners’ wives are Mary Thomas, Pearl Jolly, and Mary Petrucci.
The article continues:
They left this noon for Washington, where they will tell President Wilson he must intervene to, stop civil war in Colorado.
Lindsey said:
The president of the United States is the only power that can preserve peace now in our state. The governor, the legislature, the federal troops, the proposed mediation bodies have all failed.
The president must force arbitration on the ground of military necessity. This is the positive and unmistakable sentiment of the people of Colorado.
Mrs. [Pearl] Jolly, who was fired upon though wearing a Red Cross uniform while caring for wounded during a truce, said that when she left Ludlow last week, there were rumors that companies of armed guards were being former secretly by the coal companies.
[She said:]
If they come again to shoot women and children, they will find us ready for them. The women will take guns and fight.
I saw the dead body of Louis Tikas, the Greek. I saw where his head was split by some kind of a club. I saw the mark of a heel where somebody tramped on his face after he was dead. And I saw the four bullet holes in his back where they shot him after clubbing him to death.
I would not have believed things could happen as terrible as I saw. The soldiers seemed to go crazy. After they had killed women and children and burned the tent colony, they shot at everything that moved. Chickens, dogs, anything that moved, was a mark for them.
Mrs. M. H. Thomas, who was jailed eleven days in Trinidad, spoke to a gathering at Hull House. She said she has never been able to find out on what charge she was jailed and her case will be presented to the British government of which she is a subject
[Mary Thomas said:]
We came to this country ten months ago from Wales where my husband was a union miner. We had about $1,500 saved and many gifts and keepsakes from the old country. Everything we had was looted, taken away as plunder by the militiamen.
I had a gold bracelet that was given me by my mother when I was twelve years old. I had a Bible my father gave me when I joined the church. I had a set of silverware given me by a society of friends. All these things, about 150 presents, were taken.
Mrs. Thomas was a surprise to the newspaper men and social workers who talked with her. She looks like Billie Burke, the actress, except that her features are perhaps more rugged. She is wistful and has brown hair with a slightly reddish tint. Her two children, [Olga] and Rachel, were with her.
[Mary Thomas continued:]
On the Sunday night before the Terrible Day we had a dance. No preachers would come to us, so we had never had any church services, though I am still a member. On that night three militiamen were seen by several of us. They were scouting around the premises of the tent colony, getting ready for the next day.
I was in bed at 9 o’clock the next morning when I heard shots and people crying. I knew then that the threats of some of the drunken soldiers were coming true. I called to women and children to climb down in a well. It was 150 feet deep with ladders running down. About 50 of us hung there near the camp. It was between us and the militiamen. We ran out and told the engineer to go slow so that his train would protect us while we went down to the arroyo nearby.
That night a party of us women with our children walked eight miles to a ranch. We had no food between Sunday night and late Monday night. Instead of sleeping Monday night, we thought of our men up on the hills without water. We got pails and carried water five miles to them. Tuesday we were sick and broken-hearted.
All of the women writhed at their inability to tell all that happened.
Five miles out from Ludlow, they said, one woman in an escaping party gave birth to a child-on an open plain-no house in sight. In some way, through the chaos and clamor of the night, the child was saved and is alive. No trace of the mother has been heard of.
[Emphasis added.]
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SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote Mary Petrucci, Joe’s Little Hammer, NY Tb p7, Feb 4, 1915
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1915-02-04/ed-1/seq-7/
The Day Book
(Chicago, Illinois)
-May 19, 1914, Last Edition
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045487/1914-05-19/ed-2/seq-1/
See also:
Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday May 12, 1914
Mary Petrucci of Ludlow: “She touched and called to her three children, and they were all dead.”
Category: Mary Petrucci
https://weneverforget.org/category/mary-petrucci/
Testimony of Pearl Jolly, CIR page 6347
https://books.google.com/books?id=x-geAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA6347&dq=pearl+jolly+ludlow&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwic28zCiJyGAxW548kDHUQ-B7cQ6AF6BAgEEAI#v=onepage&q=pearl%20jolly%20ludlow&f=false
Find a Grave: Mary Pearl Waters Jolly
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/76635440/mary_pearl_jolly
“The Nice People of Trinidad” by Max Eastman
-from The Masses, July 1914
https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/eastman/works/1910s/trinid.htm
Pearl Jolly says that after she escaped from the blazing tents at Ludlow, she spent the night with a crowd of children, out of bullet-shot, in the cellar of Baye’s ranch, a mile away…..
Hellraisers Journal – February 6, 1914
Trinidad, Colorado–Mary Thomas, of Ludlow Tent Colony, Held in Filthy Jail Cell, Keeps on Singing Through Broken Window
Billie Burke
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billie_Burke
Tag: Ludlow Massacre
https://weneverforget.org/tag/ludlow-massacre/
Tag: Colorado Coalfield Strike of 1913-1914
https://weneverforget.org/tag/colorado-coalfield-strike-of-1913-1914/
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The Women and Children of Ludlow – Tom Breiding