This 1871 illustration from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper depicts a striking anthracite mineworker in Scranton, PA scrawling a warning to so-called “black legs” – non-union miners who crossed the picket line and returned to work.

The scene is set during a miners’ strike in Pennsylvania’s Coal Region in the spring of 1871, when labor tensions sometimes spilled over into intimidation and violence.

The message is blunt: “The next thing you will be all shut in,” written beside the drawing of a coffin. These threats, known as coffin notices, were meant to frighten strikebreakers, mine bosses, and informants into silence or compliance.

These notices were delivered against the wishes of the Workingmen’s Benevolent Association (WBA), the early miners’ union that was headed up by John Siney.

“The WBA never wavered from its condemnation of violence,” writes historian Kevin Kenny of the union in Making Sense of the Molly Maguires. “The actions of a militant few, the union leaders warned, might destroy the labor movement as a whole.”

Coffin notices became one of the more notorious symbols of 19th century labor conflict in the Coal Region. Although they are often linked to the Molly Maguire violence of the 1860s and 1870s, this form of intimidation appeared at other moments of unrest as well.

---

Read more about the Coal Region in the 1870s

Illustration of threats against non-union mineworkers in Schuylkill County| 1871

“The hour of doom” – The Molly Maguire executions in Pottsville on June 21, 1877

A letter in defense of the Molly Maguires | 1877

“This is a thriving little village” – Williamstown in 1871

---