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Digging for truth

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

A recently inscribed historical marker will also point to the site, known as Duffy’s Cut, in the Chester County suburb of Malvern.
But it’s what is buried in the soil below the marker that could reveal new details of a tragedy that some believe was compounded by bigotry.
Dr. William Watson of nearby Immaculata University has been leading the effort to find out whether the workers died of cholera or, in some cases, from deliberate negligence or violence from local vigilante groups.
Watson has now been given the all-clear to begin digging at the site.
“We have been given the go-ahead by the state archaeologist and hope to start work this weekend,” Watson said. “We dedicated the marker in June and we’ll be it placing it at this site on Sunday, Aug. 15.”
The burial site covers roughly an acre. The rail line running beside it still carries SEPTA commuter trains, Amtrak and freight trains. The site is today owned by a condominium association, which has given its approval for the dig.
The exact whereabouts of the remains of the Irish workers within the boundaries of the site is unknown, so the excavation will cover the entire area in some detail.
“We’re going to start in a part of the site where there are three very suspicious, oblong mounds that look manmade,” Watson said.
Area archaeologists Paul and Hillery Murdoch will lead the excavation work. The site will be divided into grids and the dig will be carried out using what Watson described as very delicate tools.
“We’re very excited at the prospect of starting the dig,” Watson, a member of AOH Div. 4 in Delaware County, said.
Watson believes that some of the Irish workers might have been buried alive during the stage of cholera known as cold cholera. During this stage of the disease it is possible to appear dead though the individual is still alive.
Back in 1832, medical practitioners often made the mistake of pronouncing live people dead, so coffins were frequently fitted with little bells to warn mourners of a resuscitated occupant within. The Irish rail workers, however, were not afforded the luxury of high-end caskets sporting such bells.
Their passing was also afforded scant attention by the local newspapers at the time. Watson has studied an issue of the National Gazette and Literary Register dated Sept. 8, 1832. The paper, published in Philadelphia, reports on outbreaks of cholera at the time affecting railroad workers.
“But there’s nothing on the 57 deaths of the Irish workers and the Chester County papers have no record of their deaths either,” Watson said.
One other story missing from the record of the time when the Irish workers died is the activity of anti-immigrant vigilante groups in the area.
But Watson has separately laid hands on records of one group’s meetings at the time of the 57 deaths. The group had a fancy name, but one that hinted at a carte blanche for rough justice and perhaps even murder. It was called the “East Whiteland Horse Company for the Detection of Horse Thieves and the Recovery of Stolen Horses.”
According to Watson, it was simply enough for a group like this to just point a finger at someone and accuse him of horse thieving, a capital crime.
Immigrants like the Irish workers could be singled out in this way even if innocent.
“These guys were the law; this was a hostile environment,” Watson said.
Watson said he thinks that the Duffy’s Cut dig will take a couple of months. Remains uncovered will be studied by the county coroner’s office and possibly by a cultural anthropologist from Ireland.
There is also, he said, the possibility that facial reconstruction might be carried out if intact skulls are recovered.
“I hope we find all 57 skulls,” Watson said.
Once the studies have been conducted there are plans for a memorial Mass for the victims in Philadelphia’s St. Peter and Paul Cathedral and a reburial with proper honors in a cemetery in the city.
“Once we find any remains, the coroner will be called in and all bones recovered will be specially stored in non-acidic paper for removal and study,” Watson said.
Then, he hopes, it will be possible to determine if the men died from one cause, cholera, or multiple causes.
The life of an Irish railroad worker in the first half of the 19th century was harsh and premature death frequently came from both natural and man made causes.
Death from cholera was never a surprise.
Just over four years ago, on an April day in 2000, Amtrak trains traveling all over the U.S. sounded their whistles in remembrance of 53 Irish railroad workers who perished from the disease during construction of an Illinois railroad in the early 1850s.
In conjunction with the salute, a 6-foot-high Celtic cross was dedicated at the site of two cemetery plots in the bucolic village of Funk’s Grove, where the Irish workers died during the winter of 1852-53.
In common with the Irish workers who died outside Philadelphia 20 years earlier, the Illinois dead also had to contend with a number of anti-Irish organizations then at work in their vicinity, including the Know Nothing party.
In contrast to the Duffy’s Cut victims, however, the Funk’s Grove dead were afforded burial in an area cemetery, an outcome that led to proper records of their deaths and burials being maintained for posterity.

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