Crow Hill Mine

Fictional record. This page describes a mine from a fictional setting, not a real place. Information is based on the cited canon, with adaptations and interpretation distinguished where necessary. It is kept separate from the real MineArchive corpus — see Fictional.

Overview

The Crow Hill mine is the Vermissa Valley colliery whose manager and engineer are shot dead in front of a hundred miners in Part II of The Valley of Fear, Doyle's fictionalised account of the Molly Maguires. Described as 'a huge business which was in strong hands', it had kept 'some order and discipline during the long reign of terror' thanks to its 'energetic and fearless New England manager, Josiah H. Dunn', which is why the Scowrers' lodge, having blackmailed the valley's other companies into paying for protection, borrows five killers from a neighbouring lodge to make an example of it. The murders bring the mine 'into line with the other blackmailed and terror-stricken companies of the district'.

History

Doyle's Vermissa Valley is a landscape of 'coal-mining and iron-working settlements' whose sidings hold 'long lines of trucks piled with coal and iron ore', policed by 'mine police' raised by the railways and colliery owners, and ruled from the Union House by Bodymaster McGinty's Lodge 341 of the Ancient Order of Freemen, the Scowrers. The lodge lives on the collieries: Max Linder and Co. have paid five hundred dollars to be left alone, Walker Brothers' hundred is sent back with a demand for five and a threat to their winding gear, and 'we had to burn their breaker last year before they became reasonable'; the West Section Coaling Company pays an annual contribution; Archie Swindon has sold his mine and fled to New York rather than be 'a large mine owner under the power of a ring of blackmailers'. Brother Morris warns that the small owners are being driven out and replaced by great companies with directors in New York or Philadelphia, the West Gilmerton General Mining Company buying up the ironworks. The Crow Hill alone has held out. Five men sent by the County Delegate, Lawler and Andrews and three who join them at the lodge's boundary, take the trail to the Crow Hill at dawn; McMurdo and Scanlan follow and watch from a heap of slag as the steam whistle gives the ten-minute signal, the engineer Menzies, 'a great bearded Scotchman', comes out of the engine house to blow his whistle for the cages to be lowered, and the manager, 'a tall, loose-framed young man with a clean-shaved, earnest face', walks up to ask the loitering strangers who they are. Andrews shoots him in the stomach, a second shot drops him among the clinkers, and Menzies, rushing at the killers with an iron spanner, is 'met by two balls in the face'. The gang empties its six-shooters over the crowd and vanishes into the mist, and that night the lodge celebrates the killing of 'the manager and engineer of the Crow Hill mine' together with the murder in the Gilmerton district of William Hales of Stake Royal, a model employer who had paid off drunken lodge members. The reign of terror ends when McMurdo is revealed as the Pinkerton agent Birdy Edwards and the lodge is broken.

Workings

A shaft colliery with cages lowered on a steam whistle's signal, an engine house, a slag heap beside the pit head and a blackened path along which the day shift walks in; 'the ten-minute signal before the cages descended and the day's labour began'. The valley's other collieries have winding gear and breakers, the anthracite coal-cleaning plant the lodge burns down at Walker Brothers'.

Real-world mining concepts used here: Cage, Engine House

Closure

Not given; the narrative moves on to the fall of the lodge and, in the frame story, to Birdy Edwards's murder in England twenty years later.

What became of it

Working at the end of the American narrative in 1875.

Canon & adaptations

The Scowrers of Vermissa are Doyle's version of the Molly Maguires of the Pennsylvania anthracite region and McMurdo of the Pinkerton agent James McParland (Wikipedia); the mines and companies named in the novel are inventions. The first book edition (New York, 1915) was illustrated by Arthur I. Keller and the Strand serial (1914-15) by Frank Wiles.

Recorded claims

Each claim is marked with its basis — explicit canon, MineArchive inference, adaptation only, or fandom interpretation — and attached to the source(s) below. Where tellings disagree, both are kept.

• The Crow Hill was 'a huge business which was in strong hands', whose New England manager Josiah H. Dunn had kept some order and discipline during the long reign of terror. (explicit canon) ¹
• At the ten-minute whistle, with a hundred miners waiting for the cages, five Scowrers shot the manager dead and killed the engineer Menzies, who rushed them with an iron spanner, then fired over the crowd and vanished in the mist. (explicit canon) ¹
• The lodge rejoiced that the killings would bring the Crow Hill 'into line with the other blackmailed and terror-stricken companies of the district'. (explicit canon) ¹
• The lodge treasurer reported Max Linder and Co. paying five hundred dollars, Walker Brothers' hundred returned with a demand for five and a threat to their winding gear, their breaker burned the previous year, and the West Section Coaling Company's annual contribution. (explicit canon) ¹
• The same night three Vermissa men killed William Hales of Stake Royal, a model employer in the Gilmerton district who had paid off idle lodge members. (explicit canon) ¹
• The American narrative opens on 4 February 1875 with McMurdo's train journey up the valley. (explicit canon) ¹
• The Scowrers are loosely based on the Molly Maguires and McMurdo on the Pinkerton agent James McParland; the story ran in the Strand from September 1914 to May 1915. (MineArchive inference) ²

Sources

1. (primary canon) The Valley of Fear (1915), full text — Arthur Conan Doyle; Project Gutenberg edition
2. (interpretation) The Valley of Fear — Wikipedia

Record created: 9 September 2026 · Last researched: 9 September 2026