Irish Firm Offers Funeral Help

By Sean O’Driscoll

THE owner of an Irish funeral supply company has volunteered to help provide for the funerals of 57 Irish railroad workers whose bodies are due to be exhumed from a mass grave in Philadelphia. 

John A. Finlay, whose family runs a funeral supply service business from Ardee, Co. Louth, made his offer after last week’s Irish Voice article about the 57, who died in mysterious circumstances in 1832. 

Two history professors at Immaculata University in Pennsylvania, William Watson and John Ahtes, have made a detailed study of the case and believe the men may have been murdered by anti-immigrant vigilantes who blamed the Irish from spreading cholera. 

The men are officially listed by the Pennsylvania and Columbia railroad company as cholera victims, but the company spent decades covering up any details of the case, Watson said. 

The two are searching for the exact site of the mass grave, known to be located at an area called Duffy’s Cut near Malvern in southeast Pennsylvania. 

Last Friday, the researchers joined the Pennsylvania Emerald Society in dedicating a second marker over a small area where the remains are believed to be buried. Both groups are hoping that an exhumation of the bodies will explain the men’s deaths, and will also allow for a proper burial in a cemetery. 

A Pennsylvania cemetery has dedicated grave sites for the men’s remains after they are exhumed. 

Finlay said that he would be delighted to help out with supplies for the burials of the men, who were mostly likely single and may have been Gaelic-speaking and not used to working in a money economy. 

The Finlay family, who run a website called irishfunerals.com, have an expanding funeral supply business in the U.S. and say they have the organization in place to provide help for the funerals whenever they take place. 

Watson said that the coroner and district attorney will be contacted as soon as the research team finds the first of the bones. Once the site is cleared by the coroner and the district attorney, the bodies can be exhumed. 

At present, the Emerald Society are negotiating with the national rail company for permission for the researchers to do more tests on the land to determine the exact site of the mass grave. The Emerald Society is also paying for markers at the site to commemorate the men. 

Historical records show that the workers were dumped at the site by a local blacksmith. However, Watson said that it would be highly unusual for an entire rail crew to suffer a 100% death rate from cholera. 

He said that he suspected that the men were murdered and said that the Pennsylvania and Columbia rail company had done everything in its power to stop the men’s records from being released. 

The research team has hired Irish graduate students to research emigration records in an attempt to uncover the men’s identities, and is also making a detailed study of U.S. census records. 

News of the exhumation has made big news in Ireland since last week’s Irish Voice article, and was front page news in the Irish Times on Monday.