The Haymarket

The Haymarket is a place, a city square, formerly an important market in Chicago. Its name is remembered because on May 4, 1886, a bomb was thrown at an anarchist meeting. Police marched from the nearby Desplaines police station and fired upon the small crowd assembled, and seven police officers died, several more were wounded. A number of persons at the meeting were wounded and some may have died. The event occurred at a time of great tension over strikes and other conflicts involving the organization of labor. [read more]

The Haymarket Trial in 1886 and the hanging of four of the Haymarket defendants a year later were both the center of national attention. The judge, Benjamin R. Magruder who handed down the opinion of the Supreme Court of Illinois in the Haymarket case was the Judge who wrote the opinion in Ritchie v. People, the factory inspection case challenging the statute appointing Florence Kelley as Chief Factory Inspector.

When Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld pardoned the three Haymarket defendants who had not been executed he closed the door on his political future.

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