George Engel - Haymarket Square

Haymarket Square

On May 3, 1886, after hearing about the massacre at the McCormick Plant earlier that day, he attended a meeting at Grief's Hall. This meeting, later dubbed by prosecutors the "Monday Night Conspiracy", was used to prove that there was a conspiracy in the bombing at the Haymarket. A witness claimed that Engel had arranged a plan to storm and/or dynamite police stations and shoot policeman should trouble occur. Engel claims it was a meeting only "in which it was proposed to give aid to any strikers if the police or the Pinkertons should attack said strikers."

The following night, May 4, as the bombing took place, Engel was not in Haymarket Square, but was at home playing cards. Nevertheless he was arrested the next day and charged with conspiracy in the bombings. At 50, he was the oldest of the defendants to stand trial. He was convicted and was sentenced to be hanged. After hearing in 1887 that several letters had been written from Samuel Fielden and Michael Schwab to Illinois Governor Richard James Oglesby, Engel wrote his own letter asking the governor not to consider any clemency.