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Unarmed strikers and police clashresulting in several strikers dead.
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A meeting of workingmen is held near Haymarket Square; police arrive to disperse the peaceful assembly, a bomb is thrown into the ranks of the police. The police open fire workingmen evenntually return fire. Police and an unknown number of workingmen killed, the bomb thrower is unidentified.
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The grand jury indicts 31, charged with being accessories to the murder of policeman Mathias J. Degan; eight are chosen to stand trial: Albert Parsons, August Spies, Oscar Neebe, Louis Lingg, George Engel, Adolph Fischer, Michael Schwab, Samuel Fielden.
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Trial testimony begins; 227 testify including 54 members of the Chicago Police Department and the defendants Fielden, Schwab, Spies and Parsons; the defendants are prosecuted not as perpetrators but as responsible for instigating the violence; a guilty verdict and death sentence are considered inevitable.
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The jury convicts the defendants and sentences Neebe to fifteen years in the penitentiary and the others to death by hanging.
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The defendants deliver speeches to the court before sentencing.
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Legal counsel for the convicted appeal case to the Illinois Supreme Court.
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Parsons, Spies, Engel and Fischer are executed.
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Louis Lingg commits suicide in his jail cell.
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Fielden and Schwab are transported to Joliet Prison where they join Oscar Neebe.