The 100th Anniversary of the Fire-Bombing of the Holy Rosary Rectory and the story of the Tilly Bill

June of 2026 marks the notorious 100th Anniversary of one of the most diabolical crimes during the Prohibition Era in Schuylkill County. In a bold attempt to “burn alive” Reverend Patrick J. Fleming, Mahanoy Plane’s Irish priest, owners of the Tilly Billy Hotel, a prostitution house, poured gallons of gasoline onto his rectory during the early morning hours of June 15, 1926, and ignited it, turning the rectory into a massive inferno. Reverend Fleming had launched a series of fiery, unrelenting denunciations against the Tilly Billy Hotel in Mahanoy Plane, arousing public indignation against the “business.” What was the outcome of this brazen crime? Veteran fire fighters and co-authors, Michael Glore and Michael Kitsock, a native of Mahanoy Plane, investigate this event from both the fire-fighting and the criminal viewpoints.