Hamilton (1) proved that a hereditarily unicoherent, hereditarily decomposable metric continuum has the fixed-point property for homeomorphisms. In this paper we shall generalize this result by showing that if X is a hereditarily unicoherent, hereditarily decomposable Hausdorff continuum and 5 is an abelian semigroup of continuous monotone functions from X into X, then S leaves a point of X fixed.

Let X be a Hausdorff continuum. X is unicoherent if, whenever X = A ∪ B, where A and B are subcontinua of X, A ∩ B is a continuum. If each subcontinuum of X is unicoherent, X is hereditarily unicoherent. X is decomposable if X is the union of two of its proper subcontinua. If each subcontinuum of X which contains more than one point is decomposable, X is hereditarily decomposable.