Biography
Edward Sherwood was a young organizer in the National Miners’ Union coal strike of 1931 in Pennsylvania. He was beaten by coal-company guards and arrested during the strike. He received a sentence of three to six years and served thirty months at the Blawnox Workhouse. The Pittsburgh International Labor Defense secured approval of his parole on April 25, 1934, and he was released the next day, April 26.
The April 26 Pittsburgh dispatch corroborates his release that day from Blawnox Workhouse after thirty actual months of the three-to-six-year sentence arising from the 1931 coal strike. It credits an International Labor Defense parole application made the previous week and approved April 25. These details corroborate the established episode. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n101-apr-27-1934-DW-LOC.pdf#page=1
Labor Defender, May 1934: James Egan’s prison visit account describes Sherwood as a twenty-year-old coal organizer then in his third year at Blawnox. A delegation won a joint interview outside the ordinary visiting allowance, but Warden Brown refused radical publications. The article describes only two and a half hours of weekly yard time and work in rag-sorting and furniture shops. These conditions and intermediate observation precede his separately documented April 26 release and do not replace that endpoint. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1934/v10n05-may-1934-orig-LD.pdf#page=14
Labor Defender, October 1932 (PDF page 21): The Blawnox roster identifies Ed Sherwood among prisoners currently serving nominal three-to-six-year terms and reports him very sick. It describes restricted visits, censored mail, refusal of books and alleged denial of medical care to sick prisoners collectively; no individual admission or discharge date is supplied. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1932/v08n10-oct-1932-LD.pdf#page=21
The November 24, 1931 report individually lists this National Miners Union strike prisoner at Allegheny County Workhouse, Blawnox. The roster establishes actual confinement during the mine-strike repression. It does not supply an individual statutory count, exact initial arrest, physical release or completed custody duration. Daily Worker, November 24, 1931, original PDF page 2. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1931/v08-n282-NY-nov-24-1931-DW-LOC.pdf#page=2
The September 27 report distinguishes them among thirty-six miners still confined after Myerscough and Young obtained parole. It does not transfer those two men’s release to the remaining defendants or establish complete time served. Daily Worker, September 27, 1932, original PDF page 1. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1932/v09-n231-NY-sep-27-1932-DW-LOC.pdf#page=1
The Blawnox strike account specifically lists Leo Thompson, Adam Ghetto and Eddie Sherwood as still in prison and asks readers to write via Box56, Blawnox. The mailing address corroborates confinement, not an exact transfer day or a separate prison identity. Later independently documented releases are retained and no individual new term is inferred from the roster.
