Biography
Elinor Swimmer was arrested in Chicago in 1936 while walking home from a picnic with a Mexican friend and carrying a circular advertising Communist presidential candidate Earl Browder's radio address. Police detained the pair and released them on $25 bonds. Judge Hermes later ordered Swimmer held for a sanity hearing and increased her bond to $5,000. Municipal psychiatrist David S. Rotman found her mentally competent. On habeas corpus, Judge Hardy reduced the bond to $200. At a subsequent hearing, defense attorney Ben Meyers sought a change of venue, which Judge Charles S. Dougherty granted after declaring his hostility toward the International Labor Defense.
Jan Wittenber’s account says Chicago police flashed guns when arresting Swimmer and her Mexican companion on the way home from a picnic. It reports initial release on twenty-five-dollar bonds, a later sanity-hearing order and five-thousand-dollar bond, then habeas reduction to two hundred dollars. Municipal psychiatrist David S. Rotman found her of superior intelligence. The article prints Daugherty for the later judge, whose venue-change ruling is described alongside his hostility to the ILD; this spelling is retained alongside the established Dougherty name. Neither the unnamed companion nor the case’s final disposition is invented. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1936/v12-%5B10%5Dn10-oct-1936-orig-LD.pdf#page=18
