Ernest Henry

Ernest Henry was a labor organizer involved in the 1937 shoe workers’ strike in Lewiston and Auburn, Maine. Police arrested him with Powers Hapgood and William Mackesy on April 22 on riotous-assault charges following a confrontation involving a state police officer. In May, the three organizers were jailed for contempt of court for violating an injunction against strike activity. Henry was suffering from tuberculosis. Visiting the prisoners in June, Norman Thomas reported that Henry had been kept for three weeks in a poorly ventilated cell and had suffered a severe hemorrhage. The Maine court dismissed the contempt proceedings in June 1938.

Norman Thomas's At the Front column in the Socialist Call, June 26, 1937, page 12, describes visiting the Maine shoe-strike prisoners. He says Henry, suffering tuberculosis, had been kept three weeks with other men in a dark, ill-ventilated jail and suffered a severe hemorrhage when the cells were opened late at night, while comrades could see but not help. Thomas identifies the six-month contempt terms as imposed under Judge Manser's injunction, criticizes delays in review and reports pressure to apologize, leave Maine and stop the strike. These are attributed conditions and advocacy in the existing contempt case; three weeks is an interim conditions report, not complete service or an exact hospital stay. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/socialist-call/call%203-119.pdf