Biography
Frank Corbishley was the brother of Zeigler union leader Henry Corbishley. Frank Corbishley was first held by the grand jury on a murder charge growing out of the 1925 Zeigler mine-town violence — facing the gallows, as the ILD reported — and was then one of the eight miners convicted by February 18, 1926 in the "Zeigler frame-up" of assault with intent to murder, sentenced to one to fourteen years at the Chester penitentiary and bailed pending appeal.
Tom Bell’s February 11 Benton trial report describes defense testimony in the Zeigler prosecution, before the verdict. It names State’s Attorney Martin and two assistants retained by Lon Fox. Witnesses disputed the prosecution’s account of the August 11 union meeting; the report’s characterization of a frame-up is attributed to the labor-defense writer. Trial attendance is not a new prison admission, and the report supplies no physical release or measured term. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1926/1926-ny/v03-n028-NY-feb-13-1926-DW-LOC.pdf#page=1
The defense report distinguishes Frank’s additional accusation concerning Mike Sarovich’s death and describes witnesses placing Frank outside when the shot was fired. This is attributed defense evidence, not a new verdict or an assertion that the murder charge produced a separate measured prison term. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1926/1926-ny/v03-n028-NY-feb-13-1926-DW-LOC.pdf#page=2
Earlier stage of the Zeigler prosecution
A September 11 Zeigler dispatch printed on the first page names Frank Corbishley among fifteen miners bound over for a grand jury after a preliminary hearing in Benton. Robert Minor’s accompanying account on page 3 describes a union meeting on August 11 and reports that an initial conspiracy-to-murder accusation was dropped while fifteen men were being prosecuted for assault with intent to kill. These are contemporary labor-defense reports of the earlier stage of the same Zeigler prosecution, not a second case or proof of the later imposed prison term actually served. The reports differ between twenty-five arrests and twenty-six initial warrants; neither collective number supplies an individual booking day. “Held for the grand jury” is a procedural description, not proof of an uninterrupted physical jail interval. The August 11 meeting date is not entered as an arrest or admission date. Existing custody fields and the separately recorded later imprisonment remain unchanged.
Daily Worker, national edition, September 12, 1925, original pages 1, 3. Contemporary political allegations are attributed to the report.
The Daily Worker of February 18, 1926, already reported a guilty verdict in the Zeigler miners prosecution and named this defendant among the convicted miners. It described the defense motion for a new trial and announced arguments for March 29, 1926. Thus the conviction preceded March 1926. This corrects the chronology of the verdict, without establishing a different date of actual prison admission. The report gives a nominal one-to-ten-year sentence, differing from later defense reporting of one to fourteen years; that discrepancy is preserved rather than used to replace the existing term.
