Biography
Godfrey Ebel was a laborer and an IWW member from San Francisco, California. Godfrey Ebel was convicted at the mass IWW trial in Sacramento and sentenced to ten years in prison. He served in Leavenworth Penitentiary from April 1918 to June 6, 1923, when he was paroled.
Arthur Shields’s account says Ebel was held incommunicado for a hundred days as a prosecution witness before being added to the Sacramento indictment after refusing to testify against fellow workers. It places that earlier detention before his defendant status; the hundred days is a reported segment, not his complete imprisonment. The article describes a full year of crowded pretrial confinement for the group and five deaths, without identifying those five or giving individual admission and discharge days.
The March1922 official report lists Godfrey Ebel in List1 of convicted prisoners or parolees. The government entry reports Conspiracy and violating the espionage act, etc. a sentence of January 17, 1919, 10 years, Leavenworth.. Imposed terms, projected term-expiration dates, parole eligibility and intervals on bond are different measures; none is entered as a complete actual custody total. This attributed government entry is retained alongside the independently established individual chronology. [PDF7]
Government Prosecutions under the Espionage Act, Senate Document159 (March1922), PDF page 7.
