Biography
James P. Gordon was from Los Angeles. James P. Gordon received a five-year prison sentence, which he served in Folsom from July 12, 1923, until his term expired.
P. J. Gordon was imprisoned at Folsom State Prison during the era of California's criminal-syndicalism prosecutions, which sent more than a hundred IWW members and labor radicals to San Quentin and Folsom on one-to-fourteen-year terms. He appears on the International Labor Defense's rosters of American class-war prisoners in Labor Defender (1926-27); like most of the rank-and-file labor prisoners of the period, little else about his case entered the historical record.
The contemporary prisoner birthday list gives his birthday as February 13 (no birth year has surfaced). His prisoner number was 38113 — the 88113 rendered by the optical scan of the list was an error. Sentenced to five years under the California criminal-syndicalism campaign, he entered Folsom on July 12, 1923 and apparently remained until his term expired.
The International Labor Defense holiday roster in the December 29, 1925 Daily Worker lists this prisoner, printed as J. P. Gordon, at Folsom California. This documents confinement at the roster’s reporting time, without establishing an admission, transfer, release, new conviction or complete duration. Existing independently sourced custody chronology remains separate. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1925/1925-ny/v02b-n297-NYE-dec-29-1925-DW-LOC.pdf#page=5
The Daily Worker of December 17, 1924, page 5, individually lists this prisoner among its political and class-war prisoners at Folsom State Prison. This fills the blank institution using the printed roster in conjunction with the existing case biography. The publication date is an observation, not an admission or release date; no duration is inferred.
Daily Worker, December 17, 1924, original page 5, political-prisoner roster.
