Biography
Victoria Cieslakiewicz was a Chicago garment-strike picket associated with the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. The authorities imprisoned this union activist in 1926 for defying the anti-picketing injunction during the 1924 strike.
The Sunday National issue of August 1, 1926 says Cieslakiewicz had left Cook County Jail after serving sixty days under Judge Dennis E. Sullivan’s anti-picketing injunction in the 1924 garment strike. It describes four children, including a daughter needing constant care, whom union members supported during her confinement. The stated sixty days are completed custody, distinct from an earlier forty-five-day sentence report. The issue’s relative yesterday wording does not establish a secure exact discharge day. Gottlip and Ruddell’s forecast release is not her endpoint. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1926/1926-ny/v03-n171-Chi-aug-01-1926-DW-LOC.pdf#page=2
The June 19, 1926 Chicago garment-prisoner account adds personal and prison-life detail. The report describes four children, including one with a physical disability, and her determination to sustain the labor fight. Its forty-five-day nominal sentence is distinguished from sixty days of actual service reported elsewhere. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1926/1926-ny/v03-n135-NY-jun-19-1926-DW-LOC.pdf#page=3
The June 25 report describes thirteen freed garment workers offering three additional jail days each to shorten the forty-five-day sentences then reported for Sadlowski and Cieslakiewicz. The warden refused. Forty-five is the issue’s stated nominal punishment; the rejected proposal changes neither actual service nor later independently documented release. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1926/1926-ny/v03-n140-NY-jun-25-1926-DW-LOC.pdf#page=2
The same report describes Cieslakiewicz as the mother of four children, including a fifteen-year-old daughter, and identifies Denis E. Sullivan as the sentencing judge. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1926/1926-ny/v03-n140-NY-jun-25-1926-DW-LOC.pdf#page=2
An individually identified Cook County jail prisoner
The June 29, 1926 Daily Worker, page 2, individually identifies Victoria Cieslakiewicz among the garment-strike prisoners who sent a telegram from Cook County Jail to the Temple Hall protest meeting. It reports her statement on entering jail that she preferred imprisonment to working in a nonunion shop. This is an individual contemporary custody account, not proof that all forty-six pickets remained continuously jailed together. It gives no exact admission or discharge day and does not resolve the forty-five-day versus sixty-day reporting discrepancy already preserved in her case. No new custody total is calculated.
Daily Worker, June 29, 1926, printed pages 1–2. Contemporary allegations and quotations are attributed to the newspaper. The available PDF contains printed pages 1, 2, 5 and 6; missing issue pages 3–4 were not reviewed.
