Biography
Victoria Raffe was arrested during a New York relief-station demonstration, according to the July 17, 1934 retrospective women’s column. Both Raffe and Long received ten-day suspended sentences. The article says police dragged the nearly full-term pregnant Raffe several blocks and later reports her infant stillborn; the causal claim is the columnist’s account, not an independent medical finding. The May 29, 1934 report dates the relief-station arrest to May 22, 1934. The exact final release day and actual pretrial custody remain unknown. The suspended ten days is not time served. Daily Worker, July 17, 1934, page 4. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n170-jul-17-1934-DW-LOC.pdf#page=4
The Daily Worker of May 29, 1934 reports that Victoria Raffe (printed Raffee as well as Raffe) and Bertha Long were arrested on May 22 during a protest against stopped relief at the Spring and Elizabeth Streets relief station in New York. This supplies the arrest day previously unresolved by the July 17 retrospective already cited here. The later report of ten-day suspended sentences remains separate from actual time confined.
The May report describes Raffe being dragged away by police and says the writer visited her ill at home before the scheduled hearing. It does not establish her precise release day or total custody. The July column’s account of her infant’s stillbirth and its causal claim remain attributed to that columnist, not an independent medical finding.
The Daily Worker of July 12, 1934, page 5, printed her name as Vittoria Raffe and reported police clubbing at the Spring Street Home Relief Bureau demonstration on May 10, followed by a stillbirth the preceding week. It named Magistrate August Dreyer at the Tombs Court and described a thirty-day sentence suspended because of pregnancy. These particulars differ from the May 29 report dating the arrest to May 22 and the July 17 column’s ten-day suspended sentence already cited here. The reports are preserved separately; this account does not establish another personal arrest, an exact judgment or release day, actual service, or an independent medical finding about the cause of the stillbirth.
