Biography
David Caplan was an anarchist and labor militant, a grocery-store keeper on Bainbridge Island, Washington, prosecuted in connection with the bombing of the Los Angeles Times building on October 1, 1910 — an attack during the Open Shop war led by Times publisher Harrison Gray Otis that killed twenty-one people. The authorities alleged that Caplan and Matthew Schmidt had helped James McNamara obtain the dynamite. Caplan remained a fugitive until his arrest near Seattle on February 18, 1915. His first trial ended without a verdict; a second jury convicted him of second-degree manslaughter on December 15, 1916, and he was sentenced to ten years. He was held in the Los Angeles County Jail from his arrest until early January 1917, when he was moved to San Quentin as prisoner 30220, and was released for good conduct on July 10, 1923 — about six and a half years at San Quentin and more than eight years in custody altogether. His case was a major labor-defense cause, supported by the AFL Structural Ironworkers and the Industrial Workers of the World. The Industrial Worker of May 1923 gives his birthday as May 18; no birth year is recorded.
He was named a political prisoner by the labor press of the day, and this record keeps that framing, but the framing should not be read as saying he was imprisoned for speech or association. The prosecution concerned a fatal bombing, and the conviction was for a death.
