Biography
One of the eight IWW defendants tried at Montesano (Grays Harbor County), WA from January 26 to March 13, 1920 for the deaths of four American Legionnaires (Warren Grimm, Arthur McElfresh, Ben Casagranda, Dale Hubbard) during the Armistice Day, November 11, 1919 attack on the Centralia, WA IWW union hall. Convicted of 2nd-degree murder despite the IWW's defense that they were defending the union hall from an armed mob. Sentenced to 25-40 years at the Washington State Penitentiary at Walla Walla. The case became a long-running cause célèbre of the IWW and the labor left, with the Centralia Publicity Committee and later the Free Ray Becker Committee organizing for parole and pardon over two decades.
John Lamb was held at the Washington State Penitentiary at Walla Walla as prisoner 9412, a number sitting between James McInerney's 9410 and Eugene Barnett's 9414. The Industrial Worker of August 6, 1924 lists him at that number and gives his birthday as August 25; no birth year is recorded. His sentence is reported to have been commuted or pardoned in 1933, though the exact release date still wants a contemporary newspaper or a Washington prison record.
This record previously gave his death as June 6, 1922, of tuberculosis at Walla Walla, and used that date as his release, which cut his imprisonment to about two years and three months. Two independent things contradict it: the August 1924 prisoner list, which has him alive and inside at 9412, and the reported 1933 clemency. The detail also matches what is recorded of his co-defendant James McInerney, who did die at Walla Walla of tuberculosis and meningitis, in 1930. The death date is removed as unsupported. If a Washington prison record establishes it, it should go back — and the 1924 listing then needs explaining.
