Biography
Lawrence Allen was a West Virginia coal striker imprisoned at the Moundsville penitentiary on a charge of dynamiting a coal mine during the miners' strike — one of ten years of his sentence served, as the ILD's Labor Defender reported him on its 1929 roster of class-war prisoners.
A letter from Dora Allen in the Daily Worker of December 30, 1932 places her husband Lawrence Allen in the West State Penitentiary at Moundsville since 1927, serving a ten-year sentence over dynamiting a coal mine during a West Virginia strike. Dora, writing from Petroleum, West Virginia, described family debts and sought support through the ILD prisoners winter relief campaign. The year-only custody reference does not establish an exact admission day or a completed five-year served total.
The September 8, 1930 Laisve, page 5, reproduces an International Labor Defense political-prisoner directory. Its row prints Lawrence Allen, a term of 10 years, the year 1927 in the sentencing-year column, and confinement or correspondence location 818 Jefferson Avenue, Moundsville, West Virginia. This is an attributed historical directory entry; printed years and nominal terms are not exact intake dates or measured time served, and mailing boxes do not independently identify a prison. The directory contains stale or conflicting chronology, so this row does not override independently established conviction, death or release facts. Source: https://www.spauda2.org/laisve/archive/1930/1930-09-08-LAISVE.pdf#page=5
A letter from Dora Allen in the Daily Worker of December 30, 1932 places her husband Lawrence Allen in the West State Penitentiary at Moundsville since 1927, serving a ten-year sentence over dynamiting a coal mine during a West Virginia strike. Dora, writing from Petroleum, West Virginia, described family debts and sought support through the ILD prisoners winter relief campaign. The year-only custody reference does not establish an exact admission day or a completed five-year served total.
Printed page 96 carries a letter from Dora Allen, identifying her husband Lawrence as serving ten years for activities in the West Virginia coal district. She described having no money before receiving assistance, being unable to find work to support herself and the baby, and asking for the return of her only picture of her husband. This contemporary family account adds the household effects of his imprisonment; it supplies no exact admission or discharge day and does not establish ten years actually served.
The undated Moundsville, West Virginia letter thanks the ILD for its check and worker solidarity and urges further organizing. The prison address corroborates ongoing confinement, without establishing individual custody endpoints or a measured duration.
The Behind the Bars directory on printed page 4 lists this prisoner under Frametown, West Virginia, with ten years, 1927. This is an attributed historical directory entry: the year and nominal term do not establish an intake day, uninterrupted imprisonment, completed service or physical release.
The prisoner directory prepared for December 1932 and published in the January 1933 Labor Defender records Lawrence Allen’s imposed sentence on 1932-01-27. This is a sentencing date, not a prison admission, physical release, or measured period served. Source: Labor Defender, January 1933, printed page 234.
The May 1934 political-prisoner roster lists Lawrence Allen under the printed charge label “Redman Act” and gives ten years imposed. The label is retained as the magazine’s wording alongside the existing mine-strike prosecution account; it is not expanded into a different statute or treated as a new arrest or ten years actually served. Labor Defender, May 1934, PDF page 17.
