Biography
William J. Mackesy was a shoe-workers' union organizer based in Lynn, Massachusetts. He became general organizer of the United Shoe and Leather Workers Union in 1934 and chief organizer during the 1937 Lewiston-Auburn shoe strike. After the Maine court issued an injunction against continuing the strike, Mackesy and other organizers were prosecuted for contempt. A jury found them guilty, and they began serving six-month jail sentences in May. They were later released on bail while challenging the proceedings. On June 30, 1938, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court dismissed the contempt petitions because they had not been verified as the statute required.
Contemporary case reporting
The September 4, 1937 Socialist Appeal, page 8, identifies Mackesy as the chief organizer of the Lewiston–Auburn shoe strike. Its account describes the jailing of strike leaders for contempt and later conspiracy arrests of organizers, but supplies no exact individual admission or bail-release day. Group references to leaders are not a complete roster of defendants and do not independently establish every named organizer’s charges.
The Associated Press Lewiston dispatch dated April 22, 1937 reports Captain Joseph Picard arrested Powers Hapgood, William J. Mackesy and Ernest Henry at their hotel that day on a riotous-assault warrant connected to the stoning of state police Lieutenant George Fowler the previous day. It places the arrests within the 6,400-worker Lewiston–Auburn shoe strike, the injunction and National Guard deployment. The report establishes actual arrest, not guilt, discharge or a complete custody total. This criminal accusation is distinct from the separately recorded later contempt sentence.
The Maine Supreme Judicial Court’s June 30, 1938 decision in State v. William J. Mackesy et al., 135 Maine Reports 488–489, overruled the defendants’ exceptions and entered judgment for the State in a separate criminal-conspiracy prosecution arising from the shoe-strike dispute. This differs from the same-day dismissal of the injunction-contempt proceedings, reported at pages 490–500. The conspiracy opinion does not supply an individual jail term or custody endpoint for Mackesy.
Maine Reports 135, printed pages 488–489; PDF pages 500–501.