Fiend (33 page)

Christ’s name was also invoked by other supporters of commutation. In a letter to the
Globe,
for example, a man named William H. Colcord addressed a question directly to the proponents of the death penalty: “What precept or example of Christ do you follow when you ask that Jesse Pomeroy be hanged by the neck until dead?”

Several days later, Colcord’s challenge was answered by a writer named Thomas Kindersley, who began by citing Christ’s words as recorded in Matthew, 5:17–18.

Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you,
Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

“Now, what was the law?” Kindersley continued. “It is to be found in Leviticus, 24:17—‘He that killeth any man shall surely be put to death.’ Or in our Saviour’s own words, ‘Put up again thy sword into his place; for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword’—Matthew, 26:52.”

Another of Colcord’s respondents threw his question back in his face. “By what precept or example of Christ do
you
follow,” demanded this writer, a man named Peter Pickart, “when you ask that Jesse Pomeroy be deprived of liberty and shut up in prison for the remainder of his natural life?” In Pickart’s view, the self-professed “true Christians” like Colcord who rejected the death penalty on Scriptural grounds were being, at best, highly inconsistent, since their own position was equally unsupported by the Bible. If there was nothing in Christ’s teachings to justify the death penalty, there was nothing in them to legitimize life imprisonment, either.

*  *  *

The daily newspapers weren’t the only printed vehicles for the continuing debate over Jesse Pomeroy’s sentence. In early May, a cheaply produced true-crime pamphlet appeared in the bookstalls of Boston and instantly became a popular seller. Though this book declared itself a straightforward biography of its subject (and did, in fact, offer a fairly reliable summary of the case, as gleaned from local papers), its obvious purpose—evident in everything from its lurid cover illustration to its overwrought language to its damning conclusion—was to inflame public feeling against Pomeroy.

Only thirty pages long, the booklet (published by the Taunton Publishing Company of Taunton, Massachusetts) was called
The Life of Jesse Pomeroy, the Boy Fiend.
A crude woodcut illustration—showing a neatly dressed boy viciously attacking a terrified little girl with a knife—was printed twice, first on the cover, then again on a separate page halfway through the book. The caption below this picture read: “With my knife I cut her throat.”

Beginning with the birth of Pomeroy—a being “whose love for cruel deeds and inordinate thirst for human blood stand without precedent in history”—the anonymous writer went on to trace the early depredations of this “ghoul-like monster who seemed
to be preying on human blood.” Pomeroy, he wrote, “had all the cunning of a fiend and chose his time and place so well that he was never seen luring his victims to their destruction in some out of the way corner. . . . In some old rotten boat, or under some railroad bridge, the groans and cries of the little sufferers could not be heard, and the torturer gashed and whipped and chopped them as he pleased, regardless of their tears and writhings of agony, or only laughed at them in his devilish glee.”

Though there was not the slightest shred of evidence to support the theory, the writer had no qualms about suggesting that Jesse’s earliest crimes may not have been limited to beating and torture. “Whether he ever foully murdered any other weak little victim . . . will never be known, unless the chance discovery of some little bones in a retired nook may lead to the discovery of an unrecorded tale of bloodshed. During the time he was perpetrating his cruelties, more than one child left its home in the morning to play about the neighborhood and was never seen again. Its fate may be locked up in the heart of the boy monster, whom some are yet found to pity.”

In his effort to stir up outrage at the “boy fiend,” the anonymous author proved absolutely shameless. He acknowledged that the Millen murder had already been so extensively covered by the press that there was no need to repeat its “fearful details”; then he proceeded to offer an extended and highly graphic rehash of the “horrible deed.” The remainder of the pamphlet consisted of an equally sensational account of the Curran killing; a brief review of the trial; a summation of the deliberations and verdict; and a discussion of the ongoing commutation controversy. As though there might be any doubt as to his own feelings on the subject, the writer ended with a bitter call for Jesse’s execution: “The gallows is the proper doom of the wretched boy, who is as fit to roam at large or be confined in a weak cell as the tiger who has once tasted blood.”

*  *  *

Jesse’s death sentence was endorsed not only by the authors of tacky exploitation books but by contributors to far more distinguished publications as well. In its spring 1875 issue, for example, the editors of the
American Law Review
weighed in on the side of those who believed that Pomeroy should be executed.

The key issue, argued the editors, was the safety of the community. If “a sentence of imprisonment for life” were an absolute
guarantee that Jesse would remain behind bars forever, “few would oppose this.” But since “the average of life sentence in Massachusetts is seven years and a half, it would be difficult to imagine a case where the protection of the community more imperatively demands the infliction of the death penalty than this.” Though its tone was far more measured, the editorial ended in the same way as the sensationalistic crime pamphlet,
i.e.,
by comparing Pomeroy to a wild beast that would remain an active threat to society so long as he was suffered to live:

If the boy’s impulse is under his control, there is surely no reason for sparing his life. If it is not, how does he differ from a wolf, except that he has the intelligence of a man, and is therefore more dangerous? If he is executed, the world is rid of one whose life is of no value to himself, and who is dangerous to the community. If he lives, no one can say how soon the mistaken clemency of some governor may turn him loose upon the public to commit new enormities like those for which he is now confined.

Calls for Jesse’s death could be found in the pages of other professional journals as well. Dismissing as “trash” the notion that Jesse suffered from “delusional insanity,” for example, the editor of the
Boston Medical and Surgical Journal
insisted that Pomeroy should be hanged. “We do not desire this consummation for the sake of punishment,” declared the writer, “nor solely for the sake of example, but for the safety of the children of the Commonwealth. If he be condemned to imprisonment for life, some ‘large-hearted philanthropist’ will not fail, sooner or later, to procure his release. And then, as sure as the sun will rise, he will return to his amiable idiosyncrasies, and future parents will curse the ‘humanity’ which shall condemn their children now unborn to be killed in torments.”

Several months later, an alienist named Charles Follon Folsom contributed an article to the same publication that also argued for Pomeroy’s execution. After considering—and rejecting—a number of possible explanations for the boy’s criminal behavior (ranging from “moral imbecility” to excessive masturbation), Folsom concluded that Pomeroy was “responsible for the crimes which he committed; not as fully responsible
as you or I would be, but yet responsible before the law.” Thus, he should be made to suffer the “extreme penalty of the law”—a punishment that would serve the three important objects: vengeance, justice, and, most vitally, “the protection of society.”

“Is it fair to suppose that anything else than death will protect society from such a monster as Pomeroy,” Folsom demanded (in language notably devoid of professional detachment), “when the chances of escape from prison are so many, and when we know that out of 266 men sentenced to imprisonment for life at Charlestown from 1828 to 1875, 135 have been pardoned? . . . Crimes of a horrible character have been fearfully frequent of late, especially in Italy and the United States, in both of which countries punishment for crime has become lamentably uncertain. I think that this terrible danger to society can be removed; but . . . in order to do it, it is necessary to hang some of these murderers.”

Another prominent psychologist, however, Theodore W. Fisher (who had testified at the public hearing in April), held a very different opinion. Contrary to Folsom, Fisher—whose views were initially expressed in a speech before the Suffolk District Medical Society, then reprinted as an article in the
Proceedings
of that organization—believed not only that Jesse was insane but that his condition had “been induced by masturbation.” While this explanation seems profoundly benighted (if not totally crackpot) from our own vantage point, it was perfectly plausible in an age that regarded “self-pollution” as the cause of everything from memory loss to mental retardation to physical emaciation and blindness.

Indeed, Fisher—who had met Jesse only once—claimed that a single glance was all he needed to see that the boy was addicted to the shameful indulgence. “The evidence of self-abuse,” Fisher declared, “was plainly written on his countenance, as well as in his hands, which he kept concealed at first. On seeing that I observed them, he asked what was the matter with them. They were purple, cold, and clammy to a degree seldom seen except in cases of dementia with masturbation. He at first denied but afterward admitted the correctness of my inference. He also admitted that he had practiced the habit for years, and particularly at the periods when his crimes were committed.”

Upon those who are in its thrall, Fisher explained, the insidious habit of self-abuse wreaks mental, emotional, and moral havoc. “The attention and memory are weakened and the judgment impaired. There is a state of vanity, conceit, and a love of notoriety, change, and adventure. . . . Sometimes great restlessness is observed, with a tendency to go from place to place without motive, to run away from home on some wild, impracticable errand in hopes of making a fortune or becoming famous, with inability or indisposition for continuous employment of any kind. The moral sense is blunted, and vicious courses new to the individual are entered upon.”

These symptoms were unmistakably present in Jesse’s case, which showed “many of the characteristics of mania from masturbation. Conceit and love of notoriety are especially prominent. . . . He twice ran away from home before the age of twelve, bought firearms, and took cars for the West to fight Indians. He was also known at an early age to be guilty of cruelty to animals.”

Of course, masturbation alone was not enough to account for the singular depravity of Jesse’s acts. After all, most boys who engaged in this vice ended up, not as multiple murderers, but merely as feebleminded cripples. In Jesse’s case, however, there was another factor operating upon his mind: cheap, sensationalistic literature. As Fisher pointed out, Jesse was exceptionally “fond of reading stories of savage warfare. It is not improbable that impressions made in this way in his youth, under the stimulus of puberty and the excitement of constant self-abuse, with its accompanying impairment of willpower, developed into morbid, fixed ideas, and these idea passed uncontrolled into the horrible acts of torture and murder which have startled the community.”

In short the deadly combination of masturbation and dime novels had turned Jesse into a homicidal maniac—a striking example of the way in which violent pop entertainment could plant poisonous seeds “in the congenial soil of a disordered and enfeebled brain” and “bring forth a ghastly harvest.”

*  *  *

And so the debate raged on. In speech and in print, in telegrams and in petitions, in private discussions and in public exchanges, the citizens of Massachusetts continued to argue over
Jesse Pomeroy’s fate. On each side of the issue, the weight of opinion was more or less the same.

And then, in the third week of May, something terrible happened—a crime that, though completely unrelated to the Pomeroy case, tipped the balance toward those who clamored for Jesse’s execution.

38

Now if the POMEROY boy is hanged, it will be because PIPER has murdered little MABEL YOUNG.

—
The New York Times,
June 1, 1875

T
he victim was a five-year-old girl named Mabel H. Young.

There are no extant photographs of little Mabel, but the newspapers invariably describe her as a radiant child—blond, blue-eyed, remarkably pretty. The atrocity that befell her, moreover, occurred not only on the Sabbath but within the sanctuary of a neighborhood church. This combination of circumstances—the angelic little victim, the hallowed setting, and the sheer, unspeakable savagery of the act—largely accounts for the extreme horror and outrage provoked by her death. In the view of the
Boston Herald,
the killing of Mabel Young was “perhaps the most shocking murder in the criminal annals of the Commonwealth, not excepting the slaying of the Joyce children and horrible deeds of Jesse Pomeroy.”