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About The Oregon daily journal. (Portland, Or.) 1902-1972 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 20, 1907)
xCt Sunday r : FORTLANR: OREGON.: (SUNDAY MORNINCV OCTOBER 20, J907 JCA2INESECTl6N TIIIffiB MAGAZINE 3ECTI0r J THREE J I i ' .i w 4 1 S'C. Jesse Pomeroy, mericasM&n b tbelronMaskMs Learned Ldngaaga and Sciences ' B ARRED from human companion ship, from the light of the sun and the pleasant visions of a budding earth, there has lived in a six-by-six cell in the Massachusetts state prison for thirty three years a man whose fate surpasses in tragedy that of any of the tragic prisoners of" fiction. . .. vl-. ' " ' ' ; Imprisoned when a child of 14, this man has liveda death in life, seldom speak ing an articulate word, never smiling, al ways as grave, as solemn, as sad as the white-faced ones we put away in tombs. Because his spirit has not departed, his story is all the more mournful, and in all the annals of criminology there is no case where tKe weight of the law's hand has been heavier than in that of Jesse Pomeroy. It remained for the twentieth century to give a modern setting to the story of "The Man in the Iron Mask," and to exceed the Bas tile in long-continued imprisonment. Pomeroy was sentenced to be hanged in September, 1874, when 14 years of age. He was a child incapable, degenerate, ir responsible but the law held him as guilty as if he had been a man of intellect and ma ture years. His sentence was finally com muted to a life imprisonment that was to be "solitary." And so it has been. Since the day of his trial the judge before whose tribunal he stood, the attor ' ney general and district attorney who prose cuted him and the Governor'who commuted his sentence have died. The papulation of the country has increased 30,000,000; tele phones, electric lights, electric trains and thousands of new inventions have changed the nation's mode of life; yet of all that this man knows nothing. For thirty-three years he has existed in a living tomb. Yet, in mental capacity at least, he has advanced during that time. From an in corrigible child, he has developed into a serious, intelligent man; he has read 8000 books; has learned six languages; has ac quired a knowledge of the history of the world, and for the last few years has worked on a drama based on the classic tragedies of the Greeks, in which he will figure as the hero suffering under the dis pleasure of the gods. i'For Man' grim Justice goes Its way, - And will not swerve aside; It slays the weak, it slays the strong, It has a deadly stride: With Iron heel It slays the strong;, The monstrous parricide I "I know not whether Laws be right, Or whether Laws be wrong; All that we know who He in Jail . Is that the wall is strong i And that each day is like a year A year whose days are long." "The Ballad of Beading Gaol." ESSEPOMEKOYt In the minds of those who can remember, the figure of this murderous newsboy may still stand as a terrible " example of childish criminality. Before he was 13 years old Jesse Pom eroy was arrested charged with torturing hia L boy companions. He was sent to the Reform School in Westboro in September, 18f2, and was pardoned lees than two years later. Not lomr after his release, he murdered a little fi-yer-old gir cruelly, brutally killed her and buried her body in the cellar of his father's tore. :'.4-r'--'f: ' :i :' ' ' '' '"" :"";t : . :; Thi was in Tebrhary; 1874.' Shortly after- " r L 9 1 ' f i - 9 i v ft : ill. f v '". f ward Le killed a 5-year-old boy, in South Boston a' murder of aiich. horrible -detaila - thai the people who read i were sickened 2 r---";'-' ' , Jet "this murdWer, juatod ccloxs 7 "f-'-v: t- f ,'sr ' 1, I S at the time and since, was a mere boy, J4 years old, with a,weak, brain, U desire in his nature to slar.. to tortur'e. 'to destroy. fu titfltfib ifj('etf resp'oosibldt. Of thbaa' Win ' , Z' , 1 1 ' r v A j ...... " v " ' I f 4 f " mysterious influences "JwKicJT: implant strango M.uiinatMJe. ia immatw hoarti the ' iaw;took no; cognizance.- .Tha child-was sen- "tended toVa 'hanfcid fiii months' after his arrest This, in brief, is the story of the crimes of Jesse Pomeroy, who became in thousands of minds a typo of inhuman cruelty and childish perversion; a monster to whom was to be shown no pity. A defense of insanity was made before th Supreme Court, but tho New England con science saw nothing of a mitigating nature in the immaturity of the state's prisoner. Gov ernor Kice, however, after hearing a review of) tho extenuating circumstances of tho case, com muted the sentence to life imprisonment. Life imprisonment, solitary imprisonment the worst death dealt by the law! The punishment has bwen carried out. Front a child this unfortunate creature has developed to a man. Within the four dark walla of his cell his nature, according to a favored few who have been permitted to visit him, has matured and softened. Evil seeds that existed in the- soil of his childish mind have perished. Bare flowers of thought have arisen there, born of communions with the writers who have been his sole com panions, s' MIND HAS GROWN NORMAL ' Today Jesse Pomeroy, the few who know him say, might take his place in any community, and his abilities would accrue to society's ben efit. His mind, it is declared by his friends, is sane, clear and perfectly normal. He has ac quired a wonderful and exhaustive education. The bitterness which rose to such overwhelm ing intensity some years ago, when he tried to escape by causing an explosion of gas in his cell, has passed away. Pomeroy, however, has refused steadfastly to receive religious consolation. To his indiot ment of society, even the good prison chaplain is unable to reply. "If the Qod you people worship," he says in his sad way, "is so forgiving and so loving, Uis worshipers could not be so cruel to me." His is the modern plea of Byron's "Prisoner t of Chillon": "My limbs are bowed, though not with ton, But rusted with a vile repose. For they have been a dungeon's spoil. And mine has been the fate of those. To whom the goodly earth and air Are banned and barred." No such transformation of character as his, however, has ever been witnessed in the annals of penology. Often in hia cell Pomeroy can be hoard by "the cautious keeper murmuring of a green forest and of a little home in the woods, far from tho world, where1 he may live under God's sky and breathe God's pure, sweet air. To those who have advocated his release he has confided the wish of his life to live on a little farm in New England, to look upon th sky before he dies and know that society for fives his crime. But society does not, cannot , orget; they were too horrible, too utterly re pulsive to all that is humane. Even today, as thirty years ago, the nam, of Jesse Pomeroy is proscribed. Visitors to., the Cherry Hill prison at Charlestown ara never taken to his cell. Inquiries about him ) long ago were met by such silence that finally,, no one came to inquire about him and he was, forgotten. Only the recent appeal of the So- i ciety for the Promotion of Criminal Anthropol ogy recalled publio attention to this forgotten! prisoner. What does he look like now ! What does ha I think? How does ho spend his timet What) has been the psychological influence of tho prison upon him during his adolescence and passing into mature manhood I He is now 47' years of age. . The "Man of the Iron Mask" spent fhra years J in the Bastile; before that he was imprisoned j about twenty years. But here is a man who has ( been alone "with himself and God" for thirty- I three years. REALLY ANOTHER BEINQ When Frank H. Gile, secretary of the Amer-. ican Society for the Promotion of Criminal Anthropology, presented the petition against keeping Pomeroy longer in solitary.confinement, he declared that this man was not the child who killed his playmates, but was now another being, a man of learning and education, a soul which has been purged by suffering, a face which has grown beautiful behind its mask of stone. Governor Guild, however, decided that tha prisoner must remain in his lonely cell. Pome- roy's were not ordinary crimes, he thought, so an extraordinary punishment was not too severe. W In the words of the poet Jesse Pomeroy'a sentiment : are expressed, better, he. says, than. - , ho could express them huoself ; ; a "But this I know, that evry tdvt : ' That men have made for Man. - Since first Man took his brother's Ufa - And tha sad world began, C ' But straws the wheat and saves the chaff i With a most evil Ian. , , , , . i And "never a human voice comes near ' ; -' To- speak a gentle word; , And the eye that watches through tha door Is pitiless, and hard; , . . . f . , ; . And by all forgot we rot and rot. jp-' With soul, and body marred." - - -j- -' ' , 'v'V' ;;';Jr 1 '- '--yM-.. ri -: : ?,:' ' ::. '' ' " A visit to Jesse Pomeroy would be interest ing and instructive. The officials of Cherry Hill allow few persons to see the man, they refuss to - tell anything about Mm, and eery effort is-mada s to keep him in hia grave and forgotten.,- . . ( ; One of the members of the society which has worked in his behalf was allowed to sea him 'Some time ago. . -M'":':f' i'": There is a wing on the esst side of Cherry Hill prison. It is doorless, and is reached onl through a dark, narrow corriJor from the interior nf tha aiL '"There are no windows, only smaii Ptures : !JgJ Jj";f;, Ztrow'mtrhk. window u ' V2vrtrtrfcn ow.ixsims fac