Journal, April 24, 1874
F ew figures in the annals of American crime have had the ability to generate as much controversy as Jesse Harding Pomeroy. For more than fifty years, he managed to find ways of stirring up intense indignation in the Boston public. And that power to provoke manifested itself from the very beginning of the Millen case, even before Pomeroy was officially named as a suspect.
Nowadays, an accused criminal can count on a fair degree of protection from the excesses of the press. Even when the evidence points overwhelmingly to someone’s guilt, the news media must be careful to identify him as a mere suspect. A man can be discovered with a dozen corpses in his crawl space, a freezer full of human viscera, and a bedroom decorated with body parts. But until he’s been convicted—or has confessed—journalists are legally required to describe him as an “alleged” criminal.
Things were substantially different a hundred years ago, when the press had fewer compunctions about branding someone a criminal. Just hours after the Powers brothers made their awful discovery on Savin Hill Beach—and before he had even been picked up by the police—Jesse Pomeroy was already being trumpeted by some newswriters as the killer. By the following morning, his name was plastered on the front page of every paper in the city, along with a detailed account of his earlier crimes against children. The result was an immediate explosion of public outrage, directed at those who had elected to put “theboy fiend” back on the streets after less than eighteen months in reform school.
Typical of this outcry was an editorial that ran in the Boston Globe on Friday morning, April 24, under the headline “The Boy Murderer”:
There must be something wrong in the regulations under which an inmate of the Reform School, sentenced for his minority, can be pardoned out on probation and turned loose in the community without regard to the crimes that he has committed or the propensities which he has displayed. In the case of the young fiend, Jesse Pomeroy, all that was necessary to secure his liberty on probation seems to have been an appeal of his mother, backed by a friend, although he had wantonly tortured no less than seven small boys for no apparent reason but a morbid delight in their sufferings. There is evidently need of a more careful consideration before the decrees of the law in the case of juvenile offenders are thus nullified. The boy Pomeroy seems to be a moral monstrosity. He had no provocation and no rational motive for his atrocious conduct. He did not know the little lad Millen at all, but enticed him away, and cut and hacked him to death with a penknife merely for sport. . . .
While we favor a humane treatment for juvenile delinquents . . . it should not be so easy to obtain a remission of penalties on pleas of good behavior or the interposition of too sympathetic petitioners.
Other papers were even more harsh in their condemnation of the officials who had authorized Pomeroy’s probation. “That a pardon should have been granted to such a fiend as Pomeroy shows a culpable lack of judgment somewhere,” proclaimed the Boston Herald, “and excites high indignation among those familiar with the circumstances which resulted in his committal to reform school.”
In the face of such criticism, the people responsible for Jesse’s early release from Westborough immediately found themselves on the defensive. Some—like Mr. John Ayers, one of the trustees who had supported the parole—hastened to justify their decision. Interviewed by a reporter from the Globe, Ayers declared that “when boys are sent to the Reform School, they are sent fortheir minority—unless, after a considerable stay, their behavior has been exemplary. If they give promise of reform and of future good behavior, and if they have a good home to which their parents are anxious to have them returned, they are often pardoned on probation. This is
F ew figures in the annals of American crime have had the ability to generate as much controversy as Jesse Harding Pomeroy. For more than fifty years, he managed to find ways of stirring up intense indignation in the Boston public. And that power to provoke manifested itself from the very beginning of the Millen case, even before Pomeroy was officially named as a suspect.
Nowadays, an accused criminal can count on a fair degree of protection from the excesses of the press. Even when the evidence points overwhelmingly to someone’s guilt, the news media must be careful to identify him as a mere suspect. A man can be discovered with a dozen corpses in his crawl space, a freezer full of human viscera, and a bedroom decorated with body parts. But until he’s been convicted—or has confessed—journalists are legally required to describe him as an “alleged” criminal.
Things were substantially different a hundred years ago, when the press had fewer compunctions about branding someone a criminal. Just hours after the Powers brothers made their awful discovery on Savin Hill Beach—and before he had even been picked up by the police—Jesse Pomeroy was already being trumpeted by some newswriters as the killer. By the following morning, his name was plastered on the front page of every paper in the city, along with a detailed account of his earlier crimes against children. The result was an immediate explosion of public outrage, directed at those who had elected to put “theboy fiend” back on the streets after less than eighteen months in reform school.
Typical of this outcry was an editorial that ran in the Boston Globe on Friday morning, April 24, under the headline “The Boy Murderer”:
There must be something wrong in the regulations under which an inmate of the Reform School, sentenced for his minority, can be pardoned out on probation and turned loose in the community without regard to the crimes that he has committed or the propensities which he has displayed. In the case of the young fiend, Jesse Pomeroy, all that was necessary to secure his liberty on probation seems to have been an appeal of his mother, backed by a friend, although he had wantonly tortured no less than seven small boys for no apparent reason but a morbid delight in their sufferings. There is evidently need of a more careful consideration before the decrees of the law in the case of juvenile offenders are thus nullified. The boy Pomeroy seems to be a moral monstrosity. He had no provocation and no rational motive for his atrocious conduct. He did not know the little lad Millen at all, but enticed him away, and cut and hacked him to death with a penknife merely for sport. . . .
While we favor a humane treatment for juvenile delinquents . . . it should not be so easy to obtain a remission of penalties on pleas of good behavior or the interposition of too sympathetic petitioners.
Other papers were even more harsh in their condemnation of the officials who had authorized Pomeroy’s probation. “That a pardon should have been granted to such a fiend as Pomeroy shows a culpable lack of judgment somewhere,” proclaimed the Boston Herald, “and excites high indignation among those familiar with the circumstances which resulted in his committal to reform school.”
In the face of such criticism, the people responsible for Jesse’s early release from Westborough immediately found themselves on the defensive. Some—like Mr. John Ayers, one of the trustees who had supported the parole—hastened to justify their decision. Interviewed by a reporter from the Globe, Ayers declared that “when boys are sent to the Reform School, they are sent fortheir minority—unless, after a considerable stay, their behavior has been exemplary. If they give promise of reform and of future good behavior, and if they have a good home to which their parents are anxious to have them returned, they are often pardoned on probation. This is
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