The Evening statesman. [volume] (Walla Walla, Wash.) 1903-1910, 1909-03-28

4
miliar to all New England perhaps to
a large portion of the reading public.
Since he has been there the United
States has added 100000 inhabitants
to it's population.
He is the only prisoner in Massachu-
sets undergoing continuous solitary
| confinement.
The warm and cheering sun never
shines upon him. For thirty three
years his face has never been seen to
brighten with smile.
| Regarding this extraordinary charac-
ter, New England knows more false
stories than on almost any other sub
ject. Persistent publicity regarding
| him has contained fewer actual facts
than ever before kept life in so pro-
I, longed a discussion. Against no pris-
oner-at least in Massachusetts-has
public indignation been SO continuously
+! bitter, says the Chicago Inter- Ocean.
1t is against a fiendish newsboy and
| his cromes that the public memory
still nurtures intense indignation. But
| in Pomeroys cell it is neither boy
nor fiend. Behind his gated door sits
reading hour after hour today a man
| arrived at his maturity, penitent,
sobered and tempered with the pass
ing of so long years of an unusual
life.
Surrounding him. almost within
hundred yards of the cell is the tur-
MOL of city's busiest industries
factories, warehouses, railroads, ship
ping of all kinds-that he has not seen
for 33 years. All about him are won
| ders of electrical invention-elevated
railroads, telephones, arc lights-but he
knows if them only through pictures
| and hearsay, as does remote barbar-
| ian.
With the very essence of the twen-
is a medieval monk He is no part of
the age in which he lives. Right in the
town of his birth he is exiled by soci-
ETY.. He has no future to anticipate,
and so, with his face turned toward
the past, he duplicates the life of an
anchorite of the dark ages, with the
three vows enforced upon him by the
commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Strange youth that he was and pc
culiar man that the unusual CIRQUE
stances of his life have developed,
Pomeroy is rarity for Psychological
study. Not alone to psychologists,
however but to the penologists and to
the lawyers interested in the evolutions
of legal interpretations his case will
stand out in histories like d. sign
board on devious road. Valuable sub
ject that he is to many fields of in
tellectual endeavor, however, accurate
data regarding him are meagre and
difficult to retain.
Were this a paternal government, |
where strict censorship could be placed |
upon publicity or where the topic could |
be absolutely placed under the ban, |
it is probable that Jesse Pomroys |
name would long ago have been elm |
mated from type. An officialdom would
rejoice if the public could forget his
name. Curiosity regarding him, new
ertheless, continues year after year,
and the public hungrily swallows the
scanty news of him that is made
known in spite of official prohibitions.
What has been printed about him
since his Imprisonment has been one
part fact and nine parts Imagination.
The accumulation in the public mind
of such diluted and often polluted
literature has created popular con-
ception of the prisoner which would
be difficult to correct. If it is at all
possible to get an outraged public to
consider dispassionately the subject Of
its prejudice, however, it would not be
difficult to explain to this public that
Pomeroy has received much injustice.
His crimes were bad enough, but the
subject of the causes of his crimes has
always been limited at publicly as unfit
for public discussion. So it has hap
pened that the whole subject has been
unknown to the condemning public.
And Pomeroy has received the full
force of complete opprobium whereas
he has been in part deserving of
sympathy. 1t may be centuries before
some historian of American prisons
Will dare to present fully a view that
me society which heaped such ex-
IRENE punishment upon an individual
was responsible for allowing an ire
responsible defective his liberty and
then, terrified at what came to pass,
because Of such neglect, not only lock-