Fiend

by Harold Schechter

  “BARNUM IN BOSTON,” screamed the headline. “GREAT ROMAN HIPPODROME! INVOLVING A CAPITAL OF ONE MILLION DOLLARS!!! OCCUPYING FOUR BLOCKS ON BACK BAY, ADJOINING COLOSSEUM GROUNDS!”

  A few months earlier, in late April, P. T. Barnum’s Hippodrome had opened in New York City. Staged inside a colossal structure that could seat as many as 12,000 spectators at each sold-out performance, the show drew raves from audiences and critics alike. “It is unquestionably the most magnificent entertainment ever introduced to an American audience,” cheered the Sunday Democrat. “Altogether making up an exhibition never before equalled in this country,” exclaimed the Brooklyn Union. “The magnificence of this last venture of Barnum cannot be understood unless seen,” declared the Commercial Advertiser. Even the straitlaced New York Evangelist had warm words for the show, pronouncing it “free from those evil associations which cluster around ordinary amusements and make them so often ministers to vice.”

  Regarding the Hippodrome as the “crowning effort” of his long and celebrated career, Barnum had pulled out all the stops for the occasion. He imported $50,000 worth of chariots, armor, flags, and historical costumes from England, shipped scores of exotic animals to New York from all over the world, and in general spared no effort or expense to mount the most dazzling spectacle ever presented—“a startling novelty, far beyond anything ever seen in this country,” as advertisements proclaimed.

  Each performance began with an hour-long “Congress of Nations,” a pageant whose “splendor and variety” (as one reviewer wrote with inadvertent irony) “seemed almost interminable.” Thousands of lavishly costumed performers representing the “Kings, Queens, Emperors, and other potentates of the civilized world” paraded around the arena in a grand procession that invariably brought gasps of awe from the wonderstruck crowds. Following this magnificent spectacle, the audience was treated to a dizzying assortment of races (involving camels, elephants, monkeys, ostriches, ponies, and Roman chariots driven by “Amazonian women”); an English hunt featuring real stags and more than 150 authentically costumed riders; a balloon ascension; a Western show with scores of real Indians and buffaloes; and much more.

  In addition to these “splendid and exciting scenes,” the Hippodrome also featured a menagerie, a museum, an aquarium, and of course, Barnum’s beloved sideshow, where visitors could gawk at such celebrated “human oddities” as “English Jack,” the frog-swallower; the armless wonder, Charles Tripp; and Ana Swann, the Nova Scotia giantess.

  While the Great Hippodrome Building on Vanderbilt Square in Manhattan was being renovated for the winter, Barnum sent the show on the road. A pioneering manipulator of the media, the “great showman” knew precisely how to whip up audience anticipation. Ads for the Hippodrome began running in Boston papers more than a week before it was scheduled to open. In the meantime—while waiting for the “Grand Spectacle” to commence its three-week run—Bostonians could continue to divert themselves with their own “human oddity”: the “boy-tiger,” the “moral monstrosity,” the “white-eyed demon,” who exerted a primal fascination every bit as intense as anything in Barnum’s sideshow.

  * * *

  That his contemporaries regarded Jesse as a kind of carnival freak—the criminal equivalent of one of Barnum’s sideshow “curiosities”—was confirmed on Sunday, July 26, when the New York Times ran another lengthy editorial on the Boston murders. Pomeroy’s case, declared the writer, was “one not only of extraordinary atrocity in crime but of singular interest in psychology.” What could possibly explain the motivations of a fourteen-year-old boy “who kills other boys and girls for no other reason than the love of inflicting torture and death, and a curiosity to see how they will act while he cuts their throats and stabs them?” The phenomenon was so monstrous—such a shocking “exhibition of the fiendish capacity of human nature”—that anyone looking for an answer might almost be tempted to revert to “the old beliefs in werewolves and possession by devils.”

  Of course, the writer continued, there were other possibilities. In contrast to the medieval, superstitious belief in demonic possession, there was the modern scientific theory of “Darwinian development.” According to this theory, Jesse’s crimes could be seen “as an outbreak of the savage nature inherited from that hairy wild beast with a tail from which the [followers of Darwin] insist we are all descended.” To be sure, the writer added, “there are few, if any, wild beasts that kill for the mere sake of killing.” But no one could deny “that there are men, women, and children who seem to delight in giving pain for the mere sake of giving it; which would seem, according to Mr. Darwin’s theory, to involve the conclusion that the wild beast of which man is the final result was the vilest and bloodiest of all the brute creation.”

  In the end, however, the writer rejected both the “gloomy beliefs of the old theology” and the “new and dreary science” of “Darwinian development” in favor of a more novel explanation. Jesse’s behavior, he argued, could “reasonably be accounted for” by the unfortunate fact that, of all “living animals,” the absolutely cruelest is a young boy “in that dreadful period between six and twelve years of age. Few of us” the writer continued, “if we have been reflective observers of our kind, can fail to remember cases of boys who have been wantonly and atrociously cruel to inferior animals, and even to younger children. . . . Why boys are thus cruel is a question involving discussion beyond the province of journalism. But that they are so is a fact to be accepted. And this boy, Pomeroy, is probably a mere example, or ‘case,’ of the existence of this cruelty of disposition in an exaggerated and hideously monstrous development.”

  The editorial concluded by recommending a punishment in keeping with its view of Jesse as an example of freakish human development, a specimen to be isolated and put under observation. “For the world’s sake as well as his own,” the writer urged, “he should be imprisoned and watched and studied as a monstrous moral phenomenon.”

  * * *

  The inquest lasted two more days before reaching its preordained conclusion. A half-dozen witnesses testified on Monday afternoon, July 27, most significantly John and Millie Margerson, the original owners of the house at 327 Broadway, who had been living above Mrs. Pomeroy’s shop at the time of the murder. Both husband and wife stated that, in the latter part of May, they became aware of a rank odor emanating from below stairs. Assuming that it was coming from the water closet, Mr. Margerson had gone down into the cellar and unclogged the toilet. Over the next few weeks, however, the smell just got worse. Thinking that some sort of dead animal might be rotting in the cellar, he checked again in mid-June—but by then, the stench was so overwhelming that he couldn’t bear to stay down there for more than a few minutes. According to Margerson, it had crossed his mind that the missing Curran girl might be buried below the Pomeroys’ shop (by that time, of course, Jesse was already infamous as the prime suspect in the Millen slaying). But since the police had already made a supposedly thorough search of the cellar, he had shrugged off his suspicions.

  At the final session of the inquest on Wednesday afternoon, July 30, the jurors heard from James Nash, who had purchased the building from the Margersons, and who offered a corroborating account of the discovery of Katie’s remains; Willie Kohr, the newspaper delivery boy, who testified to having seen Katie in the shop with Jesse right before her disappearance; and Thomas Tobin, owner of the neighborhood stationery store, who stated that a little girl matching Katie Curran’s description had come into his shop early on the morning of March 18, looking for a notebook. Tobin had shown her three different kinds, but none proved to her liking. When he last saw her—through the window of his store—she was heading up Broadway in the direction of the Pomeroys’ shop.

  At approximately 5:30 P.M., following a brief deliberation, the jurors returned their verdict: “That the said Katie Mary Curran came to her death on or about the 18th of March, 1874, at No. 327 Broadway, South Boston, by the hand of Jesse H. Pomeroy; that he has acknowledged the crime,
and the evidence obtained corroborates his statement. And the jury further find that either before or after the commission of the murder, the girl’s person was mutilated with a knife or some sharp instrument.”

  * * *

  The public’s obsession with Jesse Pomeroy wasn’t over. Far from it. In another few months, with the start of his trial, his case would explode back onto the front pages and excite communal passions all over again.

  But with the end of the Curran inquest, the story temporarily faded from the news. On Thursday, July 31, the papers offered the final glimpse of the “boy fiend” that readers would get for a while—a glimpse that reinforced the popular view of Jesse as a prodigy of both fiendish crime and diabolical cunning.

  According to an unnamed but apparently reliable source, Jesse was devoting the bulk of his time to the preparation of a lengthy manuscript intended to establish his innocence. Entitled “Jesse H. Pomeroy’s Defense,” this nearly book-length work offered a “minutely detailed” account of his actions at the time of the Millen murder and exhibited “a remarkable shrewdness” in rebutting nearly every accusation leveled against him.

  When not engaged in composing this work (supposedly intended for the use of his lawyers), Jesse passed his time sleeping, eating, and reading the only books permitted to him—religious tracts supplied by Uncle Cook, the chaplain. (As the newspapers noted, these uplifting works “were not much relished by Jesse,” whose tastes ran to the lurid pleasures of Beadle’s blood-and-thunder stories.) Occasionally, he also wrote a letter to his mother, who always answered promptly. Every day, Sheriff Clark was besieged by visitors seeking access to Jesse—reporters, photographers, and ordinary citizens hoping for a glimpse of the caged “boy-tiger.” All such petitioners, without exception, were politely but firmly turned away.

  Jesse himself was generally on his best behavior—“courteous and respectful in his address.” Even so, there was something vaguely unsettling about him. Interviewed by a reporter from the Boston Post, the jail turnkey, an old-timer named Bradley, described Jesse’s peculiar effect on the people around him.

  The boy “never causes trouble,” Bradley observed. But “beneath his placid appearance,” there was “something in his manner which caused aversion” in those who came in daily contact with him—“something which old officers cannot describe, but which causes an innate feeling of distrust and dread.”

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  Now, are we not each and all a little insane; that is to say, of unsound and imperfect mind, impelled by defects of will to constant variations from the straightforward course? Well then, suppose some of the worst of these defects greatly aggravated in our constitution. Imagine a strong inclination to cruelty, a passion for destroying, united with dull perceptions of moral rectitude and a weak will. Who shall say that the perpetrator has not the same right to claim that he could not help it that we have in our everyday peccadilloes?

  —The Boston Daily Globe, May 7, 1874

  It was clear that—if Jesse’s lawyers hoped to save him from the gallows—they would have to mount an insanity defense. And indeed, from the moment of his arrest, the debate over the boy’s mental condition—and the extent to which he could be held responsible for his acts—had raged in the press. On one side stood those who believed that—though clearly affilicted with “a morbid condition of the mind”—Jesse did not suffer from the radical “disorganization of the faculties” that constitutes true insanity. To these commentators, there was only one sure way to “protect society against the recurrence of future atrocities by Pomeroy,” and that was “to put him out of the world.” Executing Jesse would also serve as a powerful deterrent to others “who might be led to imitate his example.” As an editorialist for the Boston Post argued:

  This plea of criminals, whether juveniles or adult, that they cannot help it is a dangerous one. It may be that they are driven on by an impulse to evil that seems to them uncontrollable, but we are inclined to think that means might be found to check this indulgence in evil propensities. If there was the certainty of severe punishment before them, they could probably, by a strong effort, keep their hands off their fellow creatures. We think they might even be induced to abstain from enticing little children away and sticking knives into them, if they were sure that indulgence in such pastimes would bring a severe penalty.

  On the other side of the debate were those who argued that—as the victim of a “horrible monomania which he had neither the moral force nor the training to control”—Jesse was no more responsible for his acts “than a young tiger.” His treatment by civilized beings, therefore, should be analogous to that which a jungle cat would receive in a zoo—i.e., lifelong incarceration behind bars (either in a prison or mental hospital). These observers expressed grave doubts that Jesse’s destruction would “deter others of a like evil nature from committing similar crimes,” for the simple reason that such killers—while perfectly aware of the wickedness and potential legal consequences of their acts—“are impelled by dreadful promptings they are powerless to resist. They know what they are doing, and yet they cannot help it.”

  And then there were those editorialists who declined to take sides until the issue was resolved at Jesse’s trial. This more moderate position was epitomized by a piece in the Boston Globe, whose writer acknowledged the extreme difficulty of diagnosing a killer like Pomeroy—a person whose “mental structure” was apparently intact but who was nevertheless subject to “an uncontrollable passion for inflicting pain.” True, Jesse appeared sane enough to know what he was doing and to understand “the heinous character of his acts.” Even so—since the boy was clearly in the grip of “evil passions and propensities”—it was “not easy to say whether he could help it or not.” In the end, this writer insisted, the question of Jesse’s sanity (and moral responsibility) could only be answered by trained “alienists”—medical experts specializing in the study of mental disease.

  In the months preceding his trial, three such experts visited Jesse in his cell—Drs. Clement Walker and John E. Tyler (who had been retained by the defense) and a physician named George T. Choate, who was working for the prosecution. Among them, the three alienists would conduct fourteen separate interviews with the young prisoner—enough (as Jesse would later report) “to make me nearly insane, if I was not already so.” By the time the doctors were done with him, he felt as if he had been operated on with the mental equivalent of a stomach pump.

  Though Walker paid the greatest number of visits to Jesse—seven in all, between mid-September and early December—it was Tyler, a portly little man with a ready wit and an easygoing style, that Jesse felt most comfortable with. During their first meeting, on September 16, Jesse gave Tyler a detailed account of his attacks on the young boys in Chelsea and South Boston, insisting that he had initially approached them “just out of mere companionship,” with “no more idea of whipping and torturing them than I had of jumping up to the moon.” It wasn’t until he had led the little victims to a remote locale that a “sudden impulse or feeling came over me.”

  When Tyler pressed the boy for more information about this “feeling,” Jesse pointed to his head and explained that, immediately before each of his crimes, he had experienced a sudden pain that began just over his left ear and passed from one side of his head to the other. This pain, Jesse said, was always the harbinger of violence. “The feeling which accompanied [the headache] was that I must . . . whip or kill the boy or girl, as the case was, and it seemed to me that I could not help doing it.”

  Though Jesse claimed he retained only an “indistinct” recollection of his victims—and of the precise torments he had inflicted on them—he freely confessed to the crimes, not only to Tyler but to Walker and Choate as well. In mid-November, however, his story suddenly changed. According to his later account, he began to doubt his own memory after receiving a note from his mother which counseled him “not to say I did it unless I did, and to say I didn’t if I didn’t.” Mulling over this advice, the boy was f
orced to acknowledge that—though he “really did think” he had committed the crimes he was accused of—there was a small voice inside his head that sometimes said, “Jesse, you know you did not do these things, so why do you not stand up and try to clear yourself?” For a while, however, he resisted this inner prompting, fearing that, if he recanted, his mother and brother might fall under suspicion.

  When Dr. Tyler visited him in mid-October, however, and began questioning him about the Curran murder, Jesse—almost without intending to—abruptly denied that he had committed it.

  Tyler stared at him for a long moment. “Are you saying now that you did not kill the little girl?” the doctor asked, his eyebrows raised.

  “That’s right,” Jesse said.

  “But you have said that you did, Jesse,” Tyler protested. “Which story am I to believe?”

  “You must believe me now,” said the boy.

  “Well, then,” Tyler said after a momentary pause, “if you didn’t kill her, who did? Your mother?”

  Jesse grew instantly incensed. “No gentleman would say such a thing.”

  A few days later, Tyler examined him again, but Jesse continued to stick to his new version of events. Indeed, he now claimed that he hadn’t killed either Katie Curran or Horace Millen, and that “this was the truth.”

  Tyler didn’t try to hide his disbelief. On October 16, during his fifth visit, he took a few more futile stabs at getting Jesse to retract his new claim. When Jesse stubbornly insisted on his innocence, Tyler left and never returned.

  * * *

  Several weeks later, on November 6—just a few weeks shy of Jesse’s fifteenth birthday—Tyler submitted his written report to the defense lawyer, Joseph Cotton. It is a revealing document, offering insight into both Jesse’s pathology and the state of psychiatric knowledge in 1874. It begins with a few brief observations about the subject’s physical condition and mental capacities, both of which were, in Tyler’s estimation, unexceptional. Jesse’s “general health” was “fair though not robust”; his memory “accurate but not quick”; and his learning limited to “some knowledge of the elementary branches of education.” In short—apart from his blighted right eye (which Jesse claimed “was a result of vaccination”)—he was physically and intellectually average.