I have been within ten feet of Jesse Pomeroy! Immured deep in the vast gray walls of Charlestown penitentiary, the strange, warped human who once bore that name is hidden away from the sight of man forever in a living death, unknown by the coming generation and forgotten by the passing one. He has a double cell, much larger than the ordinary cell, into which the sunlight streams, says a Boston writer. His room is neat, and he himself is the personification of neatness. Upon this he prides himself. He wears a beard, which is kept neatly trimmed. He changes the style of it occasionally to suit himself, and displays as much taste and is as well aware of what is becoming as the most exquisite man of fashion.
“But is he well?” I asked of the one who gave me this information, and one who knows.
“As well as you are,” was the reply, “and he looks well.”
“People say a man cannot live without exercise. The only exercise he gets is in his cell, walking up and down, yet no one could possibly be healthier than he is. So far as I know, he has never known a sick day and he has been a prisoner in absolutely solitary confinement for sixteen years. He is a great reader and student. He speaks three different languages. He does not want to work, but prefers his books.”
“Does he seem to have any curiosity about he outside world?” I asked.
“Yes, I presume so, although he never asks. He does not ask privileges; no doubt he realizes it would be in vain. The only favor he has asked of Gen. Bridges since has has been warden was permission to keep the box his holiday things came in. This favor had been granted to him once before, and he used the cover to hide a hole he had dug in the wall.
“If he gets a penknife or a spoon, the probabilities are he will commence and dig. The walls are so thick it is impossible for him to escape, and no doubt he does it to make the prison officials uneasy, more than anything else.
“He is a remarkably good-looking man, a fine-looking man, in fact. If you should pass his cell, ignorant of his name, you would comment upon his appearance and select him as a man much above the ordinary.”
It is said that either his hearing is supernaturally acute or else he is possessed of some strange sixth sense, enabling him to know things that have transpired before the guards themselves. One instance of this is related. A couple of years ago the prisoners were all assembled in the chapel awaiting the annual announcement of the governor’s pardons. Before the convicts’ cheers which greeted the lucky ones had died out, Prison Physician McLaughlin had occasion to attend a prisoner located in the same tier as Pomeroy. As the doctor passed Jesse’s cell he called to the doctor, saying, “So the governor has pardoned two men,” and giving their names. Not half a dozen people have seen him since he was a boy, and he has seen no woman’s face but his mother’s since his incarceration.
Jesse Pomeroy was a real person, something which I didn’t believe when I first read this story. At the time this was published, Pomeroy had been in prison about 20 years, having been convicted of two murders at the age of 14. According to this modern reprint of his autobiography, he tried to escape numerous times. Eventually he was removed from solitary confinement (1917), and died in 1932.