Editor accuses alleged kitten skinner, and the fur flies

On this day (January 6) in 1928, newspapers reported that Jesse Pomeroy, a longtime lifer in the Massachusetts State Prison, was suing Alice Stone Blackwell, noted suffragist and editor of The Woman's Journal, for $5,000. Blackwell had accused Pomeroy of skinning a live kitten in his jail cell, not in the pages of her magazine but in a 1925 letter to a Boston newspaper, opposing his possible parole. Pomeroy denied the accusation. Blackwell said her letter was fair comment. The jury sided with Pomeroy but awarded him just $1 in damages.