Today in 1843, the birthday of Samuel W. Pennypacker.
While he was governor of Pennsylvania, his supporters tried to make certain types of editorial cartoons a crime.
Pennypacker was not a newcomer to public life when he became governor; he’d previously served as a judge; he’d led the state historical society and been a member of the Pennsylvania Board of Education.
But during the 1902 election for governor, he really, really didn’t like some of the criticism that came his way.
He particularly didn’t like cartoonists at the Philadelphia North American newspaper, who liked to draw Pennypacker as a parrot who would repeat the words his party boss had given him to say.
The new governor thought of himself as a reformer, a scholar, an honest public servant; any cartoon that suggested otherwise was “the kind of slander which is closely akin to treason.”
So, a week after Pennypacker took office, his allies in the state legislature introduced a bill that introduced criminal penalties for anyone who created or published a cartoon “portraying, describing or representing any person… in the form or likeness of a beast, bird, fish, insect, or other unhuman animal.”
The cartoonists spotted the loophole immediately, and started drawing the bill’s supporters as tomatoes, steins of beer and other unflattering non-animal forms.
Lawmakers tried again, this time expanding the legal definition of libel and making newspaper publishers personally responsible for any slanderous content in their publications.
This one passed the legislature, and Governor Pennypacker signed it… for all the good it did.
The papers pointed to the Pennsylvania Constitution’s guarantee that they could review and opine about goings-on in state government any way they wanted.
So they published more scathing editorial cartoons than ever before.
Newspapers across the country piled on, mocking the law and the governor who had signed it.
The public backlash against the measure was so strong that the government never tried to enforce the ban.
Pennypacker did not run for reelection, and his successor signed a repeal of the ban, leaving editorial cartoonists to draw whatever the heck they felt like drawing.
And that included the artist whose parrot cartoon had prompted the law: he ended up drawing the statute as a firecracker that had blown up in the governor’s face.
Today in 1942, a funeral for one John Pecinovsky.
The Iowa tavern owner was known as “the Half-and-Half Man,” because he would wear clothes that were white on one side and black on the other.
He grew a beard on one side of his face and shaved the other!
When Cartoonists Were Criminals (Historical Society of Pennsylvania)
John Pecinovsky, the Half-and-Half Man (Weird Universe)
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