Biography
D. M. Bennett founded and published The Truth Seeker, a freethought newspaper. Anthony Comstock prosecuted him for mailing Cupid’s Yokes, a pamphlet by Ezra Heywood criticizing marriage and advocating sexual freedom. Bennett was convicted in 1879 and sentenced to thirteen months at hard labor and a $300 fine. His imprisonment at Albany Penitentiary prompted a major campaign for a presidential pardon. He was released on April 29, 1880 and resumed publishing. He died in 1882.
Previous biography:
D. M. Bennett was the founder and publisher of Truth Seeker, one of the oldest magazines in America currently being published. Bennet was arrested in 1878 on charges of mailing obscenity after he published a pamphlet written by Angela Heywood which advocated for women being allowed to divorce their husbands. He was convicted of this offense and sentenced to 13 months of hard labor. Despite over 200,000 signing a petition calling on his release he served his entire sentence and died soon after leaving prison.
The Ingersoll biography’s account distinguishes Bennett’s November 12, 1877 arrest, dismissed the following January, from the later December 10, 1878 Cupid’s Yokes prosecution. It recounts a guilty verdict, affirmance on appeal, and a thirteen-month hard-labor sentence in the latter case. It also places Bennett in Ludlow Street Jail while Ingersoll sought presidential intervention. These are separately attributed legal and location details; neither the earlier arrest nor the author’s statement that Bennett served his term establishes new physical endpoints or an exact thirteen-month served total.
Col. Robert G. Ingersoll As He Is, Comstock-prosecution account, PDF pages 111, 112, 115.
