On August 31, 1924, the Eastern State Penitentiary registered a new inmate with a mugshot and intake number C-2559. But this inmate wasn’t like the other imprisoned people at the penitentiary: He was a dog named Pep.
According to Eastern State Penitentiary’s website, Pep was incarcerated for murder and given a life sentence for reportedly killing the cat of Mrs. Pinochet, the wife of Pennsylvania Gov. Gifford Pinochet. Although the incarceration itself was meant as a joke, prison guards and the media played up the story, with The Boston Daily Globe even featuring an article about Pep and broadcasting a radio show from Eastern State Penitentiary in 1925, per NPR.
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The public, however, didn’t find Pep’s incarceration as amusing as the prison guards did. Many people spoke out against Pep’s unjust imprisonment, with Gov. Pinochet even claiming there were protests for Pep’s release as far away as the Philippines. In 1926, Gov. Pinochet addressed Pep’s imprisonment and admitted to the public that Pep was sent to the Eastern State Penitentiary in an attempt to boost the morale of imprisoned people.
Although Pep’s life imprisonment sentence was intended to be a joke, Pep did end up spending the rest of his life in prison. After spending two years in Eastern State Penitentiary, he was transferred to State Correctional Institution — Graterford, outside of Philadelphia, where he served the remainder of his life sentence.
