by Carrie Hagen
JOSHUA TAGGART
EDW G. GARLIN
R. A. LUKENS
Pennsylvania Detective Bureau
Southwest corner Fifth and Spruce Streets, Philadelphia
Although Taggart wouldn’t pursue a reward that his own agency offered, he could certainly use any information gleaned through it to pursue the city’s $20,000 prize.
After a month of searching, amateur detectives across the western hemisphere sent reports of Charley sightings from Cuba, Scotland, Germany. The Ross case offered Americans, no matter how disenfranchised, more than a chance to earn money: it created an opportunity for public attention.
And middle-class America wanted attention. The early successes of industrialization expanded the echelon of business, allowing for the emergence of a more clearly defined middle class in America. Aside from quality of life, these small-business owners, managers, and “middle men” differed from the upper class in two important ways: they dealt more immediately with the working class, and they were more directly affected by the Civil War, giving them a sympathy that evaded the bourgeoisie. As a result of this Victorian sensibility, the middle class believed in community values, and their convictions resulted in relief efforts for the poor and other disenfranchised peoples. But they also believed that the laboring class was inherently violent, a fault easily overcome through moral education. The prevailing sentiment was that if wage earners insisted on disturbing the peace, thereby disrespecting the social hierarchy and its moral boundaries, then society had no problem judging them as uneducated and unworthy of redemption.
The search for Charley Ross and his captors became a special kind of challenge for the middle class. Saving the child and punishing the criminals appealed to their sense of justice; questioning foreigners and searching through poor neighborhoods appealed to their curiosity, handily disguised as civic responsibility. After the long war years, life moved quickly. More people moved into more concentrated areas at the expense of America’s slower-paced, agrarian lifestyle. Another kind of New World evolved within the country’s borders—and as survival occupied the minds of workers and family money reassured the upper class, security worried those in the middle.
The Inquirer blamed the industrialization for paranoia. “In the good old times, peace, honesty, kindness and obedience to law prevailed throughout the interior of Pennsylvania. Farm houses were without bolts and locks, quarrels never got further than fisticuffs, burglars, thieves, and murderers were rare objects. All this is now changed,” it said. “The increase of traveling facilities is the cause. The railroad carries the ruffian and thief from the great cities and sets them down in a few hours in peaceful and unsuspecting neighborhoods where they may commit awful crimes and escape with all the facility and ease which were ready to bring them to the scenes of their outrages.”
The kidnappers had, then, a co-conspirator: progress.
The appeal of “the good old times” pushed northern Republicans—Abraham Lincoln’s party of progress—further into conservatism. Railroad tracks may have spread throughout the country, but they facilitated the arrival of the unknown into the familiar, and the departure of the familiar into the unknown.
If the theft of Charley was an opportunity for the laborer to steal a piece of middle-class life, then the search for him was a chance for the middle class to assert their Puritan values. Seeing the kidnapping as a warning of things to come, they emphasized Christian education and tightened the protective reins on their households. Communi ties detained strangers, removed children from suspicious-looking guardians, and thought they recognized the kidnappers’ features on the faces of foreigners and outsiders passing through their neighborhoods. Whether or not those parties fit descriptions of Charley and his captors, they were often held until a member of the Ross family or the Philadelphia Police cleared them. Townspeople felt the power of their accusations— whomever they suspected, the police questioned.
Officers in Denver, Colorado, notified Mayor Stokley of a German couple who traveled with a small boy. After receiving Charley’s picture, and realizing the boy spoke German, the officers admitted he didn’t resemble Charley at all.
A police chief in St. Paul, Minnesota, noticed a boy with a “bright, intelligent face” loitering outside of a disreputable bar until a “rough-looking” man took him away. The chief contacted police headquarters in Philadelphia, yet had to confess he didn’t know where the pair had gone.
Officers in North Philadelphia asked a four-year-old for his name and took him to the station when he said “Charley Ross.” When his angry parents came to get him, they told the officers that their child had a lisp. He had actually identified himself as “Charley Loss.”
A man named Murkins in Odell, Illinois, told his creditors that he “was going to get a fortune from the East” around the same time a couple and two children arrived at his house. One of the children looked so familiar that a neighbor wrote Christian and asked for Charley’s picture, which he then took to the local police. An officer and a state attorney went to Murkins’s house and asked to meet the boy. He had brown hair, brown eyes, and a mark on his left arm identical to a vaccination scar on Charley. He also wore a dress. The police suspected Murkins of trying to collect the reward money by disguising an older child as Charley Ross.
Initially, authorities treated every identity question as a lead. Professional and amateur detectives came across the cases of other children who were lost or found. Over the past twenty years, the New York– based Children’s Aid Society had sent some twenty thousand boys and girls west on what came to be known as “orphan trains.” The idea was to find good homes for those homeless, abandoned, institutionalized, and/or criminal children who wandered the streets. Half of these kids probably were not orphans—indigent parents had the opportunity to ship their kids off to a better life, and some children volunteered to go themselves. Critics, however, pled the causes of parents who said their children were taken without consent, and of children who ran away from abusive placements. The Society denied stealing children and said potential families were screened, but it did not keep consistent, acceptable records. If a foster parent thought he had Charley Ross, chances are he wouldn’t have been able to trace the child’s true origin.
To the fascination of readers, newspapers published tales of exploited and displaced minors by name.
In New York City, eight-year-old Annie Sebastian left one afternoon to put flowers on her grandmother’s grave. When she didn’t return after five hours, her father reported the disappearance. Annie’s young neighbor said he saw four black men put her in a wagon while Annie screamed, “Wait! Wait!”
Reporters in Albany, New York, reminded citizens of a fourteen-year-old named John Patterson who had been missing for almost a year after failing to return home from his part-time job. His mother and the police had followed rumored sightings of the boy from Yonkers to Kentucky, even asking to see the bones of a buried body at one stop.
Seven-year-old Joe Harlen from South Philadelphia went to the market with his uncle. After making his purchases, Joe’s uncle told him to wait by the wagon while he retrieved their horses from the stable. Joe was missing when he returned.
In Newport, Rhode Island, a young girl named Charlotte played with her friends on the beach while her guardians, two Indian women, shopped in town. An eyewitness saw a gentleman walk up to Charlotte and ask her to go with him. “No,” the little girl replied. He then offered her candy and guided her into a tent. Charlotte wore different clothes when she left the beach with the man.
Never before had public interest centered so much on the place of children in American society. The public realized that regardless of Charley’s fate and their selfish interests in the reward money, children would never be as safe as they were before July 1, 1874. Parents needed the police to find Charley’s captors, but even more, they needed them to address unanswered questions—such as, Why Charley? Christian was not a rich man, his business was not going well, and he lived
in a neighborhood full of children. Why did the kidnappers select this particular little boy? Why did they risk taking him from his front yard during daylight? Why did they release his older brother? Were they initially hoping to steal two children? Were they looking for another? Were Charley’s kidnappers responsible for the disappearances of others? The public needed to believe that the ransom letters contained clues to some of these answers.
The longer the search took, the more people needed somebody to hold responsible. The captors had committed a crime against humanity, but as the Evening Bulletin suggested, they weren’t the only villains on the scene. The Bulletin accused city authorities of using silence to manipulate the public’s emotions: “But there has been much that would interest the public which is suppressed, apparently for no better reason than to minister to a sense of self-importance among the few who have made themselves the repositories of this information, and who take a certain satisfaction in looking out from their mysterious retreat upon the common public groping around in the outer darkness.”
The Republican advisers continued using the Public Ledger, under the authority of William McKean, as their mouthpiece. Ignoring accusations of having withheld information, the Ledger placed responsibility on the people. “A search like this can of course only be made by the people: It is beyond the power and the reach of the police, even if there were police in the interior.” Ironically, this statement worked against the very authorities it aimed to protect. As agents of the advisers’ decisions, police officers represented these city leaders. By diminishing “the power and reach of the police,” McKean’s paper indirectly told the public that their elected officials were unable to function as leaders. Such reporting overlooked the growing respect for the force. The public’s desire to read the ransom letters reflected their interest in police intelligence and their need to feel protected. Had the Ledger encouraged faith in the force—for example, by praising its organization of search efforts—the paper would have reinforced citizens’ fledgling faith in city authorities and deflected criticism more successfully. Instead, the advisers tried to earn public approval through fear tactics.
In the same article, the Ledger wrote, “The stealing of little Charley Ross strikes at every child, every parent and every home in the land, for it is boldly proclaimed by the brigands that it is done solely for the ransom money, and that they intend to make this case a test as to whether they can carry on their brutal traffic with success.” The public had feared additional kidnappings, but prior to this article, they hadn’t known of the kidnappers’ specific references to future crimes. By releasing this information, authorities attempted to scare the city by answering one of its questions: if satisfied with Charley’s ransom, the kidnappers would take another child.
In early August, Chief Jones authorized the search of every room on every floor of every building in the city. “Citizens should be careful as to the parties they admit to their houses on the pretence of searching for little Charley Ross,” the Evening Bulletin cautioned. “Nobody, except a policeman in full uniform, is authorized to make such an examination.” The scope of the task generated excitement on the streets, and most suspended complaints to cooperate. While police rummaged through their houses, neighbors more thoroughly explored old coal mines, abandoned buildings, and dark spaces in the corners of ravines, woods, docks, and stables. The citywide hunt failed to produce leads on Charley, but it did uncover contraband and numerous thieves whose illicit activities had gone unnoticed.
ask him no questions
CHRISTIAN ROSS DISAGREED WITH POLICE SUSPICIONS THAT Charley was in Philadelphia or New York. He thought his son had been taken to a place in the Midwest, not a day’s journey away as the kidnappers had insisted. Christian did join investigators in sorting through the suspicions and fragmented visions of mediums and con artists who would incorporate published details about the Ross family’s life into their stories. He tried to limit the number of false reports by formulating a list of questions for the police to ask Charley look-alikes. It asked the children to state Charley’s full name, his hometown, a toy he and Walter played with, and a certain prayer. When potential Charleys passed the interview, inquirers alerted the police, who along with family members decided which possibilities were worthy of a visit. Crowds of hopeful helpers greeted Ross family representatives at railroad stations across the Midwest, down the East Coast, and in Canada and Scotland.
Desiring to help somehow, hundreds of people wrote letters to Christian and Sarah. One came from a former business associate of Christian’s in Boston:
MR. C. K. ROSS—Dear Sir:—I believe years ago I did business with you. Since then I have retired from active business life, and you have my heartfelt sympathy in your deep affliction. I think your case the hardest I ever heard of, and if I can be of any help to you, I will be glad to aid in any way in my power. If you should issue an appeal to the press of the United States, I think there would hardly be a newspaper that would refuse to copy your card, and give it a prominent place, without charge. There are hundreds of families that do not know yet, that you have had a boy stolen, and CHARLEY ROSS may be living next door to some of them and they not know it. My wife and I take such an interest in the case that I feel that with as much leisure as I have, that I ought in the cause of humanity spend some of it in helping you. If you have anything in the way of guidance, let me know, and you can have my gratuitous services.
Yours truly,
SAMUEL T. HOLMES
Even though correspondence brought false reports and bizarre advice, it offered Christian his greatest support system. Ten years before, it wouldn’t have been as accessible an option.
Up until the middle of the nineteenth century, it cost seventeen times as much to send a letter as it did to mail a newspaper to a friend. People avoided high postage costs by jotting notes between articles, rolling up a paper and mailing it instead of a proper letter. The practice became so popular that the government, wanting the money generated by postage, made communication by “transient newspaper” illegal. It took two other acts for writers to change their habits, however: in 1845, the postal service lowered costs somewhat, and newspapers encouraged readers to pay a small fee to post messages in personal columns. The idea was a success. But people still didn’t receive messages at home. They had to either buy a paper on the street or go to the post office to claim messages. Before long, the post office was a community meeting place—and the perfect spot to kindle an affair.
Like so many other institutions, the postal service changed dramatically during the Civil War. Officials thought it more appropriate for women to learn of family deaths in the privacy of their homes rather than the public sphere of the post office. In 1864, sixty-six American cities instituted home delivery. For the first time, it was possible to anonymously place a letter in a container at a post office, hotel, bar, or letter box, and know it would reach a designated person exactly where he or she lived.
It made sense then, that people scanned the personals so often that they could find and keep track of the Ross camp’s answers to the kidnappers. It also made sense that the kidnappers chose the mail to communicate an anonymous ransom. And as their threats intensified, they knew the words would terrorize the Ross family alone in their home before the authorities could read anything.
if death it must be
ON SATURDAY, AUGUST 10, CHRISTIAN AND WALTER RODE THE train to New York City. Christian knew they would be meeting with Superintendent Walling, but he didn’t know why. Even though Christian’s brother Joseph had heard about the Mosher brothers more than a week before, Christian had not been told about them. Walling greeted Christian at his hotel and introduced him to Captain Hedden, who made plans to meet with the Rosses in the morning.
That night, tragedy struck Germantown. In spite of earlier summer rains, a drought had depressed Philadelphia’s rivers, leaving the Wingohocking Creek so parched that it revealed the sharp rocks usually hidden underwater. Staggered storms arrived on Frida
y, August 9, and when they turned into a steady downpour lasting more than twenty-four hours, the basins overflowed.
Germantown’s home owners had changed the patterns of the town’s streams by digging outlets around their properties, creating man-made angles that trapped branches and dirt during storms. North of the Ross home on Washington Lane, a little bridge crossed a stream called Honey Run. Throughout the storm, gas and water-main pipes trapped driftwood, sand, and trash underneath the bridge piers, and the force of the water unsettled the bridge’s foundation. On Saturday night, a concerned neighbor stood with a lantern near Honey Run. No gas lamps were lit along the route, but the watchman managed to warn an oncoming wagon or two to turn away from the unstable bridge. There was one he couldn’t save: eighty-five-year-old James Sherrard and the fifteen-year-old son of his employer, a boy named Henry Steel, were headed for the train depot. They traveled too quickly to see the lantern or heed the warning; before morning, police joined neighbors in a search for the bodies.
Somebody found the corpse of the drowned horse first. It had been trapped, attached to the buggy, underneath pieces of the bridge. About 250 feet away from the horse, Sherrard’s body had settled against the riverbank. Just before noon, somebody spotted the boy. His hand appeared to be reaching above the water’s surface further downstream, held in place by the ruins of another broken bridge.
Superintendent Walling became so determined to track Charley himself that he tightened the flow of information in his investigation, even instructing Captain Hedden not to tell Christian about the Mosher brothers. Walling wanted to do it himself, but only after Hedden asked Walter to identify a possible prime suspect. The following morning, the Captain took Walter and Christian on a walk outside their hotel. Pointing out a man who stood a short distance away, Hedden asked if Walter had ever seen him before, perhaps in the buggy that carried Charley away.
