We Is Got Him

by Carrie Hagen

  The New York Herald. August 26.

  “John. He [Walter] denies the direction you give. I require conclusive proof. Send clothing to any point that you please, and advise.”

  NEW YORK. Sept 6—Your friends yu say ask for more proof that we ever had him they are as foolish as percell for he says you never lost him. your detectives have never had the slightest clue or trace of him since the our he was taken but in order to convince these sceptical friends that we had him and have him we will now give the detectives a small clue to work upon but it will serve no other end only to convince these sceptical friends or yours that we have him. on the night of 2d July at 11 o’clock we passed through Trenton, N.J. Charley lay in my arms asleep. after we had passed about 2 squares up bridge st Charley’s hat drop off and we did not notice it until he woke up and asked for his hat we would not go back for it. you can get this hat by advertising for it there if it is not worn out. if it should be worn out you can find out who found one that night or the next morning.

  this thing is drawing to a final crises

  PHILADELPHIA ENTERED THE FIFTH WEEK OF A DROUGHT IN September. Police forbade citizens from washing the streets or using fountains for anything but fire prevention. Dust followed customers into shops, and many storekeepers circled display tables, brushing dirt off of merchandise. In the country, twenty-four-hour watch patrols kept daily fires from ravaging the land, but many fences burned to the ground. Grain stalks withered, fruit ripened early, and brown grass aged the fields by two months. Farmers worried about a winter feed shortage and rising hay prices.

  Neither the dry fall nor the Ross investigation postponed preparations. “The change from week to week at the Centennial grounds is almost magical,” wrote the Evening Bulletin. “Every portion of the work is pushed forward with a celerity that will be apt to infuse confidence into the most timid and doubting in regard to the completion of the work long within the time specified.”

  Although Philadelphia was attracting more eyes than Stokley dreamed it would at the beginning of July, it was not all the kind of attention that the mayor desired. Crowds gathered behind a large fence on the exhibition grounds. Unlike the inaugural world’s fair at London’s Crystal Palace, Philadelphia’s event would have more than one main building. It would have six. It would also be the first world’s fair to dedicate an entire exhibition hall to the arts; Memorial Hall would hold only paintings and sculptures. Around the construction sites, people watched engineers and masons step around carpenter shacks and stacks of bricks, stones, and lumber. The artisans worked rapidly to build railroads so they could distribute the one hundred carloads of stone arriving daily from the Conshohocken quarries. Some of the sightseers, though, were there to find places where Charley Ross might be hidden. These Fairmount Park grounds caused Stokley enough trouble without his having to worry that they concealed a child.

  Workmen were operating on schedule, but funds were not arriving as anticipated. The government’s check, approved by Congress to cover 50 percent of the project cost, was delayed for unknown reasons. The Centennial Commission had planned on using the federal money to finance the first phase of construction; the absence of these funds threatened to delay these plans. Stokley did not want the Commission to postpone anything. Instead, the City Council agreed to advance a loan from the city budget provided that, when it arrived, the government check would immediately repay these funds. Stokley knew that this decision was a risky one. For Congress to approve its share of Centennial monies, Philadelphia had already needed to assume financial responsibility for the remaining 50 percent of costs. Whatever amount, then, the Centennial Commission could not raise by soliciting local donors and selling exhibit space, the city would have to cover. So far, hardly any of this money had been raised. The Commission needed to attract interest, and Mayor Stokley needed to find investors that would take a risk on the Centennial and pledge money to Philadelphia— where children disappeared, strangers were interrogated, and citizens invaded private space.

  September’s papers brought more stories of the missing. Readers speculated about connections between Charley’s disappearance and the details in these reports.

  A three-month-old baby disappeared from his home on Long Island after his former nurse failed to bring him home from an outing. After lingering around the family’s property, the nurse, who had recently been fired, had obtained permission to take the infant on a two-hour sailing trip. She returned alone the next day, her arms covered in blood. The nurse said two men had blindfolded her, cut her arms, and taken the child before she could escape. The police did not believe her but could find no leads to disprove her story.

  Police could also not find a three-year-old boy, son of a poor mountaineer, who had wandered away from his family’s log cabin in western Pennsylvania. His mother had left the boy in a room when she took some of her six children to pick blackberries, and when she returned four hours later, he was gone. Her niece found a piece of the boy’s clothes on the windowsill, underneath a window too heavy for him to lift on his own. Investigators thought he had walked outside and lost his way in the forest.

  Near Washington, D.C., neighbors observed a British couple leaving a small boy with a family that lived in a remote cabin. Philadelphia sent two detectives to investigate. They thought the child’s clothes resembled descriptions of Charley’s and took the boy to a local police station. The boy further excited the police by telling them he had brothers and several sisters at his real home. Detectives traced his biological parents, who told them they were too poor to keep him and had asked friends to help take care of him. The Evening Bulletin said, “And if the fact that the boy has brothers and sisters is to be accepted as evidence that he is the lost child, the situation of vast numbers of small boys will become exceedingly solemn. The development of a detective with some other kind of a head than a wooden one would be a grateful occurrence at this juncture.”

  Townspeople in Orange County, New York, notified the local sheriff with suspicions that the esteemed David Henry Haight family hid a strange child inside their mansion. Because the town respected the family, and Mr. Haight was frequently out of town, officers ignored concerns. Further gossip prompted the sheriff to contact the Philadelphia police, who told him to visit Mrs. Haight. She introduced him to the boy, pointed to a gash on his head, and said a priest had taken him from an abusive Cuban home, where he had been tied to a bed and whipped with a buckle strap. The sheriff asked to speak with the boy privately.

  “Where did you go from when you went away?” he asked.

  “From Philadelphia,” the boy replied.

  “How did you go?”

  “They took me in a wagon.”

  The boy stopped talking when Mrs. Haight reentered the room. The sheriff said he would return in the morning with a picture of Charley Ross, but by the next day, Mrs. Haight had decided not to cooperate. She ordered the officers to leave when they arrived at her door. Legal counsel for the police told them to leave the child alone until the priest returned. When he did, Father Kenney proved the boy was older than Charley. He also admitted to taking the child from an abusive home. The Bulletin complimented Philadelphia’s force for finally identifying a lost boy. “Success in this inquiry may atone somewhat for the failures thus far chargeable upon the proceedings and search in the case of the Ross child.”

  Police also located Charlotte Wyeth, the little girl who was taken from the Newport, Rhode Island, beach in August. Passengers on a steamer to Providence recognized her and asked her female escort where she had met the child. The woman said she transported Charlotte by “order” of a man she called “Pa.” “Pa” told police he had taken Charlotte because she was a little white girl in the company of Indian women. He said onlookers at the beach wished him “Godspeed” as he walked away with her.

  The New York Times questioned why Philadelphia’s force could uncover numerous leads in the cases of other lost children but failed to find an actual clue to Charley’s disappearance in Germa
ntown, a town about two and a half miles long, a mile and a half wide, and six miles away from central police headquarters. “The chief mystery in regard to the difficulty of discovering a clue in the case relates to the horse and buggy. Who owned them? Where did they come from?” While the Evening Bulletin was happy to criticize its own city’s force, it again bristled at New York’s condemnation. “If the New York detectives are so superior to our own, how comes it that they do not find Charley Ross, and pocket this handsome reward?”

  Ninety miles north of Philadelphia, Superintendent Walling was trying to do just that. Unlike Philadelphia’s police department, the NYPD released no statement disavowing their interest in individually collecting reward monies.

  Walling bribed Westervelt’s cooperation by promising him the reward money and police reinstatement. He also began regularly inviting Christian Ross to visit the Mulberry Street headquarters. Walling encouraged Christian with summaries of his conversations with Westervelt, telling him that the informant believed Charley was hidden somewhere along the train rails between New York and Philadelphia. Meanwhile, Walling’s men followed Westervelt to Stromberg’s bar and others in the Five Points. Their reconnaissance convinced them that they could trace and arrest Joseph Douglas more easily than Mosher. Walling told Christian that within forty-eight hours of an authorization from Philadelphia, Douglas could be in custody.

  Christian didn’t want this. He feared Mosher would hurt Charley and continue to hold him as a bargaining chip if Douglas was taken in. “In view of the threats contained in the letters of the abductors, that the life of the child would be taken in case one of their party was arrested, I [fear] to run the risk of having Douglas taken without Mosher being arrested at the same time.”

  “We will have them both,” Walling replied. “We know them and will pursue them until we find them.”

  Captain Heins must have wondered why Walling had not been able to gather more information from his informant in a month’s time and questioned Westervelt’s involvement in the particulars of the case. Walling found himself defending the integrity of his spy, a man released from his own force earlier that year. He wrote Heins on September 11, finally sharing a lead from Westervelt.

  DEAR SIR.—Since writing you this A.M., I have seen Westervelt; he says he knows nothing of the whereabouts of Mosher. He says Mosher lived in your city, about four months ago, on Monroe street, near 3d street, and that he had a stable between 3d and 4th streets, in some street name not known, but the third or fourth street from Monroe towards Washington avenue. The stable was an old wooden building with very large doors, and near 3d street; that a wagon answering to the description you gave me was in said stable at that time, and may be there yet, but probably not; that they kept in said stable a dark bay horse; but he is confident the horse has been sold, but does not know to whom. I showed him the drawing of the wagon you gave to me, and he says he could not make a better one had he it before him, except that he thinks his would not be quite so much rounded at the top.

  Yours, etc., GEO. W. WALLING, Supt.

  Heins pursued the lead on the stable. It was on Marriott Lane— right where Westervelt’s directions had placed it—just before it was torn down. After a little probing, police learned that a man by the name of Henderson had rented a stall for a horse fitting eyewitnesses’ descriptions of the kidnappers’ horse. They had been unable to obtain this information when the stable was still standing because it had switched owners on July 1, the day Charley was kidnapped. During initial searches for the horse and wagon in early July, the new owner had claimed to have no information on the horse or men fitting the kidnappers’ descriptions.

  New York Herald. September 14.

  “John—Hat not found. Am ready to pay sum demanded, but only through an attorney. He dare not betray you. Name one anywhere.”

  NEW HAVEN, Sept. 23—Mr. Ros.—we did not see yu last answer til to day. we was in new brunswic british province and cold not see the New York herald we went there to se if the law would permit us to make a symultaneous change with yu but we find no such change can be efected with safety to our selves. Mr. Ros we cannot show the child to yu and we cannot give you any more proof than we have; yu must expect this as the only alternitive left you to ransom him or murder him, for one or the other wil and shal take place before many days. Yu as his father have been mor cruel to him than we have. We told yu that his place of cencealment was such that no living being could find it and that it was not a fit place for any one to be in the length of time he has been there. We do not keep him there to punish him; your detectives have made it much worse for him than he would be had they not such a close search for him; he has kept his health wonderful considering his close confinement. We do not see him often or even hear from him. The last time we se him he had been ailing with pain from stoppage of urin he would go 24 and 30 ours without making water and then he would cry with pane when he would urinate, but his custodian got him som medicine which helped him. we tel yu positively Mr. Ros his hiding place must be his tomb unless you bring him out.

  New York Herald. September 29.

  “John, your terms are accepted. Name time between payment and delivery.”

  NEW BRUNSWICK. September 30. Mr. Ros: this is the way we propose to do, we will take him to some ministers house at night put a label on him stating this is Charley Ros take him immediately to 304 Market st phil or washington lane germantown yu will find a sufficient sum in his pocket to pay yu for yu trouble no reward will be paid. we have sent word to his parents stating where he is. Mr. Ros it is true yu have got tu rely entirely on our honor for the fulfilment of this part of the contract but you can rely with implicit confidence. bad as we are and capable of the blackest deeds yet we have some honer left. your large rewards have in a measure proved this there are 4 of us to divide the $20,000 among and either one of the 4 could went and got the whole amount to himself if he had been without principal.

  others will rely on our word

  THE LETTER OF SEPTEMBER 23 VERIFIED THAT THE KIDNAPPERS still had or had recently seen Charley. The authorities told Sarah that it mentioned Charley’s difficulty urinating. Sarah said Charley had suffered from this problem for a while. When it occurred, she went to the pharmacist to get nitre (potassium nitrate), which alleviated the problem. Christian knew this meant Charley was in pain.

  His desperation deepened. As the days lapsed, the newspapers indirectly attacked his manhood with their theories on why he wouldn’t or couldn’t pay the ransom. The war years strengthened women; society acknowledged this by recognizing their emotional tenacity while allowing them to mourn. Men were not afforded this balance. Society expected them to respect the 620,000 lives lost in the Civil War by asserting their masculinity. The taking of a child demanded universal shock and sadness, and the public responded with deep sympathy for the Ross family. Christian could of course mourn the loss of his son, but he knew that he was not alone in suffering loss.

  Increasingly, reporters included Christian’s failing health and worn nerves in their case updates. These descriptions, combined with accusations against the authorities and reports of the Lewis brothers’ wealth, emasculated Christian Ross. The press was right—he didn’t have a voice in his son’s case. What they didn’t know was that he was losing a voice in his household. Against Christian’s wishes, one of his wife’s brothers showed Sarah a ransom letter. And while Christian emphatically denied rumors claiming the Lewis brothers offered $10,000 to the kidnappers, they could afford to do so. He could not. Sleepless nights and anxious thoughts plagued Christian, and as he felt weaker, Sarah Ross became stronger.

  Christian watched leads fade and claims turn to contradictions. Unclear on what path to follow next, he sought the advice of a German psychic in New York. Sarah had consistently consulted spiritualists throughout the case, and both Christian and the police had taken some of the psychic advice offered to her seriously. Until receiving an intriguing letter from this specific medium, however, Christian had
n’t visited one himself. Such a trip may seem like a hypocritical one for a Methodist Sunday-school teacher to take, but the practice was popular in the Victorian era.

  Spiritualism offered a literal “medium” between religion and science. The eighteenth-century Swedish mystic Swedenborg believed that God offered spirits as a vessel for communication between things mortal and immortal. His spiritual descendents applied their understanding of human physiology and natural philosophy to access the immortal world, using scientific inquiry to better understand, and not defy, religion. Spiritualists were fascinated with electricity, particularly with its effects on both the telegraph and the human nervous system. To thousands of Americans, it made sense that a human conduit could transport communication from the dead just like the telegraph could transport messages from one geographical area to another. Before the Civil War, groups of men and women met in circles around “planchettes,” forebearers of the Ouija board, to converse with the dead. During the war years, the massive death toll led to the popularity of daguerrotypes, photographs of the dead believed to capture and preserve the spirits of the deceased. Survivors took comfort in these meetings, séances, games, and photos, believing that spiritualism, directed by God, engaged scientific principles to transmit important information between worlds.

  Christian and a detective traveled to the neighborhood of the New York psychic. They knocked on her front door. Nobody answered. They then walked inside her entryway and knocked on another door. Nobody answered. The police officer entered the woman’s residence and Christian heard a woman’s voice.

  “Get out of this, go into the next room, I’ll soon be there,” she said.

  The men obeyed.

  An old woman entered and sat across from Christian at a table. She spoke with a heavy German accent.