The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-01-23 00:00:00

A ROMANCE OF CRIME.

The Times of the 14th inst. has the following leader on
this extraordinary case, known in America as the "Ross
Abduction Case," the account of which occupies five columns
of that journal
In our outer sheet this morning our readers will find
the particulars of what is probably one of the-most
extraordinary histories in the annals of crime. Our
Philadelphia Correspondent sends us a detailed
account of what, during the last six months, has been
known in the United States and Canada as the "Rosa
Abduction Case," and which has exercised as much
ingenuity, and created, perhaps, more intense excite-
ment than prevailed among ourselves in the days when
the identity of the Claimant was still a topic which
the endurance of society permitted to engross dinner-
tables or to divide households. It is a tribute which
has sometimes been paid to the constructive power
of Mr. Wilkie Collins to say that such or such facts
were stranger than anything he could have written;
but, for our own part, instead of using any such hyper-
bole, we should prefer to say that this episode of real
life strikes us as very much the sort of story he
might have written—with the third volume want-
ing. For its details we must refer our readers to
our Correspondent's letter but we can give an outline
of the case. Mr. C. K. hoes, the father of the kid-
napped boy, is a gentleman living at Germantown, a
suburb of Philadelphia, half in the country, where rich
people have villas. On July 1, 1874, two of his
younger children—Walter Ross, aged about six, and
Charles, about four—were playing in a road near the
house, when they were accosted by two men in a
"buggy," or light chaise, who offered them the double
attraction of a drive, and some sugar-candy. The
boys got into the chaise, and the men drove them by a,
roundabout way into the populous—or, as it is expres-
sively called in the land of large spaces, " built-up "
part of East Philadelphia. Here the elder boy was
sent into a shap to buy crackers and more candy.
When he came out of the shop his friends in the chaise
were gone, and his brother along with them. A passer-
by found the child crying on the pavement, and took
him home. From that day to this the younger boy,
Charles Ross, has never been found: but a search of
extraordinary vigour and perseverance has led to the
identification of the kidnappers; and an accident,
dramatic alike in its suddenness and in its scene, has
inflicted upon them the last penalty that can be paid
by crime.
When the detectives were first called in by the
family they naturally_prescribed strict secrecy. But,
before a week was over, public curiosity had—most
unfortunately, we think—forced the police to publish
the little they then knew. On July 6 the father offered
a reward. About the same time he began to get letters
from the kidnappers who demanded a ransom, at first
£4,000, presently £5,000. Mr. Ross acknowledged these
letters in the newspaper, in the words, even in the
spelling prescribed by his correspondents. Five times in
ten days—between July 13 and 23—he announced that
the ransom was ready. But meanwhile the thieves
had become wary. By the time that the child had been
three weeks stolen public opinion had been aroused
from one end of the United States to the other. The
public were resolved that the introduction of a
system of brigandage should not be encouraged by
I the success of the first case. No ransom should be
paid. On the 22nd of July, a public meeting; under the
presidency of the Mayor, was held at Philadelphia,
offering a reward of 20,000 dols. for the arrest and con-
viction of the Abductors of Charles Brewster Ross.
At the same time, a description of the kidnappers,
taken from the account of Walter Ross, was circulated
throughout the country. Photographs of the missing
child—who "with his flaxen hair and hazel eyes' full
face, and clear skin," appears to have resembled only
too many other little boys of four years old—were dis-
tributed by the thousand. Illustrated newspapers,
shop-windows, railway carriages and stations, picture
galleries, and blank walls displayed his likeness. "I
do not believe," our Correspondent says, "that at the
close of July, a month after the abduction, there were
100 people in the United States and Canada who were
pot familiar with the crime—discmsing it, and taking
a lively interest in the search for the thieves." It has
been seen how strongly the feeling of the general
public was against the payment of a ransom. At
first, however—prompted, of course, by anxiety for
the safety of the child and by sympathy for the rela-
tives—the police appear to have aimed at keeping open
the channel of negotiation afforded by the letters
which, until about the 15th cf November, Mr. Ross
continued to receive. Until the sth of August they
contemplated the possibility of gettinc, the child in ex-
change for the ransom, and trusting tbc, the subsequent
capture of the abductors. But all the letters insisted
on one point, that the money must be paid from five
to ten hours before the child was delivered. On this
point the negotiations were finally broken off. On
A ngust 5 the police advertised—" Propositions impos-
sible. Action must be simultaneous.' Now began the
real struggle. The kidnappers were determined to wear
out the family, and the police were determined, to wear
out the kidnappers. Over and over again the authori-
ties thought they had got on the right track. Over
and over again, when they had laboriously "run out"
the trail, the result was disappointment. Once they
spent days in tracing some suspicious persons who had
been seen driving about Germantown shortly before
the andiictiOn, and who proved to be travellers for a
New Jersey nursery garden engaged in selling trees
and shrubs in that region of villas. Once they found
in a hotel-book two names in the peculiar handwriting
of the mysterious letters; and the owners, or rather
the appropriators of these names, when, with much