Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-11-17
MEN WHO ARE MISSED.
Strange Stories of People Who hys-
teriOusly Disappear.
FAMOUS CASE OF MARY ROGERS.
A Clergyman Who Wanted to be a Subject
Of Conversation.
TIE PIRGTICAL ARCHBISHOP OF YORK
WRITTEN FOR THE DISPATCH. ]


five only knew how many people an.
nually disappear from home, from theil
business haunts, and from the circle of theil
acquaintance without leaving a trace be.
hind them, we might well stand aghast, moi
only at the length of the list, but at the ap.
parent futility of the best directed efforts fol
seeking and finding them. Even the ulti.
mate fact of their death is, in the majority Of
cases, never asserted or proved, and the
friends Of such waits and strays of society
have not even the melancholy satisfaction OF
knowing that further search is futile.
Hundreds of cases of mysterious disap-
pearances come under the notice of the po-
lice every year In many cases the missing
person is eventually found. But a consid-
cradle number vanish as if they had dis
solved into thin air, and hundreds more OF
similar cases are never reported to the po-
lice nor made public in any way except by
accident. The friends or relatives are
afraid of having their private affairs pa
raded before the public, and they either
wait in fearful silence for the missing one
to return or make some sign, or else they
grope cautiously in the dark by sending pc
culiarlv-worded advertisements through the
press. Again, the person who disappears
NAV have neither relatives nor friends who
feel any responsibility for him.
Sudden disappearances OF individuals al
ways suggest two possible explanations,
crime or mental abstraction. The crime
may have been committed upon the indi-
vidual or by him. The distressed woman
who rushes into police headquarters with
the story that her husband went to bis work
the other day, and hasn't been seen or heard
of since, may find that the dear departed
was merely drunk and disorderly. was ar
restedJ gave ieigned name to the justice
and is serving out a lew days in Jail. But
the case may be worse than that, it may be
murder, it NAV be suicide. Skeletons
found in mines, in coalpits, in dismal wells,
in the quarries, in waste lands, in
ploughed fields; just below the surface of
the soil imply so many social mysteries
which profoundly agitsted some circle Of
friends or relations, or haply created wide
spread excitement
A FAMOUS CASE.
The disappearance of Mary Rogers, the
pretty New York cigar girl, was one of the
sensations of our grandfathers' times and
furnished Poe with the plot for one of his
Marie Roget" for he transferred the locale
from New York to Paris, a story, indeed,
30 ingenious that it took the clews which
had proved useless in the hands of the New
York detectives and worked ont what
eventually proved to be the true solution.
Poe laid great stress upon the length of
time body can remain in the water before
it comes to the surface, and in fact, at the
very time he wrote Marie's body was lying
at the bottom of the Hudson river. Poe's
conclusion was that the girl had been
murdered by her lover. Several years
afterward the confessions of two people
q established not only the truth of the conclU-
sion, but also of nearly all the incidental
details.
People sometimes disappear through q
diseased vanity, which amounts to partial
insanity. They love to startle their neigh
bors, to be talked of or speculated about;
they thus become more acutely conscious of
their own existence, and fatte: themselves
they are Of some consequence. 1t matters
little to them thatthe means are undigniied.
that they occasion pain and sorrow and
modification to their kindred. In the early
part of 1868 all England was thrown into a
turmoil by the mysterious disappearance of
the Rev. Mr.. Speke, brother OF the ex-
visit a relative; he had walked out of the
house to purchase hat and was to return
to dinner at z. He never returned. The
hat which he had purchased came
home in due course. The hat
he had been wearing was found
BY q laborer in the Bird Cage Walk
and handed over by him to the police. Days
and weeks passed without word from the
missing. The Saturday ReUieaO and other
papers took up the case and abused the de-
tective force for their inefficiency. At last
it was discovered that the reverend gentle
man had simply been in hiding in order
that he might sport with public curiosity
and crafty his vanity by becoming ior q
few davs the subject of general conversa-
ton. Shortly after this discovery he was
placed in private asylum. 1t was said
that he was suffering from the delusion
that his family did not like him. If he had
endeared himself to them by his ridiculous
escapade they cordially deserved to be put
into straight waistcoats.
A PECULIAR HUSBAND.
In his story of Wakefield, Hawthorne
has endeavored, with curious metaphysical
subtlety, to explain still more remarkable
case which actually occurred in London,
and is duly chronicled in Kings anecdotes.
One Mr.. Howe, man of some fortune, after
seven or eight years of apparently happy
marriage, rose early one morning and told
his wife he was summoned to the Temple on
important business. At noon she received
q note from him saying he was going to
Golland for a month. He remained away
IL years. Then he suddenly and myster-
iouslv returned. For the remainder of his
life he proved most devoted husband. 1t
turned out that he had been living incog-
~ IN a1rrhh hhnTT rfrn L.
whole period of his absence, disguised mere
ly in black wig; that he had frequently
worshiped in the same church with his
wife, seeing but not being seen in return,
and that be had made friends with one Salt
whose house overlooked hers, and was fond
of dining there so as he could look into her
dining-room and see what she ate and how
she received her friends. He had even en-
joyed the satisfaction OF having his own
wife recommended to him as a suitable per-
son, Salt thinking him a bachelor He
never would confess why he left his home
nor why he had returned to it.
An old house in Manchester, England,
known as Garret Hall has a similar legend
with more ineligible explanation. Early
in the last century the owner was a Young
married man with several children. One
day business took him to London, a weeks |
journey in those DAYS. He wrote once on
arriving, he never wrote again. His wife, |
after exhausting all efforts at tracing him.
gave him up for dead. But when her eldest |
son arrived at his. majority, certain deeds
were necessary to establish his title to the |
property. These deeds the family LAWYER /
remembered having delivered up to the |
father just before his disappearance. An |
advertisement was put in the papers, so
worded that only one who held the import |
ant documents would understand to what it |
referred. At last mysterious answer was
received. The deeds were in existence and |
would be surrendered to the heir in person,
on his solemn promise to accede to certain |