by Carrie Hagen
“Surely you have not heard rightly,” Christian replied. He scanned the letter and saw the number himself. The kidnappers had mailed it from Philadelphia that day. Christian took the note and walked out of his office.
PHILADELPHIA, July 6—Mr. Ros: We supos you got the other leter that teld yu we had yu child all saf and sond.
Yu mite ofer one $100,000 it woud avale yu nothing. to be plaen with yu yu mite invok al the powers of the universe and that cold not get yu child from us. we set god—man and devel at defiance to rest him ot of our hands. This is the lever that moved the rock that hides him from yu $20,000. not one doler les—impossible—impossible— you cannot get him without it. if yu love money more than child yu be its murderer not us for the money we will have if we dont from yu we be sure to git it from some one els for we will mak examples of yure child that others may be wiser. We give yu al the time yu want to consider wel wat yu be duing. Yu money or his lif we wil hav— dont flater yu self yu wil trap us under pretens of paying the ransom that be imposible—d’ont let the detectives mislede yu thay tel yu thay can git him and arest us to—if yu set the detectives in search for him as we teld yu befor they only serch for his lif. for if any aproch be made to his hidin place by detective his lif wil be instant sacrificed. you wil see yu child dead or alive if we get yu money yu get him live if no money yu get him ded. wen you get ready to bisnes with us advertise the folering in Ledger personals (Ros. we be ready to negociate). we look for yu answer in Ledger.
his lif wil be instant sacrificed
ALTHOUGH THE PHILADELPHIA POLICE DEPARTMENT WAS headquartered three blocks away from Christian’s office, he went home to Germantown to read the letter. Sarah asked to see it. Christian refused, left the house, and rode the ten miles back to police headquarters. But the police were no longer in charge.
Soon after the $20,000 demand arrived, a group of the city’s political advisers became involved in the case. From the local police station to the state senate, politics and power in Pennsylvania were deeply rooted in Republican government. This was largely due to the efforts of Simon Cameron, a senator who orchestrated Pennsylvania’s “Republican machine” around 1860. Cameron encouraged his fellow politicians to strengthen party power by emphasizing the importance of local elections; the strategy worked so well that the senator himself capitalized on Pennsylvania’s Republican stronghold to orchestrate a deal with Lincoln’s advisers. In exchange for a position in the future president’s cabinet, Cameron guaranteed Pennsylvania’s convention votes at the 1861 Republican convention. The advisers agreed, Pennsylvania became a swing state, and Lincoln won the nomination. By 1874, halfway through Grant’s second term, Republicans in Pennsylvania had occupied the gubernatorial office for thirteen consecutive years.
Under Cameron’s leadership, congressmen campaigned and fund-raised for smalltown candidates, who in turn pledged their loyalties by manipulating elections. Prior to the Uniform Elections Act of 1874, any party worker could rig results by allowing and encouraging repeat voters, submitting ballot cards for the deceased, and destroying votes he didn’t like. The success of the machine demanded party loyalty from incumbents of every echelon of state government, from senator to city councilman. And as 1874 was an election year, Mayor William Stokley needed to do what he could to ensure his place among the brotherhood.
Even though Stokley was the face of city leadership, he himself answered to a group of Republican advisers who controlled the longevity of his tenure, and it was this group that took control of the Ross investigation as soon as the ransom note arrived. As Christian would later say, “There was no plan of any importance adopted without their judgment and approval, and whatever measures they proposed were carried out.” The press identified neither the number of this group nor all of its individuals, but it included members of Philadelphia’s town councils and wealthy citizens. Publicly, these counselors were consultants and promoters of civic progress; privately, they exercised an authority over all decisions made by city officials, including the police.
When these “city authorities” saw the ransom amount, they realized the implications of paying it. The kidnappers wanted $20,000 for this single criminal act—the annual salary for the president of the United States was only $5,000 more. If satisfied, the kidnappers could, and most likely would, strike again. City planners were pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into civic improvements for their Centennial celebration. Already, they had gone into debt with the hope that tourists would generate more than enough income to pay the bills. But parents wouldn’t come to Philadelphia if they feared that kidnappers would snatch their children and sell them back for $20,000.
The arrival of the second letter pushed Christian closer toward paying the ransom. The kidnappers had marked him as a wealthy man, but his personal fortune had been depleted by the Panic. Yet, while Christian didn’t have enough money to cover the ransom, his brothers-inlaw did. Christian had involved the Lewis brothers in every step of his search for Charley. Furthermore, there was nothing the police knew that they didn’t know. In fact, from the moment Christian reported Charley’s disappearance, the police had relied upon the family for investigative ideas. The city advisers, however, understood the danger of allowing the Ross/Lewis family to have authority in the investigation. If Christian Ross paid the $20,000 ransom and the details of the transaction got out, panic would threaten all the efforts of the Centennial planning commission.
But if the ransom were not paid, the authorities could perhaps contain the city’s fears while promoting Philadelphia as a tourist destination. The Ross family, fearing that the kidnappers would carry out their threats, would hesitate to talk to the press, and parents would be more focused on finding the Ross child than fearing for their own. The advisers reached the decision that no ransom could be offered. The family needed to be marginalized. The advisers asked Christian to meet with them.
The kidnappers only want money, they told him. Don’t worry. They won’t hurt him. If you don’t give them the money, they’ll give up. They’ll abandon the boy by the side of a road. Somebody will find him. The city is looking for him.
By now, Police Chief Kennard Jones had asked officers in each district to identify civilian men to lead search parties. Appealing to the “manly local pride” that Benjamin Brewster extolled on July 4, the authorities summoned citizens to target “suspicious-looking” people and places. Shopkeepers, artisans, factory workers, and children soon became amateur detectives, setting their gaze on the unknown and unfamiliar. Wherever they went—to ships on the Delaware, factories, ferries, woods, railroad depots, stables, shacks, farms, bars, henhouses, and tree houses—they were told to act as policemen, given permission to spy, trespass, interrogate.
While the city searched, a wealthy Philadelphian whose name Christian kept anonymous offered to free him from his worries. The man was socially connected with the city advisers, but he met with Christian privately. He asked if anybody knew the extent of his financial problems.
“No one outside of my own and my wife’s family,” Christian replied.
“If you will tell me your real condition, I may be able to assist you,” the man offered.
Christian told him about his failing business.
“Do you wish to pay the ransom, and run the risk of getting the child in five hours?” the man asked. “If you do, I will give twenty thousand dollars, and never ask you to return one cent.”
Christian stared at the man. “I thank you, sir,” he said. “I cannot accept your generous offer; for having taken the position that I would not compound the felony, I prefer continuing to make efforts to find the criminals. Hoping, if successful in getting them, that I will recover my child and probably prevent a repetition of child-stealing for a ransom.”
The man asked Christian what his wife would think. Christian said that Sarah was a patient woman. This decision was somewhat curious. Although Christian had agreed not to pay the ransom, and his justification for withholding it was a nob
le one, he was still a heartbroken father who couldn’t afford the price of his son. Christian was a third-generation businessman—organized, somewhat savvy, goal driven. Even though he followed the advice of the city leaders, he had to have realized that their strategy was not foolproof. This donor presented a backup plan. Christian could have asked for time to consider the proposition, or accepted the money in case an immediate exchange presented itself. If his pride were a factor, the unconditional offer of a compassionate public figure would have been more agreeable than a loan from his in-laws. After all, wasn’t his goal to get his son back? Christian’s dismissive response lent itself to three possibilities: he believed wholeheartedly that rejecting the ransom was ethically appropriate—even though such a decision could lead to Charley’s endangerment; he feared disagreeing with the city leader; or he knew more about the kidnappers than he reported.
In response to the second letter, the advisers encouraged Christian to withhold publishing the letters and to give them the responsibility for writing any further personal advertisements. Concerned for Sarah’s health, Walter’s privacy, and Charley’s safety, Christian agreed. The advisers then began an interrogation that pushed Christian for details on his private, social, and business lives. Recognizing that they were searching for a kidnapping motive, Christian answered every question.
The authorities responded to the second ransom note according to the kidnappers’ directions. A personal ad in the next morning’s Public Ledger read, “Ros, we be ready to negociate.”
The third letter arrived at the Ross home. Shaking, Christian studied the envelope. He noticed the stamp. For the third time, it was placed in the lower left-hand corner of the envelope, and it looked like it had been used before. The letter was folded in the same way as the others: the writer had turned the left side lengthwise into the center, and then the right before folding the paper down to fit inside the envelope.
PHILADELPHIA, July 7—Mr. Ros: We se yu anser in Leger the question with yu is be yu wilin to pay for thosand ponds for the ransom of yu child. without it yu can never get him alive if yu be ready to come to terms say so. if not say so. and we wil act acordinly. the only answer we want from yu now is, be yu wilin to pay $20,000 to save Charley. if yu love yu mony more than him his blood be upon yu and not us fo wil show him up to yu either dead or a live (it is left with yu) anser the folering in evnin herald or star. Ros.—wil come to terms. Ros.—wil not come to terms. omit either line yu pleas try the experiment.
Christian knew he was risking his son’s life by failing to borrow and deliver the money as quickly as possible. But if he paid, was he sure to see Charley alive again? Probably. In 1874, human history suggested two motives for people-snatching: kidnapping for human trafficking and kidnapping for ransom. The former usually resulted in a permanent disappearance; the latter, if paid, usually resulted in a return.
Jewish communities in the Middle Ages were familiar with the practice of exchanging money for life; Italians and Turks “kidnapped” wealthy Jewish merchants as they moved between Venice and Constantinople, holding them until families or colleagues paid for their return. But the term “kidnapping” wasn’t coined until 1682, when it first referenced the taking of a British child to work on a Jamaican plantation. One hundred years later, the definition had evolved to include any “man, woman or child” who was stolen “from their own country” and sold “into another.” Human trafficking crimes served imperialism in the seventeeth and eighteenth centuries. To populate and develop the New World, many European slave traders stole Africans, and others snatched their own laboring countrymen. Children also fell victim to migrating gypsy tribes, who would torture them beyond recognition and then sell them to traveling circuses.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth century, both Europe and America saw the numbers of missing children spike during wartime, when hundreds of “street urchins” disappeared during the French Revolution and the American Civil War. Whether these boys and girls were absent due to military service, malicious villains, a caregiver’s death, or the saving efforts of the church, most were victims of adult ambition. Victorian literature romanticizes tales of these helpless innocents who fall into the grasp of highway robbers, Native American captors, or urban con artists.
Just prior to Charley’s disappearance, American newspapers had discussed kidnapping as a solely Italian problem, alluding to stories of Jewish children captured by the Catholic Church and forced into Christianity. According to scholars, the Charley Ross abduction was the first recorded ransom kidnapping in American history. Christian may have had history to study, but there was no precedent for him to follow in a case such as this one.
The kidnappers were trying their hand at a new crime in America: if they took the money and kept or killed the boy, they would only gain $20,000. If they returned him safely, they would gain $20,000 and establish a reputation for keeping their word, which would improve the success of future ransoms. Both potential outcomes burdened Christian. He wanted his child, yet he also felt a responsibility to thwart copycat crimes. With the arrival of each new ransom note, Christian began to understand that his choices would influence whether the kidnappers became failures or models. Following the advice of the advisers, communicated through the police, wasn’t exactly a “tried and true” option. The problem wasn’t so much that the authorities had never handled a ransomed kidnapping before—it was that the police hadn’t been around that long.
When Christian and his brother Joseph had arrived in Philadelphia over thirty years before, there was no organized police force. Robbery victims hired “thief catchers” to recover stolen property by negotiating with thieves, and neighborhood watches quieted noise, arrested criminals, and reported fires. City neighborhoods multiplied in 1854, when more than eighty thousand acres were incorporated into the city limits. To prioritize public safety and crime prevention, the city government established a police tax and hired a paid, uniformed “reserve corps.” The corps’ initial efforts to suppress street violence were so ineffective that the public asked to exchange the police tax for the old neighborhood watch. Many officers profited from lucrative side businesses as thief catchers, and citizens mocked their disrespect for the law as well as their blue uniforms.
Between the 1850s and the 1870s, police responsibilities centered on protecting the innocent; crimes that didn’t threaten public safety, such as burglaries and vandalism, were often ignored. It made sense then that the Evening Bulletin challenged the police to prove their professionalism through their handling of this one, single case: “The detective force of Philadelphia is now upon trial before this community … For a long time, an impression has prevailed perhaps unjustly, that the detective force achieves its successes only under the impetus given by large pecuniary inducements; and that it possesses no special skill in the business of rogue catching. The success or failure of the present undertaking will remove this opinion or confirm it.”
The kidnappers’ directions in the third letter asked Christian for one of two responses: “Ros.—wil come to terms” or “Ros.—wil not come to terms.” They told him to publish his answer in either the Herald, the Evening Herald, or the Star. Advisers insisted on communicating through the Public Ledger. A conversation of sorts had begun between the Ross camp and the kidnappers. One voice spoke through a letter to the Ross home, another through the newspaper personals.
The Philadelphia Public Ledger. July 8.
“Ros wil come to terms to the extent of his ability.”
PHILADELPHIA, July 9—Ros. we is set your price. We ask no more. we takes no les we no the extent yu bility. how mucht time yu want to obtain this money. yu is only in part answered our question. the only question for yu to answer is is u got it and be wilin to pay it then we wil proceed to bisiness at once. this anser or omition it satifies us.
The Philadelphia Public Ledger. July 9.
“Ros is willing. Have not got it; am doing my best to raise it.”
The Philadelphia Public Ledger
. July 13.
“Ros is got it, and is willing to pay it.”
PHILADELPHIA, July 13—Ros: in 5 ours after we receve the mony and find it correct, yu wil se yu child home saf. Aft we gets the mony we has no further use for the child, an it is our interest then to restor him home unharmed, so that others will rely on our word. if we don’t get the mony from yu the child’s life wil an shall be sacrificed. be you redy to pay it as we dictate. if so, have the $20,000 in United States notes. in denomination not excedin “tens.” have yu money were yu can git it any moment wen cal for, the detectives, wen they read this, wil tel yu they have now got the key that opens the secret, but don’t be misled by them (we alone hold the lock wich is yu child, if they open the dor for yu it wil only revele his (ded body) consider wel, an if these terms agre with yu anser the folerin. Ros, it is redy, yu have my word for it. we look for the answer in the Evenin Star.1
The Philadelphia Public Ledger. July 14.
“Ros, Came too late for Evening Star. It is redy: you have my word for it.”
he is uneasy
THE CITY ADVISERS PLANNED TO FOOL THE KIDNAPPERS WITH marked bills. Christian did not like the idea. “I felt that it was a fearful risk, involving the life of the child,” he later said. When they read that the kidnappers wanted Christian to keep the money on his person, the police assigned an officer to protect him around the clock.
Christian was also frustrated because communication with the kidnappers was slowing down. In the first days after Charley’s disappearance, the kidnappers had responded to newspaper messages within twenty-four hours. Between the fourth and fifth ransom letters, however, four days had passed. Christian faulted the advisers twice for this: for one, they were intentionally stalling for time as they figured out how to negotiate under false pretenses. He was also insecure with their insistence on communicating through the Ledger instead of the Herald or Star as the kidnappers had asked. Increasingly obsessed with the kidnappers’ threats to take Charley’s life, he didn’t sleep, and he rarely ate.