by Carrie Hagen
INTERVIEW WITH MARTHA MOSHER, NEW YORK HERALD
September 2, 1875
“Did you see the facsimiles of the letters to Mr. Ross by the abductors which were published in the Herald last year?”
“Yes, I saw them, and they are not in my husband’s handwriting.”
“Ross experts have pronounced them to be in the same handwriting as letters written by your husband.”
“I don’t care for experts. I know my husband’s handwriting, and besides no letter of his has ever been found. They have all been destroyed.”
…
“Mrs. Mosher, now tell me candidly, is the boy living or dead?”
“I do not know. I am sure he is living and will turn up before long. I am as sure that he is living as I am that I breathe. I would not believe him dead unless I should see his dead body before me.”
“How do you know that he is still living?”
“I decline to answer this question.”
is my child dead?
CHRISTIAN AND SARAH ROSS PRAYED THAT IN SPITE OF THE weather, somebody would respond to the Lewis brothers’ reward and return Charley to the doorsteps of one of the family’s seven business locations. Outside of the three designated Philadelphia buildings, during the winter of 1875 steady successions of sleet, snow, rain, and hail glazed the sidewalks. Dozens of sparrows lay dead in the town squares, gas meters froze throughout the city at night, and wind chills contributed to 373 deaths in one week.
West of Center City, an ice block threatened the residents and industrial laborers of Manayunk. The gorge sat just above the Fairmount dam, which regulated the flow of the Schuylkill River. The River had risen five feet above its normal level. Water had flooded the Manayunk mills, causing workers to lose a week’s pay and neighborhood residents to flee north or west for higher ground; they couldn’t go east, as ice blocked the roads leading into central Philadelphia. The Water Department needed to break up the ice, because it kept clean water from freely flowing throughout the city’s water pipes. At the Ross home in Germantown, water looked as brown as lager. It stunk, and it would only smell worse until the river could move through sunlight and aeration. The engineers, however, had to be careful—if the ice blocks broke too quickly, the heightened river would hurl them into the homes and businesses of Manayunk.
Mayor Stokley supervised attempts to blow up the ice pack. Engineers drilled holes in the ice and lowered large tin vessels full of dynamite into the water. Long tin cylinders carried fuses to the powder. The explosions were loud but unsuccessful. At most, small pieces broke away, but without enough water flow to carry them downriver, they became lodged in the dam. Because the City Council would not allot enough money for a more creative solution, Stokley and the engineers had to pray for a gentle March. Only warmer weather could aid their efforts.
A new town ordinance threatened to fine home owners two dollars for failing to remove trash, snow, and ice from the streets, but police found it difficult to uphold. Instead of insisting that officers enforce ice removal, Chief Jones cited the danger of kite flying as a public nuisance and instructed his men to fine offenders five dollars. Throughout the winter, the Bulletin had chastised the force for ignoring the weather-related conditions of the streets, which sent more injuries to area hospitals than did kite flying: “[The] commodious, well-paved, well-lighted, well-policed streets are not only necessary for the comfort, safety, and convenience of the population, but they give a style to any city which nothing else can give. Philadelphia is aiming at a metropolitan position, and she has many of these elements which go to make such a position.”
New York papers frowned upon this “metropolitan position,” questioning whether Philadelphia could handle the lodging needs of the Centennial’s thousands of visitors. Slowly, successful New Yorkers had begun supporting the exhibition, signing and publishing notices that encouraged people to consider its potential for New York tourism. “All the visitors from foreign countries will land here, will find more objects of interest here than in Philadelphia,” wrote the Herald. “It would be as great a loss to New York as to the most important of its suburbs, Philadelphia, if the Exposition should fall short of public expectation.”
This is exactly what Philadelphia feared: sending elsewhere the attention that it deserved. The Evening Bulletin initially defended the city’s accommodation plans, but after the dedication of a new Masonic hall in Center City, local critics worried about the rooming shortage as well. When more than five thousand visitors came to town for the ceremony, less than a fifth of the number predicted for the Centennial, hotels quickly ran out of rooms, and managers had to construct temporary accommodations in hallways and other common areas. Everybody knew more hotels would be needed in less than a year, but there was not enough time, manpower, or funds to construct them properly. Ignoring city ordinances and fire codes, some contractors began building temporary residences from wood.
The city leaders claimed there was plenty of lodging space available, but because so much of it was privately owned, they said home owners needed to allow familiar and foreign guests to stay in their spare rooms. “Nearly everybody is ‘coming home’ in the Centennial year,” wrote the Ledger. “But after all allowances are made for these [visitors], there will of course remain a large number of dwellings with perfectly available quarters for tens of thousands of visitors.” Considering that Philadelphia was still the focus of a famous kidnapping investigation, this request was an odd one to ask of citizens.
Even if families considered allowing strangers into their homes in the wake of Charley Ross’s disappearance, a surge in violent domestic crimes threatened to alienate potential guests. One disgruntled man struck his wife’s head with the edge of a dull axe; another sliced his wife from her throat to her lips with a razor; and a third man responded to his wife’s complaints over his drunkenness by throwing their six-month-old daughter from a third-story window. When one young newlywed took a stand against domestic abuse and reported her husband to the police, he stalked her through Fairmount Park, pulled out a knife, and stabbed her in the jugular vein in broad daylight.
Police also arrested landlords and custodians for abusing their boarders. One South Philadelphia man stumbled drunk into his house one afternoon as his wife tended to their infant twins in the kitchen. After he threatened to kill her, she ran away with one baby while he poured a two-gallon can of kerosene underneath the cradle of the other. A seventy-two-year-old tenant fought to take matches from the man’s hands, but he struck one on the wall behind her, lighting himself and his boarder on fire. Neighbors extinguished the flames and saved the family, but the elderly woman died from shock.
Several blocks away, neighbors contacted the police with concerns about screams coming from the home of two sisters, Catherine and Amanda Troxell. Five officers raided the house. After following an overwhelming stench to the rear of the third story, the police found fifty-year-old Mary Troxell, another sister who had recently been released from an insane asylum. Police sent Mary back to the hospital on the stretcher and reentered her room to stake out the source of the smell. Before long, they came across the corpse of the sisters’ mother, who had been dead for at least three months.
Neither the papers nor the authorities attempted to reconcile the assaults with their request for citizens to offer their homes as hostels for parents and children during the six-month duration of the exhibition.
The city leaders couldn’t resolve Philadelphia’s social tensions, but they could distract taxpayers’ concern by emphasizing the financial capital that the Centennial would bring to Philadelphia. In order to capitalize on the city’s future progress, however, these leaders had to distance themselves from stories that attracted bad press. Charley Ross’s name slipped from the Public Ledger, and an Inquirer editorial lamented the lack of interest in the case. “So little that seemed availing has been done recently in the Ross case that the public have, reluctantly, adopted the idea that the unfortunate Charley Ross was either dead or
that, if living, his identity had by this time been forever lost.”
INTERVIEW WITH MARTHA MOSHER, THE EVENING BULLETIN,
New York, September 6, 1875
“Mrs. Mosher, you said in your interview with a Herald reporter that you were confident that the child is alive. What reason have you for thinking so?”
“Because I know my husband wouldn’t have hurt a hair of his head. Mr. Walling and Mr. McKean both told me that they thought the child was living when my husband was killed, and nobody would have any reason to kill the child since.”
“Did you ever see the child?”
“I never did, nor did I ever see anyone else that saw him, or knew of anyone who saw him unless it was my husband.”
“Did you ever suspect that your husband might have done the stealing for a third party?”
“Yes sir. I think he would have done it if he was paid for it. I thought at times that the child was stolen for someone else. I never had any real reason for thinking so, though. My husband wanted money. He intended, if he could get enough, to get up a floating palace for the Centennial.”
she is a city
MARCH 25, 1875, THE LAST DAY OF IMMUNITY GUARANTEED BY the new kidnapping act, came and went without any developments in the case. Only when the Inquirer noted the significance of the date did it introduce the public to William Westervelt. “Some days ago, Westervelt, the brother-in-law of Mosher, the burglar who was shot and killed at Bay Ridge, Long Island, was induced to come to this city for a conference with the police authorities relative to the case. Today he occupies a cell in Moyamensing Prison, and it is reported that there is a bill of indictment against him, based, it is said, on admissions made by him in some of his statements implying a knowledge of the abduction.” The note ran at the bottom of a paragraph reviewing slow case progress, and city papers did not publish follow-up articles providing details on the indictment.
The Philadelphia Public Ledger may not have released information about Westervelt’s arrest because it was a mouthpiece for the Republican advisers. It is curious, though, that neither the Inquirer nor the Evening Bulletin mentioned the detention of a man who authorities deemed partially responsible for Charley’s disappearance. The papers may have become more judicious about printing speculation about Charley, but they hadn’t wavered from reporting other confirmed progress in the investigation around the time of Westervelt’s arrest— like the hat discovery in Trenton or the horse at Van Fleet’s stables. The only logical explanation for the omission is that journalists’ connections in the police department must not have disclosed the importance of William Westervelt. Yet confidential case information—like the content of the ransom letters—had moved fairly consistently to reporters from their sources at police headquarters. It makes sense, then, that the press didn’t know details about Westervelt because the police didn’t know.
Chief Jones, Captain Heins, and Detective Wood were the Philadelphia officers most entrenched in the investigation. Had they kept Westervelt’s information to themselves, and had they given Westervelt the incentive to keep his mouth shut in prison, then it was plausible that the public would not realize that the biggest lead in the Ross investigation was in custody in Philadelphia. The question was why. Why wouldn’t the Philadelphia police have wanted to publicize the arrest after hearing accusations of incompetence? Westervelt was clearly involved with Mosher and Douglas. This information alone could have earned public approval. Even a few details about Westervelt’s familial relationship with one of the kidnappers could have calmed parents a bit more, and made the city appear safer in the midst of Centennial plans. But for some reason, the advisers were keeping Westervelt’s story secret, and Captain Heins, who acted more independently than anybody else in the investigation, agreed with them.
So, unaware of Westervelt’s story, Philadelphia continued to turn its attention away from what was taken from it toward what was coming to it.
Visitors journeyed to the Centennial grounds through snow showers at the beginning of April. They donned their spring best for the occasions—men dressed in white suits and ladies wore high, round hats decorated with ribbons and ostrich feathers. Parading around the freshly, constructed custom house and ticket office, visitors saw gardeners preparing flower beds and pruning shrubs. Before the winter’s first storms, the head contractor had insisted upon covering the grounds with building materials like granite and bricks; his foresight prevented the ground from freezing completely, and his men had continued erecting Memorial Hall, the centerpiece of the grounds, throughout the cold weather. Once the builders laid the foundation to Horticultural Hall, a second exhibition building, the city held a week-long fund-raiser called the Bazaar of Nations at the site. There, artisans and caterers sold crafts and food, orchestras played, scholars spoke, and African-American waiters sang spirituals.
The Centennial Commission solicited proposals from photographers and continued encouraging civic groups to hold private and public fund-raisers in neighborhoods around the city—the press called these events successful, but planners were frustrated that European countries had expressed more interest in financing displays than did any of America’s states other than Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Partnering with the Pennsylvania Railroad, local businessmen organized an all-expenses-paid tour of the grounds for their colleagues in New York and New England. The visitors walked through the construction sites, commented on the diligent work of the planning committee, and noted the camaraderie of the builders. They were especially pleased to see two of the five main buildings already occupying 3,300 square feet of ground. Before the train returned the delegation to New York at 8:00 P.M., many agreed to sponsor exhibits highlighting the soil sciences, the mines, forestry, craftsmanship, education, metals, and manufactories.
May and June passed without any publicized progress in the Ross investigation. One year after Charley’s disappearance, three thousand school children participated in a concert on a makeshift stage inside Machinery Hall. Twenty-two thousand parents, neighbors, and other guests sat in the midst of international flags, streamers, and banners bearing each state’s coat of arms. Onstage, the children held flowers and wore medals inscribed with “Liberty to All Americans, July 4, 1776.”
Not only did those out-of-state businessmen who had pledged support uphold their promises, but more western states paid to reserve display space, and city financiers received funds a year overdue from the national government. The Inquirer boasted of the money flowing into Philadelphia from around the world. “Those who have been accustomed to regard her as a sort of suburb or appendage of New York … will be apt to form a different idea of her when they learn that she is a city with a population of nearly 890,000.”
you need not ask more questions
TOWARD THE END OF AUGUST, 1875, THE ROSS CASE BEGAN TO dominate the headlines again. By then, Philadelphia’s district attorney had to either try Westervelt on conspiracy charges or allow him to walk. Believing there was sufficient evidence to link Mary Westervelt to her husband’s activities, Captain Heins also wanted her to stand trial for conspiracy. Superintendent Walling came to her defense. Even though Mary had admitted to housing Bill Mosher’s family and to periodically meeting with the kidnappers, Walling said she was ignorant of her husband’s behavior.
Christian Ross and his family hoped that after six months in prison, Westervelt would tire of responding to the same questions and contradict his previous answers. More than once, Sarah Ross had visited him at the Moyamensing Prison in South Philadelphia. Through tired tears, she had begged him to tell her where Charley was hiding, but Westervelt insisted on his innocence. Once, he even began crying with her, kneeling to pray with her as she asked God to return her little boy.
The trial began on August 31, 1875, in a courthouse behind Independence Hall. On the first day, there was room for all of the onlookers inside of the courtroom. Sitting on benches behind the docks holding the defendant, the defense lawyers, and the prosecutors, they saw Westervelt turn
as his wife, their eight-year-old daughter and their six-year-old son rushed up the aisle to join him in the docks. When he kissed his family, he cried. As the case continued, spectators also filled the aisles and the back of the courtroom. Those who stood could see Westervelt’s large frame sitting next to Joseph Ford and Newton Brown, two respected Philadelphia attorneys.
Every day but Sundays, the crowd sat or stood in oppressive heat, leaning forward to hear testimonies full of details that the police and the city advisers had kept from them over the past fourteenth months— months in which they had searched for Charley, suspected their neighbors of taking him, prayed for the Ross family, and restricted their own children’s outdoor play. They watched Westervelt take notes and exchange smiles with his wife during the testimonies of Walter and Christian Ross. They then watched this confidence wear away as Westervelt listened to colleagues testify against his character, and as he heard eyewitnesses tell of his walks and conversations around Germantown. What thrilled the audience most, though, was the reading of the twenty-three ransom letters that they had begged to see for more than a year.
During the fourth and final week of Westervelt’s trial, a reporter from the Inquirer visited the Ross family at their home in Germantown. After Christian finished his dinner, he walked into his library, lit the gas, and sat in a chair. His children stood around him.
“What I want from Westervelt is for him to give me a clue if he has the knowledge,” he said. “I want him to tell me if he knows my child is alive or dead. I want that question settled. If he is dead, I want him to tell me how and when he died, and where I can go to get the body.”