SARAH ROSS’S ANXIETY, COMBINED WITH CHRISTIAN’S RAPIDLY declining health, worried Captain Heins. The kidnappers were closing in on a $20,000 deal, and if he didn’t make an arrest soon, he probably never would. Although he didn’t completely trust Walling, Heins’s working relationship with the superintendent had strengthened throughout the fall months; Walling respected the captain’s discretion in keeping the believed kidnappers’ names from the press, and he regarded him as the head of Philadelphia’s search efforts. Heins’s quiet demeanor allowed him to communicate directly with Walling without updating the city leaders, but their determination to micromanage the case had temporarily weakened anyway.
Slow progress in the investigation had turned the advisers’ attention back to Centennial preparations. To the dismay of the city council, local merchants appeared uninterested in financing the exposition. The national government had not yet released a promised check to help cover construction expenses, and the planning commission needed investors to help defray the hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs. The New-York Advertiser gave one explanation for the lack of support: “profound and prevailing apathy has discouraged all attempts to procure money or sympathy here.” So far, Philadelphia had diagnosed New York’s “apathy” as jealousy, an opinion which had certainly not helped them solicit funds. The western states had pledged quick support through exhibitions, but if the city was going to keep from going into greater debt, then it needed to stop worrying about its pride and humbly ask other eastern cities for money. New York papers said the burden was on New England to show more Centennial support. “What is most desirable now is that Massachusetts and her sister States should enter into the spirit of the enterprise, and help, as they can without hardship, to make it creditable in the eyes of the world.” Like New York City, Boston had felt the sting of the honor bestowed upon Philadelphia. “It is time now that the doubt will be settled,” the New-York Advertiser wrote. “We earnestly hope it will be settled as Massachusetts would have wished to have it if Boston had been selected instead of Philadelphia for the grand commemoration.”
Trying to handle the problem internally, the Centennial Commission targeted local business support through regional celebrations, including one for the fiftieth anniversary of the Franklin Institute. Fifty years after two mechanics proposed the idea at a town meeting, the “Institute” had presented twenty-six showcases of the mechanical arts, but it had no building of its own. The anniversary event, lasting six weeks from mid-October through mid-November, featured displays of light fixtures, textile fabrics, cabinetry, tools, instruments, and the soda fountain of Robert M. Green, the man who presented America with its first ice-cream soda on one particularly busy day. The exhibition earned the Franklin Institute almost $60,000, enough for a committee to begin scouting properties for a year-round exhibition building in Center City.
The press praised the police for maintaining peace during the showcase. They had patrolled corridors, watched out for pickpockets, accommodated weary visitors by setting up benches, and established order in the lines of those waiting outside to purchase tickets. In fact, the authorities were so busy keeping the peace that they may not have been as vigilant in criminal profiling as they had been over the past few months. Bill Mosher was a criminal, but he was also a professional artisan. He and Joseph Douglas could have very well been two of the thousands who had strolled through the main hall, perusing displays, tools, and inventions that celebrated craftsmanship. If Westervelt was to be believed, and William Mosher had successfully traveled back and forth to Philadelphia unrecognized in the aftermath of Charley’s kidnapping, a popular festival commemorating the mechanical trades would have been hard for him to ignore.
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As Heins continued pursuing the clues offered by William Westervelt and Superintendent Walling, the advisers turned their attention to transforming Philadelphia’s image from a violent, industrial metropolis into a clean, cultural haven. The Evening Bulletin wrote, “The condition of the streets will be marked by everyone, and comparisons will be made with other cities in this country and abroad. Nothing will tend more to make the city inviting and create a favorable impression among visitors than a neat and tidy condition of the public highways.” The city planners authorized funds for street cleaning machines, solicited bids for repairing roads and installing streetlamps, and encouraged citizens to remove garbage from the streets. Police spread circulars with “No Refuse Allowed” throughout town and worked to contain street violence.
Nevertheless, throughout the fall months, brawls spilled from saloons onto sidewalks. A group of men in one corner bar beat a bartender when he ordered them to stop smashing full-pint glasses with empty bottles. Street thugs fought one another with blackjacks and brass knuckles. They beat a seventy-five-year-old man to death, nearly kicked a “feminine-looking” man to death, attacked women, shot one man in the eye, another in the throat, and assaulted officers for arresting their friends for rape. Police locked up twelve-year-olds who threw stones at windows, a fireman who threw a cat into a furnace, an angry drunk who stabbed a fellow drinker in the head, and the proprietresses of three brothels, their female employees, and their gentlemen guests.
As updates on Charley Ross’s disappearance slipped from the papers, the story of Mary Elizabeth Carton, another abandoned child, enraged the public. In Kensington, the neighborhood where Walter had been abandoned by the kidnappers, Mary’s father, Francis Carton, had stumbled home drunk one night and beat his wife to death in front of two of their six children—ten-year-old Mary and a ten-month-old infant. By the time Mary was called to testify at the murder trial, her father’s family and two of her own brothers claimed that neighbors and police had misinterpreted the crime scene. Police had, in fact, kept Mary under close supervision at a neighbor’s house, fearing that her family members would kidnap her before her testimony. While Mary waited for the trial, her father sent Mary and the neighbors threatening letters.
The district attorney angered the public when he charged Francis Carton with second-degree murder. He said the state could not ask for more because Carton did not use a weapon. The Evening Bulletin said, “It is true that the use of a deadly weapon presumes the deliberate intent to commit murder. But is it equally true that the absence of a deadly weapon presumes that there was no such intent?” It warned of the consequences should the judge agree with the prosecutor’s decision. “If so, it will be quite an inducement to murderers to practice the art of manual and pedal murder, and so keep themselves safe from the gallows.” The judge supported the district attorney’s decision; he attributed the charge not to the absence of a weapon, though, but to Carton’s intoxicated state at the time of the murder. After Mary’s testimony, the jury found Francis Carton guilty and the judge sentenced him to eleven years and six months in prison.
Reporters reminded the City Council that they had less than two years to transform Philadelphia’s reputation for ineffective policing. “Foreigners will judge the nation by what they see in Philadelphia.” But instead of giving stronger punishments to violent offenders, the city fathers ignored the papers’ warnings and focused their efforts on patching the town’s aesthetic flaws. As workers built and street cleaners tidied, foreign ministers across the globe received invitations beckoning them to visit Philadelphia and reminding them to reserve exhibition space for their own countries. When potential investors continued to withhold pledges, the city planners decided to recruit more aggressively and widely. A fund-raising delegation traveled to Massachusetts hoping to capture Boston’s interest with the council’s grand plans. If successful, they could count on the rest of New England and a jaded New York City to follow Boston’s lead.