[Indexed as: “Child Stealing in New York,” (originally in New York World, N.Y.), The Saturday Evening Post (Philadelphia, Pa.), Apr. 13, 1872]

That reminds me of an incident that happened two years ago. A Mrs. H ––, in Thirty-Fourth street, sent her lad, ten years old, down to his father’s office one evening by the Third Avenue railroad. He was a bright lad and an only son. About midnight the father came home. He had not seen him. Then began the customary search. The telegraphing and hiring of policeman, and the advertising. All without the least success. One, two years passed away, and then a letter came to Mr. H –– purporting to be written by his son, in London, and asking him to send £200, for God’s sake, to save him from being sent to Australia. It was the opinion of the police authorities that he was in the city; that in fact he had never been out of it. And so indeed it proved. But what gave admission that is to make. Does it not suggest to the thoughtful mind a night whose darkness, almost impossible to such official eyes as we have, needs exploring for our own safety? A very dense darkness is that which can cover a child for years from the search of parents and a tolerably intelligent police force, with money and all the machinery of law at its command.

A little girl was stolen a year ago out of a hallway in upper Madison Avenue in the evening. Report was made of the case, and there it ended. I don’t think she was recovered. But some time after the disappearance, the mother saw, or declared she saw her daughter from an omnibus window on Broadway, and made a frenzied and useless descent from the stage, and ran headlong in the direction the child had taken. There is something startlingly sad in the idea of a parent firmly convinced that its infant is in the hands of evil-disposed persons in the same city who cannot be reached.

This child-stealing business belongs by tradition to the gypsies, and that reminds me that there are quite a number of them in this country – and those who come here, singularly enough, seem to lose their gregarious habits. This free atmosphere is a wonderful solvent, and its affects the criminal no less than the laboring classes. What I was going to say about the gypsies relates only to a case of child-stealing that occurred in 1868, on Long Island, near Jamaica. A boy about eight years old was missed one Monday night just as the family were about retiring. A New York photographer – I think it was Kurtz – had been on the grounds that afternoon making pictures of the place, and the children had been plating croquet at the time. He came the next morning and took another picture of the same view. But the boy was not found. They had three city detectives out there, but nothing was done except to invent theories, until one day a young lady, a piece of the family, brought home the finished picture of the ground from Kurtz’s. Almost as soon as it arrived, somebody in the house, and I dare say it was one of the children, discovered on the bark of a large tree that occupied the foreground three hieroglyphics that puzzled them. They were gypsy marks. Reference to the tree itself was made, but they were almost obliterated with the weather and summer parasitic growth. Nobody at the time thought much about it. But it occurred to the niece, a day or two afterwards, that she would she mention it to one of the officers. The first question he asked her was, if the artist had taken more than one picture, and when she told him he had, and in different ways, that worthy officer instantly replied, “Then we must fine that other picture.” Neither of them had the slightest suspicion how closely they were treading on the domain of Wilkie Collins [famous mystery novelist]. They went to the photographers, and with some difficulty found the negative of the first picture. There were no marks upon the tree. “Hah!” exclaimed the officer, “we’ve got the boy.” It was obvious the symbols had been made between Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning, and at that time the lad was missed. The clue thus given was successfully worked. The boy was overhauled by a deputy sheriff of Broome county about two months afterward.

I have seen these gypsy marks in the city, and pointed out that only last summer a sentence written on the rocks in Central Park – N. Y. World