[Indexed as: “The Italian Children – The Examination Continued,” The Philadelphia Inquirer (Pa.), Aug. 22, 1873]

United States Commissioner Osborn, today, continued the examination in the case of Vincenzo Motto, the Crosby street padrons, who is charged with kidnapping three Italian children, and keeping them in a state of servitude.

Little Joseph, who told his story of misery yesterday, was put on the stand and cross-examined by Motto’s counsel. He did not, in any particular, contradict any of the statements made by him yesterday on direct examination.

Mrs. McMonagle, keeper of children’s cottages in Central Park, was called and testified that she noticed Joseph in one of the cottages about a month ago, after he had run away from Motto, she sent him home, and he went back again and told her how he had been used by Motto; she gave him water and soap to wash himself, he did not know what soap was, had never seen it in Motto’s; she then took him home with her, and put clean clothes on him and dressed the bruises on his body from the blows and beatings he had received from Motto; several Italians tried to kidnap him, but she watched him well and prevented them; he would run away himself from the Italians, so much was he afraid they were going to take him back to Motto.

One of the little boys, aged 11 years, who was found in Motto’s place, when Motto was arrested, was put upon the stand, and told a story of his own suffering almost as bad as Joseph’s. He was asked to point out Motto, which he did. He was then afraid to go near him, and asked that some person would go with him to protect him. He was assured Motto would not be allowed to touch him, and he then went over to where Motto sat, and pointed at him. As he did so he trembled with dear.

Mr. Monachesi, who arrested Motto, testified to finding two boys in the place at the time, and that he learned Joseph’s story from meeting him at Central Park. He said he believed there were between two thousand Italian children kept in this state of servitude and misery in this city.

The examination was then adjourned till Saturday.

NOTES

“As the became desperate, the police moved well beyond gypsy wagons and began unwarranted door-to-door searches of Italian neighborhoods (Italians were associated with brigandage andd seen as disreputable and exotic), gambling dens, and houses of ill-fame. In other words, confronted with a new situation [child kidnapping was not, as the author claims, a “new situation”], the police pursued their usual hunches, associating Charley’s disappearance with gypsies, Italians, and the underworld.” [p. 27-8, Fass, Paula, Kidnapped: Child Abduction in America, 1997, Oxford University Press]

This description is both historically inaccurate and deliberately deceptive – in using “politically correct” stereotypes (which appear throughout the book cited) to created a censored – and ideologically anti-family — history of child kidnapping in America.

The problem of child slavery and torture committed by Italian organized crime – which had recently moved to Philadelphia and elsewhere following a law enforcement crackdown resulting from widely read and detailed newspaper reports on the racket – was the actual reason for the search for Charlie Ross, which Fass claims was “unwarranted” in Philadelphia Italian neighborhoods.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries during  the epidemic of “Black Hand” kidnappings of children by Italian-American criminals, it was Italian-American families – of all classes – who were the victims, almost without exception. Thus, the idea of “brigandage,” if associated with Italian communities need not refer to the majority of decent Italian-Americans, but to the type of criminal traditions that immigrant sociopaths carried over to the new world.