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One reason the parental advice “never accept candy from strangers” became a very familiar phrase was the sensational July 1874 kidnapping of Charley Ross, the four-year-old son of a wealthy businessman in Germantown, Pennsylvania.
Charley and his six-year-old brother, Walter, were accustomed to playing near the road in front of their home. During the last week of June, two strangers in a carriage stopped each day to talk to them and offer candy. Then, on July 1, they offered to take the boys into Philadelphia to buy fireworks for Independence Day. In the city they sent Walter into a store with 25 cents, a princely sum for a six-year-old in those days. When Walter came out of the store, the carriage, the two men, and Charlie were gone.
Two days later the boys’ father, Christian K. Ross, received an illiterate, barely legible note warning him: “. . .dont deceiv yuself an think the detectives can git him from us for that is one impossible—you here from us in few day” Soon there came a demand for a $20,000 ransom, but an attempt at a rendezvous for the delivery of the money fell through.
The New York City police identified the handwriting of the notes as that of William Mosher, a dock thief, but before they could track him down Mosher and his accomplice, Joseph Douglass, were shot during a burglary in Bay Ridge, New York. Mosher died at once; Douglass survived long enough to confess but claimed that only Mosher had known Charley’s whereabouts. Little Walter Ross identified the two dead as the kidnappers of his brother.
Later, a book about Charley Ross was published in 1967, written by Norman Zierold.
Today, Charley Ross bottles from the mid to late 1870's are very difficult to find. But once in a while “diggers” will discover them in their searches as they go through old trash dumps and privy pits.
A fascinating bottle of historical importance that marks a sad event in American history. The admonition "don't take candy from strangers" is said to have originated from Charley Ross' kidnapping.
The mother's brother-in-law, a former policeman named William Westervelt, was tried for his alleged part in the crime. Sentenced to seven years of solitary confinement, he never admitted guilt on his release in 1882 he dropped out of sight.
Source: Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, August 15, 1874; June 18, 1875; Harper's Weekly,August8,1874,p.652
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