Boy Rescued From Gypsies, Now of Unsound Mind

New York, 1908

Leonard Allen, Rescued from Gypsies, Runs Away Again — His Mother's Plaint.

Mrs. Mary Allen, of 14½ Union street, whose son, Leonard, was recently recovered from a gypsy camp at Fall River, Mass., called at the Times-Press office Friday and stated that the boy has again disappeared and she asked the aid of this paper in locating him. Mrs. Allen states that her son is of unsound mind and that she will not be at rest until he is committed to a State Hospital.

Leonard Allen, the weak-minded son of Mrs. Mary E. Allen, who wandered away from their home at 14½ Union street, Friday morning, was found late that afternoon on North street near the city limits. Mrs. Allen will take some steps to have him committed to an institution.

—Orange County Times-Press, Middletown, New York, April 14, 1908.


Fear of Gypsies Makes Boy Insane

Middletown, N. Y., May 22. — Seized with the fear that he would again be carried away by gypsies, Leonard Allen, fifteen years old, of this city, has become insane. He seized a large knife and threatened to kill his mother, Mrs. Mary Allen, a widow. The boy was committed to the Middletown State hospital. In August, 1906, young Allen, a healthy, rugged fellow, was taken away from this city by a band of gypsies. On March 18 last the boy was found at Fall River, Mass., | the police of that city having rescued him from gypsies.

—Distributed wire article


Told His Story Against Gypsies

Leonard Allen, the fourteen-year-old son of Mrs. Mary Allen, of 14½ Union street, who went to Fall River, Mass., the first of the month to give testimony before the grand jury against the Stanley gypsies, who took him away from Middletown two years ago, and were afterwards arrested for ill treating him at Fall River, returned to town Saturday noon, having been brought, back by Capt. Connor of the Fall River police force, who came here after him.

Young Allen was taken back the Middletown State Hospital, to which he had been committed after making an attempt on the life of his mother with a butcher knife.

—Orange County Times-Press, June 23, 1908, page 2.

Found The Missing Link

Boston Traveler Claims to Have Discovered Darwin's Ape Man.

Charles J. Frewen of Boston, an extensive traveler, is an ardent believe in the theory of Darwin. Recent investigations on his part in Africa have convinced him that men originally sprang from what is now known as the ape. He is registered at the Windsor and is on his way to the Phillippines to study the natives of that archipelago and the conditions under which they live. He says:

"I have just come from Africa, where I studied all types of human beings. Some of the negroes there are very akin to the ape. They dwell in the Congo forests of central Africa in the western section. These ape-like people do not seem to dwell in organized communities, but hang about the edges of the forest. They speak a sort of dialect that is of the most crude form. Some of them are not really black, but have a skin of dirty yellowish-brown hue. Their bodies are covered over with a yellow down. Their intellect is not developed and their morals are on a parallel with those of the lower animals.

"Human instinct are prominent, of course, as they are human, but their stage of development is so low that they border on the edge of the brute world. It seems, however, that as time advanced that these primitive people have intermingled with superior tribes and, where intellectual advancement has been attained, the characteristics of these apelike people will crop out a following generations.

"Where or not this section of Africa is the cradle of the human race I am not prepared to say. Certain it is, however that these primitive people are the nearest to the ape of any on earth." – Denver News.

--The Sioux County Bee, Rock Valley, Iowa, June 26, 1903, page 1 (doesn't actually look like a page 1.)

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Lecturing at the Royal institution on the retardation of the earth's motion, Prof. George H. Darwin said the time would come when the length of a day would be prolonged to fifty-five of the present days -- "a very leisurely age to live in," he interpolated -- and when the moon's journey around the earth would occupy fifty-five days.

--The Racine Journal, Racine, Wisconsin, July 14, 1903, page 7.