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Source: The New York Clipper, 6 June 1885

He is not dead, but victor over Death. Though sobs the world, and patriot bosoms thrill, For truth proclaims, with inspiration's breath, Great Victor Hugo reigns Immortal still. He claimed a "pauper's burial" from his peers — Sublime request, great-hearted, noble, true: The poor he loved bestow his manes more tears Than France hath shed since she lost Waterloo. His monarch mind with history was stored. The field of romance marvelous he wrought. And proved "the pen was mightier than the sword," When waved with power from the throne of thought; He spurned the Drama's petrifactions past. Like mummies carved monotonous in stone. And when his pearls before the world were cast He stood great Victor Hugo, all alone — The patriot poet, whose immortal pen Illumines Waterloo's illustrious dead Till phantom hosts revive to life again. Their forms we view, and hear their martial tread: The cannon's roar, the clash of steel on steel. While lightning bolts spread carnage and dismay. Till from his throne we see Napoleon reel. When failed the last charge of brave Michael Ney.* We see a boy abandoned, sad and mute. With tearful eyes and face carved like a clown. Who roams & bleak bill where the gibbets fruit Swings to the blast with murder's midnight frown: He flees in terror, homeless on the globe. And finds a babe, to his lone heart a prize. And his poor coat shines like an angel's robe Wrapt round the waif in Charity's pure eyes. A lonely rock, that towers store the sea Where ships are wrecked and waves their dirges roll. Has one glad tenant, fearless, brave and free. With giant nerve and love-illumined soul. He slays the dreadful monster of the deep. Laughs at the storm, defies the tempest's roar: The trophy gained, will be love's harvest reap. Or never sing sweet "Bonnie Dundee" more.**** What sacred mother-love, pure and sincere, Redeems poor Fantine. fallen and betrayed. As if from Heaven fell a pitying tear From Him who once was in a manger laid: And, dear the thought, the "O My Mother," cry ***** Brought down an angel from a martyr's throne, To stand on guard while danger hovered nigh, When Cossette's heart lay buried 'neath a stone. Author sublime: Columbia honors thee, Thy offerings grand through her broad border spread! Thou hast no part with those of '93,****** Who dyed the royal purple crimson red, When, 'neath the shadow of the guillotine, Fair Roland's word with awful warning came, But, patriot pure, through every mortal scene, Thy robes are white, impregnable thy fame. JOHN COOPER VAIL * See "The Battle of Waterloo," "Les Miserables" ** See "The Victim of the Comprachios." *** See "The Man Who Laughs, or by the King's Command." ****See "The Toilers of the Sea." *****"Les Miserables," the chapter entitled "A Heart Under a Stone." ****** See "93, or the History of a Crime."

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Full size (100x86 cm) graphic version of painting for my composition classes. It is needed to better understand tone values and to have a perception of how your work gonna look like in full size. Made with charcoal stick

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the best father daughter duo 🥲

📷 @medium-observation

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courfeyrac voice dont worry marius you are my friend 💖 i love you so much and i will give you a place to sleep 🛏️ and take you to balls 🪩👯‍♂️ and gossip with you 🗣️ and tell you about women 🧍‍♀️and only stalk you a little bit 🤏 with my good friend bossuet 🥚

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post brick reread/les mis ntl tour moodboard

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Los Angeles Herald, 5 January 1914. Image by Mary Ellen Sigsbee.

The picture at the top of this page is not exactly a pretty picture. But it ought to be a USEFUL picture, because it is a picture of life, as certain children in the cities live it. And these children are not criminals or the children of criminals. They are only POOR, and the children of the poor. Our civilization has many plans for all sorts of citizens—but no plans, apparently, for these children who have to take up the burdens and responsibilities of life, at an age when they should be in school or at play. There are too many such children—any “society” that would undertake to care for them would be swamped. Only the Government is big enough for that work. Look at this little girl, lugging a baby, with one arm and carrying a heavy pitcher with the other. Where is the big hand to reach down and give a lift as there did to Cosette in the forest, of Hugo’s Les Miserables?  Little woman, taking mother’s place, will you ever wish to be a mother when you grow up? You know that this little girl’s mother is NOT leading an immoral life. She is away struggling for her own existence and the support of her loved ones, perhaps scrubbing an office building somewhere for a few cents an hour. If an acrobat came along, took these little girls, and taught them to turn somersaults for pay, HE WOULD BE ARRESTED. THEY WOULD BE TAKEN AWAY AND CARED FOR. If a manager of a theater took these two children and taught them to act, one to play Little Eva and the other Topsy, HE WOULD BE LOCKED UP for “interfering with child life, child development and child happiness.” What a pity we can’t use some of our high, righteous indignation to get these children out of the gutter, to make these conditions impossible. What a pity that none of the gentlemen whose business it is to make laws and to "lift up our civilization” ever think of lifting up the foundation, the bottom, the deepest cellar of that civilization. Why must they always confine their efforts to lifting the gilded ROOF?

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San Francisco Call, 20 December 1897

It is not necessary to shed tears over Dickens' pathetic portrayal of the death of little Nell, or to read some of the stirring pictures from Hugo's immortal "Les Miserables" to understand the sorrow of the poor. The city prison yesterday developed a case as sad, as deeply touching as any of the heart-moving recitals of human sorrow ever portrayed by the masters of fiction in their most realistic creations.

In a city of plenty, among hospitable people, while anthems rose from scores of church choirs, a little child perished in its mother's arms from lack of nourishment, while the father, a man of education and refinement, paced his cell in the city prison, powerless to comfort the distracted mother and his four grief stricken and destitute children.

The babe that perished in its mother's arms was the child of Horace Van Buren, a manufacturing chemist, who was sentenced Saturday to the County Jail for embezzling $10. He had been entrusted with this petty sum by a woman who lives on Grant avenue. Thus forced by poverty to do wrong the man who bears the name of a president of the United States languished in poverty and disgrace while his helpless wife paced the floor of her humble home at 722 Grove street until the dark angel kissed and called away the last flower and gift of her life.

But Mrs. Van Buren is a brave little being in the face of crushing sorrows. Battling to save her dying child against difficulties that would have crushed many a woman, she bore up bravely until its death. Then she sobbed as if her heart would break, for the man who had sworn to love and protect her and his children was that moment a prisoner in a narrow cell, there was no money with which to meet the expenses of a funeral and her other children stood face to face with the last loaf, their little lives warped with new sorrows, her own life at best but a wintry day.

It was then that the patient sufferer hastened to the jail, there to break the news to the prisoner whose child was her child, whose sorrow was hers. It was there, too, that she entwined her arms around the unfortunate father's neck and sobbed so mournfully that the jail keepers — men accustomed to witnessing many sorrows — bowed their heads and stepped aside out of respect to the bereavement of two unfortunates whose lives had thus drifted into the depths of despair.

The interview between husband and wife was evidently a painful one, and the prisoner, as well as his wife, sobbed so as to attract the attention of other prisoners. But the hardest wretch in the entire enclosure was not so heartless as not to be affected by the sight when he knew the cause of the sorrow. When the grief-stricken woman departed from the prison her husband told Captain Robinson that his youngest child, a babe of 7 months, had died in its mother's arms a few hours before her visit to the jail. He asked whether he would be permitted to go home and see the babe and comfort his wife for a few hours. When Chief Lees was told the story he said:

"Let permission be granted by all means. We would be hyenas to refuse such a request."

So the sorrowing father was led from his gloomy cell by Policeman Coughlin, who was deeply affected by the sight he beheld at the home of the parents of the dead baby.

The mother led her husband to a lounge, where the babe lay beautiful in the last sleep. The strong man knelt beside the babe, as tears bathed his face and his body was swayed by the storm of grief that swept over his whole being. The mother threw her arms around the unfortunate man, who was soon to be led back to jail. Four young children witnessed the sad spectacle and added to the pathos as they cried and clung to him until he painfully and slowly walked with bowed head and aching heart from the house of sorrow.

There is no food in that house except a few morsels of bread, and the fuel is all gone.

"If you could only be with me we might do something," said the lonely and hopeless woman as her husband was taken back to jail, "but alone I am helpless. For two days I have paced the floor with baby in my arms, unable to see any one or ask for assistance."

An effort will be made to-day to have the unfortunate man's sentence commuted. There is room, meantime, for charitable persons to demonstrate in this case, and at this Yuletide season, that there is such a thing as the brotherhood of man, and that "one drop of blood flows through the races."

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Los Angeles Herald, 29 October 1905

If you want to read the full story, and I recommend that you do because it is wild, there is a very good writeup of it here. This article is just a VERY small piece of the story and doesn't do it justice.

LAWRENCE, Kas., Oct. 28.— The Illinois foster-parents of little Emily Darwin, the world-famous incubator baby of the world's fair Pike, won a point today in their fight to make the infant heiress to a third of a million dollars. Justice Smart overruled the motion of Mrs. Charlotte Bleakley, who now has the child, for the dismissal of the habeas corpus suit filed by James G. Barclay, of Moline, Ill. The claim of the Barclays, who say that little Emily, or Thelma Barclay, as they call her, is the daughter of one Edith Stanley, will now be heard on its merits. Into the evidence, which will be heard in the Lawrence court, next month, will enter the strange story of a scientific marvel, by which a baby whose face resembled an ape's was transformed into a beutiful [sic] child, of the substitution of a dead infant for a living one whose mother mourned her as dead, of the mother's discovery, and of her fear aroused by reading Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables" that the little one was suffering the fate of Cosette, and of the riches which her claimants wish to bestow on the baby. Mrs. Bleakley obtained the child through a suit decided in the Rock Island, Ill., circuit court, where Judge Emery C. Graves declared her to be the mother of the child named as Edith Bleakley. She says that her determination to recover her child, then living with the Barclays in Moline, came while she read in "Les Miserables" of the fate, of a child brought up by others than its parents. That night she packed and set out for St. Louis. She hunted up physicians and nurses who had been at the incubator, and learned enough to make her sure that the child to whom she had formally renounced her claim was, indeed, her child. Her effort to recover the baby began as soon as she found the Barclays. Mrs. Bleakley had been told her child, whom she had sent to the incubator, was dead, and had paid, she said, $15 for its burial expenses. If the baby be held by her foster parents she will inherit a third of a million dollars.

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Sorry y’all, I still don’t know how upload audio files. Anyway, I kinda wanted to show y’all a piece of music from the Les Mis 1925 film. It seems like this movie has different music depending on the cut, but I’m pretty sure this is the one composed by Roch Havet. I could be wrong though.

This piece plays during Javert’s suicide and the scene leading up to it. I’m not always super into the music used in this cut of the film, but I do rather like this bit.

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Colusa Daily Sun, 10 November 1908

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Los Angeles Herald, 14 March 1907

Like Jean Val Jean, the famous hero of Victor Hugo's novel, "Les Miserables," who stole a loaf of bread because of his hunger and was sent to the galleys for it, James Brown, a young man of Long Beach, was yesterday sentenced to serve one year's imprisonment in Folsom penitentiary, his crime having been the theft of a piece of pie. Only in the case of Victor Hugo's hero the unfortunate man managed to get a few bites of the bread before he was captured, while the Long Beach victim was captured just as he had the slice of pie in tempting proximity to his mouth and was about to bite into it. According to Brown's story he went to one of the Long Beach restaurants a few days ago and asked for something to eat. He was out of work and hungry and had tramped in streets until he was worn out. After visiting a dozen restaurants and after having been refused food by all of them he started on a still hunt for something to eat. Brown says he went from door to door and at last reached the Long Beach cafeteria. The man stated to the court yesterday that he had pounded on the door in an attempt to get someone to answer and that he had then tried first the screen and then the wooden door and had found both unlocked, so he walked in. He explained to Judge Smith that he had an abnormal fondness for pie and that despite the fact that many good things were lying about he had left all alone and had simply carved out a huge chunk of mince pie, which he had started to transfer to his mouth when he was brutally captured and led away to prison with the odor of the delicacy still lingering in his nostrils, the pangs of hunger still growing. When Judge Smith heard Brown's story he stated that he would not send a man to state's prison simply because he had stolen food when he was hungry. Officers said that Brown had had a bad record and that a proneness for burglary rather than pie hunger led him to "burgle" the cafeteria, and the court imposed sentence of one year at hard labor in Folsom penitentiary, where Brown will have time to curb his pie appetite.

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San Pedro News Pilot, 12 November 1925

The letter of M., the “Outcast,” who, after serving a term in a girl’s reform school, is finding it difficult to establish herself, has brought me many letters, chiefly from men, asking her address. Because of the rule of this column never to divulge names and addresses of correspondents, none of these requests were compiled with, but the letters were indicative of a wide interest in the young girl’s plight. Now comes a belated communication from one who can perhaps sympathize with her more sincerely than any of the rest of us. He says: Dear Mrs. Thompson: I read the letter from the outcast in your column. I also “graduated” from a reform school some years ago, and have had the same experience since I left the state’s boarding house. Since my release I’ve made good to society but paid the fiddler. I am a member of a well known family, having resided here for 12 years, except for two years in the war. I came here to start all over, but ill news will spread and my record is known, and reflects on me who paid for an offence I never committed. I have since been proven innocent. However, that doesn’t mean anything to people. They just remember that I was in the reform school. I am 26 years old, and went to France to fight for people who knew my record. You do not know the agony dealt out to us in the state’s hotel. Somehow, one sort of lost all faith in humanity. Memory of the past punishment forever wakens whenever one goes out at night without any particular business in mind. We have good reason to avoid the officers of the law. We must walk a chalk line forever or fall into the law’s hands and then the past means more grief. I have gone straight but the police know my record and I have to watch my step or live under a phony name, all because I refused to squeal on another. Though I paid the state’s price elsewhere, the local police somehow knew all about me when I came here. They have my fingerprints, birthscars, etc. Once a black sheep, always a black sheep. The worst of it is that my own family distrust me. Simply because of a boyhood prank of throwing a stone at a roundhouse window. I was caught, refused to tell, and called “a bad boy,” was given eighteen months in the reform school. My record there is first class. But my life is blighted forever. Out of 600 boys in the school, 321 were killed in France. Yet we were criminals then and are now. I know how “Outcast” feels for I myself am an outcast. Love has been denied me. There are some who will call this “bunk” but no one who has ever been in a reform school will say I am wrong. Tell the outcast she has my sympathy. I ask nothing of the world. --THE BLACK SHEEP. [Thompson] Your letter reminds me of that masterpiece, Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables.” Have you ever read it, “Black Sheep?” For one’s life to be blighted by so small a crime seems incredible in this enlightened age of ours. But I have no doubt there are many other cases like yours. Much depends on you and others similarly punished both in prison and out. Every time one of you does “fall from grace” it sets back the day when this evil will be remedied.

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Yorkville Enquirer, 4 February 1903

M. Moreau-Christophe, the inspector of prisons under the second empire, knew the man who served as the prototype of Jean Valjean, and whose history haunted the brain of Victor Hugo and inspired his famous "Miserables." M. Moreau-Christophe had a passion for reforming convicts. He gathered many confessions, and knew many strange secrets. The following story of the convict Urbain Lemelle is taken from his notes:

"Urbain Lemelle, like Jean Valjean, was the abandoned child of a drunken father. When he was only 8 years old he went from farm to farm to offer for a piece of bread the work that his little hands could do. He was first taken in hand by a kind-hearted peasant named Brisset, who kept him minding cows for three years. Then he was employed by two neighboring farmers, who sent him to tend sheep for three years more. Urbain tired of the life of a shepherd and determined to become a sailor, when he reached the age of 14. He began as cabin boy in a river boat from Angers, whose captain generally spoke to him with the end of a rope. Three years passed in this way, during which Urbain's only consolation was in his friendship for the son of the captain, a young man named Gervais, who was no less badly treated than himself. This friendship was unfortunate for Urbain. One winter's day, when the waters of the Loire were frozen and navigation was suspended, Gervais proposed to Urbain to take away the money that was in the safe of the boat for the pay of the hands.

"Then," said he, "we will go to Nantes where we will become real sailors."

"But that is robbery you propose to me!" said Urbain.

"Robbery, nonsense!" replied Gervais. "Doesn't my father owe you 80 francs? Well, you can pav yourself the 80 francs out of the sack, and then you will be square."

An hour afterward the money was no longer on board the boat. Gervais had taken it away, and Urbain had hid it in the trunk of a willow tree.

Next day the imprint of his feet upon the snow led to the tree, where the treasure was found. Urbain was arrested, and the lock of the safe having been broken, he was condemned to seven years penal servitude. He was then only 17.

During his seven years' imprisonment, Urbain was resigned, industrious, religious and exemplary in his conduct. When he left the penitentiary, where he had lost seven years, he thought he had nothing to do but to return to Angers purified completely. It was at Angers that he committed his crime, and he wanted to prove that he was reformed. This hope was dissipated. The fact that he was an ex-convict closed all doors and all hearts on him. He found it extremely difficult to get work, and when, by chance he did procure some arduous employment, the other workmen refused to associate with him. He was condemned to idleness, beggary, and theft.

One Sunday, while roaming through the country he stopped, fatigued, to rest himself in a field where there were some horses at liberty. He thought of the sea that was only thirty leagues from him, and of America, that new world where he expected to live as an honest workingman. The idea turned his head. He jumped like a mad man upon one of the horses and started the animal along the road, without a saddle or bridle. He set out in the evening and arrived at the break of day at Ingrandes. Nearing that place on the edge of the road there was a prairie. There he turned loose the horse and entered the town.

An unknown person turning a horse loose was suspected. He was followed, arrested and brought before the mayor. He gave his name without hesitation, but while they were discussing his case, he managed to escape. He reached Nantes and tried to ship with some captain on a long voyage. But to embark, it was necessary to have papers, and Urbain didn't have them.

For some time he wandered along the quays almost on the verge of suicide, when a big hand touched his shoulder, the hand of a boatman of Angers, who recognized him. The boatman wanted help, so Urbain went with him to Angers. He had hardly arrived before he was arrested and put in prison on the complaint of stealing a horse. Now, it happened that the honest peasant Brisset, was the owner of the horse in question. He testified before the court that his horse came back to him and that Urbain was too honest a fellow to want to steal it. But he pleaded for him in vain. The unfortunate young man was convicted a second time by the Assizes court of Maine-et-Loire to twelve years' penal servitude.

At Brest he served his time just as he did formerly at Toulon. In prison his conduct was irreproachable, but after four years of tortures inflicted upon him in that dreadful place, he escaped. Where was he to go? Paris was the only place that could hide him from the police. He went there without encountering any difficulties, and the very next day after his arrival he was on the Place de Greve among the laboring men. There he was taken by a building contractor, with whom he remained for three years, whose regrets followed him to the establishment of M. Masse, a dry goods manufacturer, where he received better wages.

For four years M. Masse kept him and entrusted to his hands large sums of money, which Urbain always handled with zeal and intelligence and perfect honesty. He commenced to prosper and married an honest working girl. Happy in the thought that at last he was loved and respected, he lived with her for seven years.

One Sunday while he was walking in the suburbs with his wife, he met a policeman who was a former convict, who knew him at Brest. This policeman destroyed his entire happiness. He arrested him. Urbain was brought to Bicetre, and from there was taken to Brest to finish the eight years of penal servitude that he had still to serve, in addition to the supplementary years for the crime of escaping.

It was during the few months of his detention at Bicetre, in 1833, that Moreau-Christophe knew Urbain and learned his story. M. Moreau-Christophe obtained for him the favor of exemption from the first chain gang, on leaving Bicetre for Brest; and a few months later he managed to send him back to Paris. In other words, he brought the case to the attention of the king, who pardoned the man upon the spot.

Urbain Lemelle lived to a great old age. He was the best of husbands, and wished to be the best of fathers, but that joy was denied him. He consoled himself, nevertheless, by making pets of all the children in the place where he lived, and he amused them often by telling them stories of brigands. Heaven only knows what queer stories he must have learned during his ten years in the Bagne.

------

This story was published as early as 1900 and was printed verbatim in the 1919 book The Paris of Novelists, along with the claim that it inspired the character of Jean Valjean. And a newspaper article from that same year repeats the same story as well but calls the man "Urbian Lemerre." But in Moreau-Christophe's 1863 book Le Monde Des Coquins although he does tell the story of Urbain Lemelle, he does not make a connection between it and Valjean. He does however mention a gang leader nicknamed "Monsieur Madeleine" and suggests that it might have inspired Victor Hugo to use the name as well.

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The Bamberg herald, 10 April 1913

Millions of Americans have shuddered at Victor Hugo's tremendous arraignment of law in the story of Jean Valjean, the youth who, for stealing a loaf of bread for his starving family, was condemned to a lifetime of suffering, imprisonment and persecution. And they have said: "That was terrible. But that was in France, and long ago. Such things could not happen now-- certainly not in America." But William Welch, looking out hopelessly from behind iron bars, gives them the lie. For William Welch, in free America, has suffered greater wrong than Jean Valjean. Driven by hunger, he stole a piece of bacon from a dwelling house; and for that "crime" he was sentenced to the penitentiary for life by an Ohio judge, and driven insane by brooding on the overwhelming injustice of it. Six years ago Welch, a young man of twenty-five, was wandering thru southern Ohio, looking for work. He found neither job nor generosity. Penniless, lonely, hungry he lost his reverence for the great god Property. And so, one dark, bitter night, in Greenville, he opened the door of a dwelling house, entered and took a few pounds of bacon to keep him alive in his quest for work. He lifted his hand against no man. He attacked no woman. He frightened no child. He destroyed nothing. He had to have food, and he took a dollar's worth of bacon--that was all. He was seen, caught and hauled into court. And being at heart an honest man, Welch admitted stealing the bacon. He would steal to live, but he would not lie to avoid punishment. The law, however, was not so square as the thief. Welch was guilty of "breaking and entering an inhabited dwelling at night," with intent to steal property. And that, in Ohio, is an offense punishable with life imprisonment, unless the jury recommends mercy. Welch was destroyed by his own honesty. By pleading "guilty," he surrendered his right to a trial by jury. And so there was no jury to "recommend mercy." Wherefore inexorable law, in the person of Judge Allread, sent him to the penitentiary for life. It is not likely that any jury would have done that. And the lack of a jury was merely technical. The judge might have insisted on a jury trial for the prisoner, refusing to enter his plea of "guilty." Judges have often done so. This judge merely said, "There is no alternative." So, speaking as a statute book, and not as a man dealing with flesh and blood and the passions of life, with legal phrase he took away this young man's lifelong freedom, his human ties, even his secret hopes-- for stealing a piece of bacon! The door of the penitentiary closed on William Welch, his name became a number, and he was forgotten. Just the other day somebody happened to recall the case, and inquired what had become of William Welch, and this is what he found: The body of William Welch still lives. But the soul of him is dead. A few months of prison life brought him face to face with his appalling fate. Brooding over it in bitterness, and longing for "that little tint of blue," which prisoners call the sky, "his mind broke." Law had murdered the only part of him that raises man above brutes. And now he is no more than an ape in a cage.

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The Washington times, 30 April 1907

The Bamberg herald, 16 May 1907

Washington, D. C. -- President Roosevelt in a note to the Department of Justice expressed the opinion that John William January, of Missouri, should have his sentence commuted at once or be pardoned outright. He wrote as follows:

"Department of Justice: In view of the statements of the judges, bank presidents and so forth, who know him, I think Anderson's nine years of life as an honest citizen, hard working and of good repute warrant us in commuting his sentence at once or in pardoning him outright. Which do you think ought to be done? Are there sufficient reasons for not doing either?

THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

The whole State of Missouri has risen up in appeal to President Roosevelt for a pardon for this Western Jean Valjean, who has just been recaptured in Kansas City after an upright and prosperous life of nine years, during which he had proved himself one of the best citizens of the place. Missouri is asking the President to give the man a "square deal," and there does not seem to be much doubt that Missouri's request will be granted.

John William January, thirteen or fourteen years ago, when he was just twenty-one years old, broke into the post office at Hennessey, Okla., for the purpose of robbery. He got no booty worth anything, but was caught, tried in the Federal Court at Guthrie, and sentenced to serve five years in the penitentiary.

In prison January was a model of good behavior. He was working for the good conduct commutation, and had come to within eight months of the time when he would be liberated, when he saw a chance to escape and took it. He worked his way north, and after a time got work on a railroad with a construction gang. He saved his money, and finally had enough to get to Kansas City. There, under the name of Charles W. Anderson, he got a job on a street railway. He was steady and sober, worked hard and saved his money. Kansas City is a red-hot city politically, and the fact that he never could be induced to vote, even on questions in which the street railroad men were deeply interested, caused some to marvel, but Anderson, aware of his civil disability through his prison sentence, held steadfastly aloof.

At length he saved enough money to buy out a small restaurant near the car barns of the street railroad. His principal customers were his former workmates. He stuck to his restaurant as he had to his railroad work, and as before he prospered. He had lived so long undetected that he began to believe he was safe, so he married and had one child, a five year-old girl.

He made enough money to buy a better business in a more thriving locality. He sold his first place for a good price, and was looking for a new one when he was caught. It happened that a man who had been in the penitentiary at Leavenworth with him met him on the street and recognized him. The ex-convict followed Anderson and made himself known. Anderson realized at once that he was in the man's hands, and lost if he chose to betray him. The man proposed that they go "downtown and have some fun."

"No," answered Anderson. "I have quit all that. I am married and have a family. I don't want to have anything to do with you."

The convict knew there was a standing reward of $60 for information that would lead to the recapture of escaped prisoners. He got in communication with the prison authorities, and promised, if the man was forthcoming, to reveal the whereabouts of January.

The authorities promised, and the information was given them, with the result that the police of Kansas City were requested to arrest Anderson. Two policemen, hating their task, took the man they knew to have been a good citizen for nine years, and locked him up. Then it developed that the convict who had betrayed him could not receive the reward after all, because such money could be paid only to citizens, and he was outside the pale. So it was offered to the two policemen who made the arrest. Both spurned it.

There was nothing for the court to do but remand Anderson to prison. He did not attempt to deny his identity and went back to Leavenworth to serve out the unexpired portion of his full sentence, all his good conduct commutation having been forfeited by his escape. That was about a week ago.

Kansas City rose up in his behalf, and all Missouri followed the lead of the city. The two policemen who scorned the blood money accepted it and turned it into the fund that was raised to help obtain Anderson's pardon. Everybody in Kansas City lent a hand. Doctors, lawyers, judges, merchants, the Mothers and Homemakers' Club, the Board of Trade, the Chamber of Commerce, labor organizations and private individuals, either signed petitions or wrote directly to the President.

The House of Representatives of the State Legislature, by formal resolution, added its weight to the appeal to Mr. Roosevelt. The judge before whom January had been tried wrote one of the strongest letters ever received at the Department of Justice, and the warden of the penitentiary made an appeal. Nothing, he said, could better serve to convince the prisoners now in the penitentiary of the relentless pursuit of wrongdoers by the Government than the manner in which January had been brought back after nine years. But the mere bringing him back had served to enforce that lesson. Now there was opportunity to add to it a lesson equally striking, in the mercy as well as the justice of the Government, by giving the man who had proved his reform a pardon for his old offense.

Neither the White House nor the Department of Justice knew at first what it was all about. By the time the slow-going official mail had brought the information there were thousands of unofficial appeals for mercy for January. Then came a sworn certificate that a petition signed by 37,000 citizens of Kansas city was on its way. Senator Warner and Representative Ellis took up the case. Their constituents in solid mass demanded that they should act.

The red tape of official methods compels a little delay. Usually it is a great deal of delay. But in this case the pardon attorney of the Department of Justice will have his opinion ready promptly after the official application from Mrs. Anderson for her husband's pardon is in his hands. Then it will go to Attorney General Bonaparte for his recommendation, and thence to the President for action.

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After 50,000 people reportedly petitioned on his behalf, he was pardoned in July 1907.

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Yorkville enquirer, 29 September 1908

Too bad about William January. Who doesn't remember the fuss made less than a year ago over the man who, after escaping from the Federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kan., and living a model life for years, had been discovered and rearrested? [. . .] More than one magazine printed special articles descriptive of the hero and his experience. But now, alas! January has been found running a gambling joint and the police are looking for him in vain. Unlike his prototype, this new Jean Valjean spoiled the story. Too bad, indeed.

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The Times and Democrat, March 13, 1908

John H. Allison, Michigan's Jean Valjean, walked out of Jackson prison in Michigan the other day a free man. At the prison gate his wife and baby met him and he gathered them both into his arms, murmuring tenderest words of endearment and gratitude--gratitude for the faithfulness of the little woman who has stood by him so pluckily and whose constant appeals in his behalf at last brought him his conditional pardon. The first ecstatic moments passed, Allison's wife led him to the home, just a block away from the prison walls, where she established herself soon after he was returned to prison and where she has remained all these weary months of his incarceration. When an interviewer came in shortly after, Allison was sitting in the cozy little room, his face radiating happiness. On his lap sat his daughter Laura, two years old, her chubby arms around his neck, pressing kisses on his face every moment. Near them sat Mrs. Allison, the happiest woman in Michigan. "Haven't I got the grandest little wife in the world?" he said. "If it had not been for her John Allison would still be doing time. I owe her more than I can ever repay." He declared he intended to go to work at once and show himself the man he has been represented to be. He said that before his release his fellow prisoners made up a purse of $30 for him from money they had earned, a few cents a days, working in prison. Allison was arrested seven years ago for bank robbery and sent to Jackson prison. He escaped three years ago. When he was rearrested eight months ago in Moline, Ill, he was married, had a baby and was living an upright, honorable life. He was put back in prison. His wife moved to Jackson that she might be near her husband and work for his release.

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The Evening World, 15 June 1889

Augostino Cannavaccino lies in the Tombs prison, accused of a heinous offence. Yet he has not the least idea of what the charge is against him.

He is a Neapolitan of middle age, and has been in America only about a year. He came to the land of liberty and equal rights because his brother, who had come to America with his wife and four little children had died and left the helpless family with no one to care for them.

Augostino bravely assumed the burden, like Victor Hugo's Jean Valjean. His experience in America has been of a character which might easily make him, like poor Valjean, the enemy of all his follow men.

He had been told in letters from his brother and from others of his fellow-countrymen that this was a land of promise That there was a living to be earned here and that was better than could be said of his overcrowded native land.

And so he came to the relief of his little kinsmen.

He had a little money, and his first efforts to find work which would be near to the little family which he had adopted proving futile he cast about him for a suitable place to plant a stand for the sale of fruit, and found such a place under the awning of the drug store of Anton Applemann at the corner of Tenth avenue and Sixtieth street.

There was a fruit stand within the stoop line at Fifty-eighth and Sixty-first streets— indeed, at every corner along Tenth avenue, but Augostino, nothing daunted by this, applied to Mr. Applemann for permission to erect the booth at the corner.

Druggist Applemann is a practical man, and a man of kindly heart. He replied to the applicant that the police permitted a gang of loafers to congregate before his windows and under his awning despite his protests, and he would rather have a well ordered fruit stand there than to be annoyed by the crowd of loungers who insulted passers-by, bestrowed the walk with tobacco juice und were a nuisance generally.

And so Augostino prepared for business. He applied to the City Marshal for a permit to erect a stand, and pending the granting of the permit, by advice of Mr. Applemann, proceeded to erect his stand.

It was a modest stand, but well laden with fruit.

Augostino was cleanly, industrious, and a gentle fellow, and soon begun to get his fair share of trade in bananas, oranges, peanuts and other truck.

The widow and her orphans were cared for the the simple Neapolitan was happy as a king.

But his prosperity did not last long. Somebody seemed to accumulate a grudge against him, and one night last winter, almost under the noses of a roundsman and a patrolman from the Twenty-second Precinct, his stand was upset in the street and more than $100 worth of fruit destroyed.

Nobody had the slightest idea who did this contemptible thing, and nobody seemed to consider it his business to find out.

Augostino, with good pluck, repaired his stand and started afresh. But a few weeks ago his enemies begun a system of tantalization.

Loafers gathered and bothered him, and finally, on Thursday, an officer from the Bureau of Incumbrances appeared on the scene with a note in his hand which he showed to Mr. Applemann.

It was a complaint stating that the fruit stand was a nuisance; that Augostino was selling decayed fruit and the odor was unhealthy. The coward who thus complained had not the courage to sign his name. His complaint was anonymous.

Mr. Applemann pointed out the absurdity of the complaints; that the vendor could not sell decayed fruit, but the officer found that Augostino had never gone after his permit, and then he dumped the fruit from the stand and lugged the structure away.

Poor Augostino didn't understand what had struck him and getting two boards he improvised a temporary stand; but even while he was at work Officer Cusick, of the Forty-seventh street station, on patrol there, arrested him and lugged him away to the Yorkville Court, where, half-dazed with fright and not understanding the words of the Court, he made no answer to the charge of erecting a stand without a permit, in violation of the ordinances.

He was held in $100 bail for trial and hurried off to the Tombs, where he now is, while $200 worth of fruit, all the property he has, is rotting in the basement area of the drug store.

The little family whose solo support he was, knew nothing all day Thursday and yesterday of the trouble that had befallen their hero, and when they learned last evening, their mourning was pitiful. They are almost penniless and without means of support.

But the majesty of the law is vindicated. Druggist Appelmann is indignant. He says Augostino is a good man, temperate and orderly. That there are stands all about him, and that Augostino's arrest is an outrage. He ventured the opinion that Augostino ought to have paid blackmail to somebody.

The policeman on that beat yesterday afternoon declared that the arrested Italian was a first rale man, and that he was the victim of the jealousy of other fruit dealers and had been for a long time, but he did not think there was any blackmailing of stand keepers.