116 years ago, The Boston Globe made a reporter disappear
In 1899, The Boston Globe had a wild idea.
A young reporter was moving to town to write for the paper. But first, The Globe made him pretend to go missing, and challenged the paper’s readers to see who could find him first.
The “missing’’ man was John Forbes, a Globe reporter who worked for the paper’s New York bureau and had never before set foot in Boston.
The “reward for his detection’’ was $50. (Today, that would be close to $1,500 when adjusted for inflation.)
The first story ran on July 14, 1899 on the paper’s front page. As The Globe saw it, both women and men would enjoy the hunt for John Forbes, though for different reasons:
“Every man delights to play the detective a bit. Every woman has a sense of intuition which may enable her to pick out the right individual without even a careful study of portraits, age, hight [sic] and so on.’’
The paper then broke down the rules of the game:
“He will spend a week, if not identified in less time, in the metropolitan district of which the hub is the center. He will mingle freely with the throngs … He will use no disguise, but go his way like any denizen of the metropolis. He will walk the streets by daylight and in the evening. He will ride on the electric cars, on the steam trains, visit hotels and go to public pleasure resorts, just as any person would who was spending a summer vacation in and around the hub.’’
The paper printed a list of towns around Boston where Forbes might be spending time, and then followed up in a series of dispatches penned by Forbes as well as letters to the editor from readers.
Then the search began.
Day 1
The Globe reported that the search for Forbes has “created considerable interest along the shore’’ – namely at Nantasket Beach in Hull.
The police were asked to intervene when one man “was so positive he had the missing man in his clutches that he was minded to have him arrested for fraud because the victim insisted upon denying the alleged identity.’’
Turned out, the victim denied being John Forbes because he was not, in fact, John Forbes.
And that wasn’t the first – or the last – case of mistaken identity in the search for John Forbes.
Day 2
Forbes detailed how he had spent his first day missing. He ate breakfast in a Boston restaurant, visited several hotels, rode a streetcar to Lynn, spent some time there, enjoyed a “beautiful ride along the breeze-swept coast,’’ took a ferry from East Boston, went to the post office, ate lunch back in Boston, visited three jewelry stores, took in a show at the Palace theater, hung out in Malden, ate dinner in Charlestown, asked police officers for directions, and so on.
“They will not find him in a thousand years,’’ Captain Joseph Dugan, of the city’s bureau of criminal investigation, told the paper. Finding Forbes would be “next to an impossibility’’ even for a real detective, Dugan said.
And no one spotted Forbes on his second day gone “missing’’ – though some were convinced they had.
A series of reports and letters to the editor detailed cases of mistaken identity:
One woman was so sure she had identified Forbes that she wrote the following letter to the editor: “Forbes … has been identified by me this morning … I stopped him and communicated with him and asked him if he was the John Forbes who was sent out by The Globe … He denied being that person, but I claim he is.’’
One Hyde Park man said he had been mistaken for Forbes seven times in 36 hours, and that he had even been “held up and interrogated.’’
While another man mistaken for Forbes “denied that he was worth $50 to anybody who found him’’ he was “not believed by his discoverers.’’ He claimed to have been “captured and held prisoner for a brief time until the captors came to the conclusion that they were mistaken.’’
“The great majority of the suspects enjoyed the fun. A very few were vexed,’’ The Globe reported.
Even the city’s law enforcement community got in on the action.
Captain Dugan “told his inspectors that it would be a feather in their cap to locate’’ Forbes, according to The Globe.
Police patrolmen were encouraged to be on the lookout.
Day 3
At 11:58 a.m., Forbes was spotted in Hingham by 15-year-old Edward Howe.
Edward Howe
Forbes later described the moment:
“A boy rushed up to me very much out of breath and laboring under suppressed excitement. He said: ‘Say, are you John Forbes?’ While the boy was somewhat nervous and excited, I saw that he was determined. To the extent which I considered fair I tried to evade his question, but saw it was no use. He had me.’’
Forbes headed to The Globe’s offices, where the “bright little fellow’’ was “congratulated by editors and reporters.’’
Howe told a reporter he planned to put his $50 reward in the bank.
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