~The only recent-ish piece of Mansion art I have..
The Little Child Sailor
This story dates back to 1889 and is about a family that purchased a rather old fashioned house in Stuyvesant Square, Philadelphia. The couple started working on refurbishing the whole place. With a lot of time in her hands and no adult supervision, their youngest daughter started spending a lot of time in the attic that had been converted to a playroom.
Even after the house was set up the girl did not want to spend time with her parents but preferred spending time in the attic. When quizzed she said that she used to play with a little boy who had shiny buttons. On further investigation her parents realized that the boy that their daughter was talking about had a child’s sailor suit on.
The father started making enquiries about the family that lived there before and eventually got to know that the family had three children and their youngest son had drowned in the river. The father then accompanied his daughter to the attic and had the boarded up fireplace that his daughter indicated as the place where the little boy came from, ripped apart and found the corpse of the little boy dressed in a sailor jacket who was presumed to have died by drowning.
An examination revealed that the boy had been murdered.
