Today, a missing child is a huge deal. Amber Alerts go out, police mobilize, and the public is urged to keep watch. A century ago, a missing child was just as serious, but the way people responded was certainly very different.
That’s clear in the 1922 disappearance of 15-year-old Albert Smythe of Fredericton.
Albert was last seen around 7 a.m. on Saturday, July 29th, leaving his home on Victoria Street. He told his brother he was going to a nearby pasture to retrieve a cow.
“The pasture was not far from the house,” reported the Fredericton Daily Mail, “and when the boy failed to appear, there was wonder because of his absence.”
Albert’s life hadn’t been easy. His parents died when he was young, and he was raised by his older brothers. During the First World War, they all enlisted, and Albert was sent to live with a distant relative in Saint John. Now that the war was over, he had returned to Fredericton to live with his brother, John Smythe, who worked as a night watchman at a local factory.
Albert, like most teenagers at the time, had a job too — he was a shoeshiner. But newspaper reports suggested that living with John hadn’t been easy for either of them.
As that Saturday passed with no sign of his missing brother, John became increasingly worried.
His concern deepened when he noticed his rifle was missing. “[Albert] had taken the rifle out of the house unknown,” noted the Daily Mail, “and had not gone after the cow at all.”
John’s first step was to reach out to his neighbours. Together, they searched for the missing boy. As evening approached, with no sign of him, John knocked on the door to the mayor’s house.
As dusk fell, Fredericton’s Mayor Reid put out a public call for volunteers to join the search effort.
There was a sense of urgency because of concerns about Albert’s health. Once, while bicycling, he suffered an “epileptic fit and fell from his bicycle, injuring himself.” The Daily Mail wrote that searchers “believed it possible he suffered a similar attack.”
The following morning, at the crack of dawn, a pack of young boys in brown shirts assembled outside the Smythe home on Victoria Street. They were Boy Scouts. At the time, Boy Scouts often helped in missing persons cases, typically as junior search-and-rescuers, though this time they appear to have taken the lead.
They fanned out across the countryside on foot, covering the thick forest stretching between New Maryland and Hanwell.
The Daily Journal reported that “they found a collar and tie which they brought back, but they did not belong to the missing boy.”
The Boy Scouts interviewed local farmers who told them that distant gunshots had been heard on Saturday from the direction of Tower Lake, a popular swimming area in Hanwell.
Since few people owned cars, the Scouts had walked the search so far. But this new lead changed things. Mayor Reid lent the boys his own car so they could drive to Hanwell, then hike the rest of the way to the lake. Along the road, they met swimmers who said they’d heard a rumour — “through a friend of a friend” — that a cap and coat had been seen floating in Tower Lake.
Although the Daily Mail cautioned that “confirmation is lacking,” Fredericton City Council called an emergency meeting.
City Manager J. H. McCollom was put in charge of a more advanced search team (composed, this time, of adults). The team was equipped with rappelling gear to explore the cliffs around Tower Lake.
In a grim turn, City Council also prepared to drag the lake to search for Albert’s body.
On August 1st, “while searching parties were scouring the woods,” wrote the Saint John Globe newspaper, “and another party with grappling irons were dragging the bottom of Tower Lake in the belief his dead body might be there,” Fredericton’s Chief of Police Jones’ phone rang.
It was Detective Biddescombe from the Saint John Police.
Biddescombe, who had been following the story in the newspapers, had a hunch. He knew that Albert had lived in Saint John during the war and decided to check in with the great-aunt he had once stayed with.
On Monday afternoon, the detective knocked on the door of Sarah McCormack, who lived near Haymarket Square. She answered and invited him in.
It was a difficult conversation. It turned out that McCormack hadn’t even heard Albert was missing, let alone that the authorities were now searching for his body.
Then, as they were talking, the door opened.
“Walking into Mrs. McCormack’s home was Albert Smythe,” reported the Globe, “stating that he had walked all the way from Fredericton.”
He had taken an unusually long and winding route. He walked from Fredericton to Gagetown, where he caught a steamship. Somehow, he ended up at a remote hunting lodge called Sharkey’s Camp, out on Poorhouse Hill near Lake Utopia, before finally making his way to Saint John.
“The wanderings of a small boy,” sighed the Daily Journal. Albert was returned to his brother in Fredericton.
But this wasn’t the last time Albert would make the news. Less than a year later, he was arrested for break and enter, not to steal anything, but simply to find shelter. He had run away again and broken into a Fredericton home to sleep on a rainy night.
At his trial, the judge took pity on him. Rather than handing down a sentence, he arranged for Albert to be sent to live with relatives in Nova Scotia.
After that, Albert seemed to have settled into a more stable life — no longer lost, no longer wandering. Whatever challenges he’d faced adjusting to life after the war, growing up without parents, and bouncing between homes, it seems that a quieter, more settled chapter began for him in Nova Scotia.
A century later, it’s easy to forget how many young people like Albert fell through the cracks in the early 20th century.
His story offers us a glimpse into what it meant to grow up in a time before social workers, before child welfare systems, and before mental health was widely understood.
Albert Smythe didn’t grow up to be famous, or wealthy, or notorious. He was just a kid trying to find his place in a time and a world that didn’t make it easy. And maybe that’s what makes his story worth remembering.
