The piteous plea of this bereaved mother produced a great effect upon the mind of the Committee. The children had been taken away by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, under an Act which had been passed with the best intentions in the world, but which, as the case of Mrs. Urchittel showed, was only too facile an instrument in the hands of the corrupt police. It will be noticed that in her evidence she said that “two bad, disreputed boys” were engaged to swear away her character. The allusion was a reminder of the fact that one of the worst developments of the system under which the police became bandits was the organisation of a band of professional perjurers, who would swear anything the police cared to tell them. Mrs. Urchittel’s character was irreproachable, yet on the evidence of these scoundrels she was convicted of keeping a house of prostitution. The man Hochstein, who divided the plunder with the detective, was a saloon-keeper, and a prominent politician in the district, who figures very conspicuously in the evidence of other witnesses before the Committee. No sooner had Mrs. Urchittel given her evidence than two men came to her and warned her that if she were to commence with Mr. Hochstein she would get into trouble, and be sent to prison for two years. The efforts of the Commissioners to secure the return of the children to their distracted mother were for a time thwarted by the provisions of the law which is so hidebound and imperative in its terms that no judge would venture to interfere with the commitment of the police magistrate. Mr. Goff called attention to the fact that “the condition of the law in New York City is that, upon the _ipse dixit_ of one man, children can be taken from their protectors, fathers and mothers, and secreted away in some institution, and there is no power invested in any court or in any official to compel him to reveal where the children are or to restore them.” The sensation occasioned by this case was so great that the Commission were able towards the close of their sittings to announce the gratifying intelligence that they had at last succeeded in securing the release of the children, who were then, after more than eighteen months, handed over to their mother. The opinion of the Commissioners on the case was embodied in the following terms, which I quote from their Report:-- Oppression of the lowly and unfortunate, the coinage of money out of the miseries of life, is one of the noteworthy abuses into which the department has fallen....