As Hamilton’s youngest and longest-serving mayor, Charles S. Bosch seemed to be something of a Teflon politician in the days of iron skillets.
Dogged mightily by the opposition, who accused him of all manners of misconduct, including embezzlement, Bosch weathered scandals, fought crime, and served as a fair and empathetic judge while he oversaw the development of the city’s early sewage and electrical systems. In March 1898, when the Great Miami River took six lives and a covered bridge in a catastrophic flood, it was Mayor Charlie Bosch at the front of the recovery. He is credited as the man who brought paved roads to Hamilton. When the city government failed, only Charlie Bosch held steady.
“The Centennial History of Butler County,” published in 1905, Bosch’s last year in office, called him Hamilton’s “wise counselor… whose life and character are worthy of emulation…”
Charlie Bosch was the son of Frederick and Lena (Breitling) Bosch, both natives of Württemberg, Germany, who came to America in 1852 and ended up on a farm in Jacksonburg in Madison Township, where Charlie, the youngest of three children, was born on July 11, 1858.
When Charlie was 12, the family moved to Hamilton. His first job was at the National Zeitung, Hamilton’s German newspaper, where he became a crackerjack typesetter. He didn’t particularly like the work, though, and never finished his apprenticeship. Instead, he learned how to make cigars and opened a cigar shop, which he sold to become the freight clerk for the CH&D Railroad.
In 1883, married Mary Kay Schwab, “a lady of high social attainments,” and they had three children: Walter, Edna, and Lillian. Mary Kay was the niece of Peter Schwab, owner of the Cincinnati Brewing Company, a longtime president of the Hamilton Board of Education and a boss in the local Democratic Party.
The Schwab family was a great influence on Charlie, and it was likely the patronage of Peter Schwab that led Bosch into politics, first as the fourth ward representative and clerk for the Board of Education.
Although he was a loyal Democrat, first became mayor in 1893 as an independent running against the establishment.
The Democratic party had fallen into disarray when two Democratic members of the school board, a city councilman, and two of Peter Schwab’s sons were arrested at a Port Union dog fight during a free-for-all in which a saloon keeper was killed by a seemingly stray bullet.
The party split in two, and when Charlie Bosch did not get the nomination, he ran as an independent backed by what the Republican News called “the dog fight faction” of the party led by Peter Schwab.
It’s hard to say from the distance of time whether it was through political maneuvering, election fraud, the endorsement of Homer Gard’s Daily Democrat newspaper, or truly on Bosch’s popularity from his service on the school board, but he was elected by a solid majority and at 34 years old, became the youngest mayor in Hamilton history. He easily won his reelection in the spring of 1895, again in 1897, 1899, 1901, and 1903, making him also
Hamilton’s longest-serving mayor. Raymond H. Burke came close, serving in that role from 1928 to 1940. Both were elected six times, but Bosch’s term was eight months longer because the elections shifted from the spring to the fall while he was in office.
Bosch’s first scandal may still serve as an object lesson against nepotism. His first appointment–three days after the election and before taking office–was making his brother-in-law George Schwab, nephew of Peter Schwab, night captain of the police department. They soon fell into discord over the operation of the saloons in downtown Hamilton, which were many.
Captain Schwab wanted to arrest two saloon owners for staying open past midnight, a violation of city ordinances. Mayor Bosch said the captain might be better off if he “wouldn’t see so many things after midnight,” reported the Daily Republican under the headline “An Open Rupture,” saying that the two were now “practically enemies” as they accused Bosch of winking at the law for political gain.
Bosch fired Schwab, who ignored the order and went out on patrol anyway. Bosch let him get away with it the first night, but when Captain Schwab came to work the second night, the mayor sent two officers to arrest him for impersonating an officer and carrying a concealed weapon.
Peter Schwab soon got wind of the arrest and showed up at the police station with his nephew’s bond. And as the Schwabs were leaving the station, they passed through the patrol wagon station and ex-Captain George flicked a cigar out of the side door.
As it so happened, Mayor Bosch was passing by on the outside of that door and the lit cigar hit him in the face.
The articles don’t say whether the mayor typically carried a gun, but he packing was that night. He drew a revolver and aimed it at George’s head. There was a tense moment and a lot of excitement, but the mayor stood down and no one was shot. The Schwabs maintained the cigar flip was an accident. Witnesses said otherwise.
Perhaps the greatest testament to Bosch’s political resilience is that he managed to survive a scandal that brought down the entire city government. When the Ohio Senate voted 23 to 6 to dismantle Hamilton’s municipal government in 1898, only Bosch kept his job.
The ballot tampering in the election of 1897 was deemed so improper that “The Hamilton Ripper Bill” ousted the entire city council and fired all politically-appointed heads of the municipal departments, putting everything under the control of a five-man board appointed by the county’s senior judge, John Neilan, until the city could enact a new charter. Not only was Mayor Bosh exempted from the house-cleaning effects of the Ripper, the bill gave him veto power over the Board of Control.
Still, the opposition was constantly upbraiding him for one thing or another, the way he handled public contracts or his administration’s bookkeeping practices. He was never indicted for anything, although a Catholic priest in 1896 demanded his impeachment and challenged him to a duel because the mayor wasn’t doing enough to disperse the hoodlums that gathered around the church at night. Mayor Bosch said he wouldn’t mind being impeached but declined the offer to duel.
In those days, the mayor also held court, which served as a sort of arraignment hearing for serious crimes, but he could also render verdicts and pass sentences. He was said to be very compassionate in that role, and would sometimes levy a fine against a man for unruly behavior, then secretly give the money to the wife so that the family would not suffer a financial setback because Dad was acting the scoundrel.
When Hamilton police arrested Alfred Knapp in 1903 for bigamy and suspicion of murdering his wife Hannah, Bosch sat in on a four-hour sweat session with the chief of police and four other officials. The alleged murder took place next door to Bosch’s house on South Fourth Street, and he knew the suspect as an odd but friendly sort of fellow. Knapp insisted that Hannah had left him and he didn’t know where she was, so he didn’t see anything wrong with having gotten married again.
When the law enforcement interrogators left Bosch alone with the suspect while they checked up on some information he had given them, Knapp dropped the act and confessed to the murder. The next day, Knapp would speak only to Bosch again when he confessed to four other murders in Cincinnati and Indianapolis. Although the latter confessions weren’t pursued, Knapp went to the electric chair for the murder of his wife. Bosch, having shown sympathy for the simple-minded Knapp throughout the ordeal, went to the execution and received Knapp’s final handwritten confession to various other crimes, which helped set an innocent man free.
A week after Knapp’s execution in August, 1904, Bosch and his wife were relaxing on their front porch when the neighborhood became alarmed over a horrible argument around the corner on Sycamore Street. Bosch was the first official on the scene and discovered the brutal murder of Mamie Sherman by her husband, Charles Victor Sherman.
He had taken a chair, a knife, and an axe to her, then tried to cut his own throat.
While he faced down scandal, tragedy, disaster, and major crimes during his career, Charlie Bosch could not recover from typhoid fever, which he contracted during his final term in office. After a period of rest, he emerged as the owner of a downtown hotel and became one of the city’s favorite hosts.
He died from the lingering effects of typhoid in 1917. In his obituary The Daily Democrat said he was “Kindly in action, considerate of others, gentle in words and without condemnation for the weaknesses of others, he was a man worthy of the confidence of the people of Hamilton so long imposed on him.”