As Fish reached puberty, he began having sex with a telegraphy boy, who introduced him to ingesting human excrement, as a sexual practice. Fish also began visiting public bath houses, so he could watch other boys and men undress, according to The Lineup. By the time he reached the age of 20 in 1890, Fish left Washington for New York City, where he worked as a prostitute, and began physically and sexually assaulting young boys, as noted by All That's Interesting. He would regularly target disabled and black children, making the cold-hearted calculation that nobody would miss them and the police wouldn't likely exert any great effort in finding them.
To the outside world, Fish seemed a normal man. He worked as a house painter, and he soon married a woman named Anna Mary Hoffman, arranged by his mother. They would have six children together. But Fish continued to satisfy his appetite, which only seemed to grow. While on a job in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1910, Fish met a teenager named Thomas Kedden. The exact circumstances are unclear, but the two began a sadomasochistic relationship. Fish eventually took Kedden to a farm and tortured him for two weeks, including severing half his penis. "I shall never forget his scream, or the look he gave me," Fish later recalled, according to Albert Fish in His Own Words. Fish doused the wound with peroxide, wrapped it up, kissed Kedden, left $10, and went on his way.
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