George William Childs

 

George W. Childs

George William Childs (1829–1894) was an American publisher who co-owned the Philadelphia Public Ledger newspaper with financier Anthony Joseph Drexel.

Early life

Childs was born in Baltimore Maryland on May 12, 1829 to a poor family. He began work at age 12 in a bookstore for $2 per week while attending public school. He entered the Navy, at age 13 and served 15 months at Norfolk. After leaving the Navy in 1843, he moved to Philadelphia, becoming a clerk in a bookshop at age 14. Childs found favor with his employer, proving himself to be trustworthy in business. After shutting the shop for the evening, he was entrusted with buying books at auction for the store. By the time he was 16, he was going to New York and Boston to attend publishing trade shows.
When Childs turned 18, he took his savings, which amounted to several hundred dollars, and leasing space in the offices of the Philadelphia Public Ledger, started his own firm. While working on building his business, Childs was noted for frequently commenting on his desire to own the Ledger some day.
At age 21, Childs was offered a partnership in the publishing firm of R.E. Peterson & Co, which he accepted, and the name of the firm was changed to Childs & Peterson. Childs & Peterson grew prosperous by publishing useful if unexciting titles that reached a broad market. Peterson excelled in scientific knowledge, while Childs provided business acumen. The two partners grew the title Familiar Science into a 200,000-issue sale by interesting schools in using it as a textbook.
Childs was known throughout his life for generosity and philanthropy. He was quoted to say, "Meanness is not necessary to success in business, but economy is." This approach won him a wide circle of friends whose affection and friendship ran deep.
Childs was married to Emma B. Peterson, the granddaughter of Judge John Bouvier, a jurist born in Codognan, France. Her father was Robert Evans Peterson, a lawyer and scientist; her mother was Hannah Mary Bouvier, author of "Familiar Astronomy" and collaborator with her husband on other works. They left no children.

The Public Ledger Newspaper

The Public Ledger Building as it appeared when it opened in June 1867

On 5 December 1864, with Anthony Joseph Drexel, he purchased the Philadelphia Public Ledger, at that time a money-losing newspaper, losing about $150,000 per year. The business was squeezed by rising paper and printing costs due to wartime shortages as the country engaged in the Civil War. The paper had lost circulation by supporting the Copperhead Policy of opposing the Civil War and advocating an immediate peace settlement with the South. Most readers in Philadelphia at the time supported the Union. Publishers were reluctant to increase the one-cent subscription cost to cover the actual costs of production in the face of declining circulation. Childs bought the paper for a reported $20,000.
Upon buying the paper Childs completely changed its policy and methods. He changed the editorial policy to the Loyalist (Union) line, raised advertising rates, and he doubled the cover price to two cents. After an initial drop, circulation rebounded and the paper resumed profitability. Childs was intimately involved in all operations of the paper, from the press room to the composing room, and he intentionally upgraded the quality of advertisements appearing in the publication to suit a higher end readership. For four years he rarely left the paper before midnight.
Childs' efforts bore fruit and the Ledger became one of the most influential journals in the country. Circulation growth led the firm to outgrow its facilities, and in 1866 Childs bought property at Sixth and Chestnut Streets in Philadelphia and constructed the Public Ledger Building, which was called at the time "...the finest newspaper office in the country." It was estimated that toward the end of Childs' association the Ledger was generating profits of approximately $500,000 per year.

Main Building of Drexel University (fondness for the school as I am one of its graduates)

Close friends with Anthony Drexel for more than 40 years, Childs served as the second President of the Board of Trustees of Drexel University, succeeding the founder.

George Childs, Anthony J Drexel, James MacAlister (close friends)

Wayne Station

In 1880 Childs and Drexel purchased 300 acres (1.2 km²) west of Philadelphia along the tracks of the Pennsylvania RailRoad, an area which was to become known as the Main Line, from banker J.H. Askin. The two laid out roads, public utilities, community amenities, churches, and building lots to create "Wayne Estate", later the unincorporated community of Wayne Pa., an early example of a planned community.

The suburban village known as Wayne, on the Pennsylvania RailRoad, fourteen miles from Philadelphia, differs so much from the ordinary town allowed to grow up hap-hazard and to develop conveniences as population increases, that it is necessary, in describing it as it appears, to keep in mind some facts about its history. Wayne is not an accidental aggregation of cottages; it is a town built by design, and provided at the start with all the conveniences to which residents of cities are accustomed and which they are so apt to miss and long for when they go into the country or even into the suburbs of a great city. The scheme of the town was well thought out and planned before any of the new cottages were built, and, as it was undertaken by liberal gentlemen of abundant means, no expense was spared in the preliminary municipal work.

 

George Childs Elementary School in South Philadelphia

George Childs died in Philadelphia on the 3rd of February 1894. His wife died at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia on 13 August 1928 at age 88. His Recollections were published at Philadelphia in 1890 and an elementary school in Philadelphia is named after him, as is the
Upon his death his employees at the Public Ledger adopted the following resolution:

"The employees of the Public Ledger, having lost by the death of George W. Childs one who has stood to them in the relation of a kind and considerate father, find it impossible to express in formal resolutions the due sense of their great loss, but nevertheless seek to record in this minute their high appreciation of his character as it has been revealed to them in daily intercourse. He was the embodiment of kindness and benevolence; his broad sympathies made him a citizen of the world, and not merely those associated with him socially and in business, but humanity itself, lost a generous friend and noble exemplar by his death.

 George W Childs was interred in Laurel Hill Cemetery

If you made it this far in the article, you will discover the patterns that connect the journey of my life. I went to a park in the mountains to hike, connect with God and myself. The park was founded by this man George Childs which led to my interest in researching his life to come across his life and connections with the very man whom founded the University I graduated from and to discover the man was interred in a cemetery I volunteered. Life comes full circle. Park = George = Anthony Drexel = Drexel University = Laurel hill Cemetery. As a post note, Anthony Drexel is interred in Woodland Cemetery.

 

Philadelphia General Hospital

First known as Old Blockey in 1835 located at 34th and University in West Philadelphia. Built to accommadated Philadelphia's poor. The facility had four main buildings; poorhouse, hospital, orphanage and insane asylum. Old Blockey was renamed Philadelphia Almshouse and Hospital around 1885. Blockey's location was isolated from any other medical facility, therefore, lacked skilled medical personnel.

In 1885, Blockey focused more on becoming a public hospital and opened its own nursing school. By 1906, the insane population housed at Blockey were moved to the new Philadelphia State Hospital also known as Byberry State Hospital.

In 1919, Blockey renamed its facility once more to Philadelphia General Hospital until it closed its doors in 1977. The hospital had a nursing home and a poorhouse. It treated those who had no money for medical care. My own great grandfather, John McCafferty/McCaffery died of tuberculosis in this hospital in August 1930.

In 2001, more than 1,000 bodies from the Almshouse were discovered during a renovation of the University of Pennsylvania. These bodies were moved and buried in Woodland Cemetery. In my research, I came across a well written document from the archives that I want to post here.

BLOCKLEY "THE MEMORY LINGERS ON"
"As previously indicated, the entire area of University City was originally the William Warner Estate of Blockley. As settlements developed and the section became more populous, political sub-divisions sprang into being so that by 1854, when the City was consolidated, little remained of the township, most of it having given way to the District of West Philadelphia.
 
Although much of the early history occurred while the area was still known as Blockley, we shall tell of it in the section on West Philadelphia. In a like manner we shall consider that small portion of Blockley that covered the northwestern slice of University City. It is that large acreage bordering on the Schuylkill River we shall here discuss. For although it covered the least desirable of the land west of the River and was the least populated, it left its imprint in the history of Philadelphia, and made the name Blockley a synonym for misery, sordidness and suffering.
 
Here, on the grounds surrounding the present Philadelphia General Hospital was the Blockley Almshouse. It consisted not only of the alms-house, but also the city hospital, the orphan asylum and the refuge for the insane. It is to be remembered that our forebears had neither the understanding, the patience, nor the knowledge of how to handle their helpless and afflicted, so that to be sent to Blockley was to be condemned to horror and exile.
 
It must have been especially so in the very early days when, with transportation and distance being what they were, Blockley was considered to be far removed from the city. Indeed, in 1832 when it was proposed to move the hospital from 10th and Pine Streets where it had been for over 65 years, one of the serious arguments against locating at Blockley was that its great distance from the medical school would make it difficult of access to the students who might thereby be deprived of clinical instruction.
 
Despite the odium that the name Blockley received (some old residents even to this day call the early step in the care of the unfortunate. It was a great advance from the original brick building erected at 4th and Pine Streets in 1731, the first of its kind in America to house the sick, the infirm, the poor and the insane.
 
In 1832 the City purchased 187 acres From the Hamilton heirs on which to locate the new institution. Included were the present sites of part of Woodland Cemetery, the Veterans Administration Hospital, Convention Hall, the Commercial Museum, the original buildings of the University of Pennsylvania, the River fields, part of Franklin Field, the University Museum and the Philadelphia General Hospital.
 
Much of the land was then considered of little value. It was mostly lowland that sloped down to water level and was criss-crossed with waterways that traversed to marshy meadows. It was an ideal hideout for shadowy characters and evil-doers who crossed the river in skiffs after a thieving or smuggling job south of the city. As late as 1850 it was considered hazardous to be abroad alone in this area.
 
Perhaps the largest of the watercourses was Beaver Creek or Beaver Run which flowed through the Almshouse grounds and emptied into the Schuylkill River opposite to Pine Street. It crossed Woodland Avenue (Darby Road) just east of 34th Street under a bridge which still exists at the same spot, buried about 25 feet below grade. The meadows along the river were purposely flooded in winter so that the ice could be cut for the use of the hospital, ice which the reknowned Dr. J. Chalmers Da Costa described as being "richly endowed with bacteria. The caustic Dr. Da Costa, who for a time was physician-in-chief, later wrote in his florid style "Blockley is the microcosm of the city. Within these gray walls we find all sorts of physical and mental diseases, and also a multitude of those social maladies that degrade man-hood, undermine national strength and threaten civilization itself. Here is drunkenness; here is pauperism; here is illegitimacy; here is madness; here are the eternal priestesses of prostitution who sacrifice for the sins of man; here is crime in all its protean aspects, and here is vice in all its monstrous forms."
 
Nor was it helpful that this place was under the control of a committee known as the Guardians of the Poor. This appointed group consisted of political hacks whose only interest was to line their own pockets which, of course, entailed the obstruction of enlightened members of the professional staff, such as Dr. Da Costa, who commented they had been named Poor Guardians because "they did some of the poorest guarding on record."
 
Around the buildings of this dismal place was a high board fence with but one entrance on Darby Road. In 1875 it consisted of four three-story buildings 500 feet long, in which were housed 3000 inmates, 200 of whom were orphans, and 600 insane. In the region of Franklin Field was Blockley's Potter's Field where so many of the unhappy victims of this pest-hole were buried. When 33^rd Street was being cut through to Spruce many skeletons of these unfortunate were unearthed.
 
In 1868 Nathaniel B. Browne laid a plan before the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania to move that institution from 9th and Chestnut Streets to the slopes of Blockley, where it might find the expansion room it so badly needed. In pursuance of this plan the City sold the University a portion of the Blockley land for $8000.00 per acre and in June 1871 the cornerstone of College Hall, the first building, was dedicated. Thereafter, the neighborhoods of Blockley and, to some extent, Hamilton Village, were on the upgrade."