George Peabody and the Peabody Buildings
George Peabody grew up on the other side of the world from the East End. And as he left school at 11, going to work to help support his seven siblings, it was unlikely that he learned much about London in the classroom either.
But the grinding poverty of the East End was to strike a chord with this extraordinary figure – and to set in chain a huge charitable venture that bears his name to this day.
US war with Britain 1812
Peabody was born in Danvers, Massachusetts in 1795, and had already been a working ‘man’ for seven years when he signed up as a volunteer in the United States’ war with Britain in 1812. While serving, he showed the first signs of the financial acumen that was to make his fortune, raising the financial backing to found the dry goods firm of Peabody, Riggs and Co.
In 1816, Peabody moved to Baltimore and the thriving business soon established branches in Philadelphia and New York. Seeking still wider business opportunities, Peabody travelled to England in 1827 to negotiate the sale of American cotton in Lancashire. In 1837, the year Queen Victoria ascended the throne, he made his home in London.
Great Exhibition 1851
In 1851, Britain staged The Great Exhibition of the World of Industry of All Nations in London. But despite the brave new world promised by the scientific and technical marvels on show in the spectacular Crystal Palace, England was in social turmoil.
London was paying a terrible price for the uncontrolled industrialization and sprawling urban growth. The homeless and destitute were increasingly seen on East End streets, while Charles Dickens scourged the heartless industrialists in works including Hard Times.
The East End has a couple of remnants of those days – one of Lord Shaftesbury’s Ragged Schools and Burdett Road, named after benefactor Angela Burdett-Coutts.
Shaftesbury and Peabody
It was Shaftesbury who was the catalyst when the shaken Peabody asked what he could do to alleviate the suffering of his fellow Londoners. “Low-rent housing,” was the politician’s reply, and Peabody stumped up the at-the- time astonishing figure of $2.5 million. The trustees’ brief was to use the cash to benefit Londoners, who had to be poor, have moral character and be a good member of society.
First Peabody Buildings
And so the first of dozens of Peabody Buildings was raised in the East End. The buildings at 135-153 Commercial Road were for the housing of 40 low-income families, with shops, laundries and baths – undreamed-of luxuries at the time. The buildings still stand but, in a sign of the times, they are now privately owned.
In an 1831 letter to his nephew, David Peabody, George gave some clues to the reasons for his philanthropy: “Deprived as I was of the opportunity of obtaining anything more than the most common education, I am well qualified to estimate its value by the disadvantages I labour under in the society in which my business and situation in life frequently throws me,
and willingly would I now give 20 times the expense attending a good education could I possess it.
“But it is now too late for me to learn and I can only do to those that come under my care, as I could have wished circumstances had permitted others to have done by me.”
Nobody knows for sure how much the benevolent millionaire gave away, but there are recorded donations of more than $8 million, most of it in his own lifetime.
George Peabody died in London on November 4, 1869. At the request of the Dean of Westminster and with the approval of Queen Victoria, he was given a temporary burial in Westminster Abbey. His will said he should be buried in the town of his birth, Danvers, and the prime minster, William Gladstone, arranged for Peabody’s remains to be returned to America on the Monarch, the newest and largest ship in Her Majesty’s Navy.
Peabody gets freedom of City of London
Peabody was honoured on both sides of the Atlantic for his generosity. He was one of only two Americans ever to have been awarded the Freedom of the City of London (the other was General Dwight D Eisenhower.) A statute to George Peabody still stands in the heart of London’s financial district. In the United States, he was awarded the Congressional Medal in 1867. Commercial Road may have gone but, throughout London, the Peabody Trust provides affordable housing for 26,000 people.
With thanks to Elizabeth Schaaf, archivist of the Peabody Institute.