George Peabody - Philanthropy

Philanthropy

Peabody is the acknowledged father of modern philanthropy, having established the practice later followed by Johns Hopkins, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and Bill Gates. In the United States, his philanthropy largely took the form of educational initiatives. In Britain, it took the form of providing housing for the poor.

In America, Peabody founded and supported numerous institutions in New England and elsewhere. At the close of the American Civil War, he established the Peabody Education Fund to "encourage the intellectual, moral, and industrial education of the destitute children of the Southern States." His grandest beneficence, however, was to Baltimore; the city in which he achieved his earliest success.

In April 1862, Peabody established the Peabody Donation Fund, which continues to this day as the Peabody Trust, to provide housing of a decent quality for the "artisans and labouring poor of London". The trust's first dwellings, designed by H.A. Darbishire in a Jacobethan style, were opened in Commercial Street, Spitalfields in February 1864.

Peabody's philanthropy was recognised and on 10 July 1862 he was made a Freeman of the City of London, the motion being proposed by Charles Reed in recognition of his financial contribution to London's poor. He became the first of only two Americans (the other being Dwight D. Eisenhower) to have received the award. A statue of him was unveiled by the Prince of Wales in 1869 next to the Royal Exchange, London, on the site of the former church of St Benet Fink (demolished 1842-6).

One of his longtime business associates and friends was renowned banker and art patron William Wilson Corcoran.

George Peabody is known to have provided benefactions of well over $8 million, most of them in his own lifetime. Among the list are included:

1852 The Peabody Institute (now the Peabody Institute Library), Peabody, Mass: $217,000

1856 The Peabody Institute, Danvers, Mass (now the Peabody Institute Library of Danvers): $100,000

1857 The Peabody Institute (now the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University), Baltimore: $1,400,000

1862 The Peabody Donation Fund, London: $2,500,000

1866 The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University: $150,000

1866 The Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University: $150,000

1867 The Peabody Academy of Science, Salem, Mass: $140,000

1867 The Peabody Institute, Georgetown, District of Columbia: $15,000 (today the Peabody Room, Georgetown Branch, DC Public Library).

1867 Peabody Education Fund: $2,000,000

1875 George Peabody College for Teachers, now the Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee. The funding came from the Peabody Education Fund

1866 The Georgetown Peabody Library, the public library of Georgetown, Massachusetts

1866 The Thetford Public Library, the public library of Thetford, Vermont: $5,000

1901 The Peabody Memorial Library, Sam Houston State University, Texas