George Peabody
George Peabody, founder of Peabody, has been described as the first great philanthropist. More than 20 organisations in London and America owe their existence to him and reflect his interests in education, music, science, banking and housing.
Born in New England in 1795, he started his fortune in Baltimore during the city's rapid growth as a port and centre of trade. He had a key role in opening up the American frontier as director of the company that laid the first railroads to the west.
In 1837 he moved to London and established himself as a merchant banker. He was part of a circle of like-minded reformers, including Lord Shaftesbury, William Cobbett and Charles Dickens. Unlike most philanthropists of the time he specified that his benefactions were not to be used for sectarian ends.
Ironically, given that he had volunteered as a soldier against the British in his youth, he became an unofficial diplomat and during the Civil War he helped ensure that Abraham Lincoln's emissaries to London won the continued support of the British government for the abolitionist side. After the war, horrified by the devastation it caused, he made his largest single benefaction to set up a public education system for the Southern States. Remarkably for the time, he insisted that these opportunities were provided for black people as well as white.
He is best known in the UK as the founder of Peabody. Through the Peabody Donation Fund, founded in 1862, he gave £500,000 to tackle poverty and poor housing in London. Queen Victoria herself acknowledged the gift as 'wholly without parallel' and the Prince of Wales unveiled a statue of Peabody on Threadneedle Street to commemorate the event.
Among his many honours, he was the first American to be awarded the Freedom of the City of London. When he died in 1869, the Queen and the Prince of Wales sent carriages to follow the coffin to Westminster Abbey, where Gladstone was among the mourners. He is buried at Salem, Massachusetts.
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