Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Childs, John
CHILDS, JOHN (1783–1853), printer, was born in 1783 at Bungay, Suffolk, where, says the song ('Old Bungay'), 'Then for printers, good gracious! what hosts we have got!' His father and grandfather carried on the same business from 1795. In association with Joseph Ogle Robinson, he projected the series known as the 'Imperial octavo editions of standard authors,' which sold extensively for many years, and supplied in a cheap but handsome form books of literary value. The series subsequently passed successively through the hands of Westley and Davis, Ball, Arnold & Co., and H. G. Bohn. The select committee of the House of Commons appointed in 1831 to inquire into the king's printers' patent arose from a conference between John Childs, his brother and partner Robert, and Joseph Hume, M.P., on the subject of cheap bibles, and the inconvenience of a continuance of the monopoly. Childs informed the committee that he and his brother had been in business for a quarter of a century, that they employed over a hundred hands, and that they had printed editions of the Bible with notes (thus eluding the patent) for many years. He was a staunch nonconformist, and perhaps the first person not a member of the Society of Friends who suffered imprisonment on account of a conscientious refusal to pay church rates. This occurred in May 1836, and led to the agitation out of which grew the Braintree case. The incarceration was the subject of a debate in the House of Commons, and a contemptuous reference by Sir Robert Peel to 'the Bungay martyr.' In 1837 the town was visited by O'Connell, and the Messrs. Childs took a leading part in receiving him. A newspaper of the day says that a banquet was given at the house of 'the spoil'd Child' in honour of the agitator. In 1841 the two brothers, Mr. Alderman Besley, and others, established the 'Nonconformist' newspaper, for many years edited by the late Edward Miall, M.P. [q. v.] Besides his opposition to church rates and the bible monopoly, Childs deserves to be remembered as one of the pioneers of the movement for cheap and good literature for the million. He died at Bungay on 12 Aug. 1853, in his seventieth year. He married the daughter of a Mr. Brightley. This fact, with other items of personal history, is told by J. E. Ritchie (East Anglia, 1883, pp. 138, &c.)
Robert Childs (d. 1837), his brother and partner, also gave evidence before the select committee of 1831 on the king's printers' patent. He committed suicide on 29 Dec. 1837, by throwing himself out of an upper window of his house at Bungay.
Charles Childs (1807–1876), printer, son of John Childs, and long the head of the firm of John Childs & Son, died at Bungay on 26 Dec. 1876, in his seventieth year. Dr. F. J. Furnivall (Report of the Chaucer Soc.. 1877), after referring to the support afforded by him to the Chaucer and other societies, goes on to state that his 'interest in us and our doings was that of a cultivated literary man, and not of a tradesman seeking gain. A first-rate man of business, quick, resolute, always to be trusted, always striving for excellence, Mr. Childs was also a well-educated, well-read man, a strong liberal in politics, a good hater of religious shams, a captain of volunteers till within a few years of his death.' During the corn-law and currency controversies he contributed one or two articles to the 'Westminster Review.' He gave evidence before the select committee of the House of Commons on the queen's printers' patent, 1859, pointing out that the most beautiful as well as the most accurate editions of the Bible had been the work of unauthorised printers. Messrs. Clay, Son, & Taylor, of Bread Street Hill, purchased the plant and stock-in-trade of the firm, and carried on the business at Bungay.
[Gent. Mag. February 1838, April 1854; Non-conformist, 17 Aug. 1853, 10 Jan. 1877; Suffolk Chronicle, 20 Aug. 1853; Bookseller, 2 March 1877; Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the King's Printers' Patent, 1831; ib. on Queen's Printers' Patent, 1859; Timperley's Encyclopaedia of Printers and Printing, 1842; Printing Times, 16 Jan. 1877, 16 March 1877.]