Cincinnati Icons Have Historic Connections
Cincinnati Children's and Procter & Gamble are well known in the Queen City and around the globe for their innovative spirit. It's no surprise that the two share an origin story.
William Cooper Procter
The respect and ranking that Cincinnati Children's and its Department of Pediatrics enjoy today are due in large measure to the creativity, enthusiasm and financial contributions of leaders who are descendants of the founders of Procter & Gamble, the most respected and successful local commercial goods company.
William Procter (1801-84), candle maker, came from Herefordshire, England, to Cincinnati in 1832, and James Gamble (1803-91), soap maker, arrived in Cincinnati from Ireland in 1819. Both Procter and Gamble married daughters of Alexander Norris, from Ireland. When a banking crisis hit Cincinnati in 1837, Norris suggested that his sons-in-law combine their candle-making and soap-making businesses. That was a time of economic expansion in Cincinnati, where the dominant business of "Porkopolis" was the slaughterhouse industry, with its ready supply of raw materials for soap and candles. Thus was the Procter & Gamble Company born in 1837.
William and Olivia Procter had 10 children. William Cooper Procter (1862-1934), who is such an important figure in the history of Cincinnati Children's, was their grandson.
Three generations of William Procters were presidents of the company for its first 93 years: William (1837-90), William Alexander (1890-07), and William Cooper (1907-30). In 1930, William Deupree became the first non-Procter president.
Three Procters served on the Cincinnati Children's board of trustees in the hospital's first 50 years: Harley T. Procter, William A. Procter, and finally William C. Procter, from 1913 to 1934.
William Cooper Procter was born in 1862. He attended Hughes High School and Princeton University. He began working in the soap plant, became general manager of P&G when it was incorporated in 1890, then became president of the company in 1907 upon the death of his father. He was a colonel in the old First Regiment of the Ohio National Guard during WWI.
He joined The Children's Hospital's board of trustees in 1913 and served as president of the board from 1921 until his death on May 2, 1934. As board president, he established two goals: to affiliate the hospital with the UC College of Medicine and to construct a new state-of-the-art hospital with 200 beds on a site near General Hospital and the College of Medicine.
Both were accomplished within a few years, and he was more than willing to supply his family earnings from P&G to make it happen. He gave $1.2 million to help construct and furnish The Children's Hospital building that opened in 1926, at the intersection of Bethesda and Elland Avenues. He gave $300,000 for the 1928 Vincent Hall, a residence for nurses. And he gave $2.5 million to build and endow the Research Foundation, which opened in 1931. He gave another $1.3 million to the Research Foundation for fixtures and building upkeep.
This phenomenal gift of over $5 million prior to the Great Depression was a gift of the greatest and most enduring consequence ever given to the hospital. It established the future of Cincinnati Children's as a nationally and internationally recognized center for pediatric patient care, professional education and investigations into the causes of childhood diseases.
William Cooper Procter and his wife were childless after losing a baby at birth, and "having no children of his own, he put his heart into the promise of tomorrow," former Cincinnati Children's president William Schubert, MD, once said. "We remember Colonel Procter, an individual whose foresight, leadership, and philanthropy provided the foundations upon which one of the most important pediatric institutions in the world has been built."
The Children's Hospital was state-of-the-art when it was built in 1925.
Fun Facts about P&G
- The fact that Ivory soap floats was discovered serendipitously when a worker left the aerating pump on too long when he went to lunch in 1879. The soap got its name because one of William Procter's sons liked a church hymn about ivory palaces.
- William Cooper Procter instituted several innovations in employee benefits: the half Saturday holiday for plant workers; the P&G profit-sharing plan; and the insurance, disability and pension programs.
- When P&G sponsored the "Ma Perkins" radio show, the term "soap opera" came into being.
- William Cooper Procter established six plants in addition to the one in Ivorydale. He saw sales escalate from $20 million in 1907 to $200 million by his death in 1934. His 23-year presidency contributed more to P&G's growth than any other director, and his presidency of the Cincinnati Children's board of trustees vaulted the hospital into national prominence.
Robert Frenck, MD, heads the Gamble Program at Cincinnati Children's.
The Contribution of the Gamble Family
When P&G was established, William Procter ran the downtown office, and James Gamble ran the manufacturing plant. Their relationship was trustful and harmonious, and this continued through the third generation of Procters and the second generation of Gambles.
As the Episcopalian Procters became the benefactors of The Children's Hospital, the Methodist Gambles became the philanthropists for The Christ Hospital.
The Elizabeth Gamble Deaconess Home was established by James Gamble as a memorial to his wife. James and Elizabeth Gamble had settled in Westwood on a 60-acre farm on Werk Road, where they built a frame farmhouse in 1840.
With several additions and a carriage house, the second-generation James N. Gamble lived in the family Victorian-Italianate house and was affectionately known both as "mayor" and as "patriarch" of Westwood. He married Margaret Penrose, and they had two daughters, Maude, who married Judge Alfred K. Nippert (Louis Nippert was a son), and Olivia Gamble, who lived in the Gamble homestead until 1961. Margaret died in 1901, but James N. Gamble lived to be 95 and died in 1932. The house was demolished in April 2013, amid much protest by local preservationists.
What is the Gamble connection to Cincinnati Children's? James N. Gamble founded the Institute of Medical Research at The Christ Hospital in 1927 "for the benefit of suffering humanity in general and the citizens of Cincinnati in particular to secure the best possible scientists, which I hope will lead to such discoveries in the science of medicine and healing, both preventive and curative, as will be a blessing to mankind." His gift was said to be the most generous gift a hospital in Cincinnati ever received (until William Cooper Procter's gift to Cincinnati Children's).
Research was accomplished there under the presidency of Gilbert Schiff, MD, on viruses and vaccines, and particularly on the development of vaccines to prevent rubella and its damaging congenital defects. Work was begun to develop a rotavirus vaccine, which is now in use around the world. The institute worked with Cincinnati Children's faculty and researchers James Sutherland, MD, and lrwin Light, MD, on neonatology problems, with William Schubert, MD, and John Partin, MD, on Reye's syndrome, and with Joseph Rauh, MD, on the rubella vaccine.
In 1995, Schiff worked out the arrangements to move the institute to Cincinnati Children's as The Gamble Program, under the auspices of the Division of Infectious Diseases. The Gamble Program is now headed by Robert Frenck, MD, whose team has participated in 11 clinical trials related to COVID-19 vaccines.
When the Greater Cincinnati Business Hall of Fame was established in 1991, both James Norris Gamble and William Cooper Procter were founding electorates. If we had a Hospital Hall of Fame in Cincinnati, both of these great philanthropists would be founding members there, too.
[Ed. note] This story comes from the files of our late staff historian, William Gerhardt, MD.
