Smith Child:

Sir Smith Child: "He contributed annually to the Staffordshire Infirmary, served as president and vice-president of its general management committee and was elected a patron in 1895. In 1877 he built and endowed the Smith Child ward, originally intended for incurable patients but eventually opened as a children’s hospital. Two years earlier he had founded the North Staffordshire Incurables Fund, for sending . patients on holiday. He also. supported, in Tunstall, the local Nursing Society and the Samaritan Society, and at Longton the Cottage Hospital.

His benefactions extended to other fields. He supported the Tunstall Choral Society; the Victoria Institute, Tunstall, was built largely as a result of his efforts and support and accommodated, at various times, a museum, an art school, a technical school, a high school for girls, a library and a reading room. Nor were his benefactions confined to Tunstall. He supported the establishment of the Wedgwood Institute, Burslem, gave £200 to the North Staffordshire Chamber of Commerce to encourage the teaching of Spanish and Portuguese, the languages of the expanding pottery markets in South America, and £1,000 towards the establishment of a girls’ industrial school at Lichfield."

Source: People of the Potteries

Tower Square, Tunstall
The tower erected in honour of Sir Smith Child

Another principal landed Proprietor in Tunstall is Smith Child, Esq., of Newfield, an acting Magistrate of the County, who inherits the estates of the Baddeleys, his ancestors on the female side, who have been seated here for four centuries, at least, and where his paternal grandfather, Admiral Smith Child, (whose mother was Mary Baddeley,) died in 1813, at the advanced age of 83. 

The Newfield and other estates belonging to Mr. Thomas Baddeley, were settled by him upon the marriage of his nephew, Captain (afterwards Admiral) Child, with his cousin Margaret Roylance, daughter of Mr. Thomas Roylance, of Townhouse, in Audley, in the year 1764; and by the death of their eldest surviving' son, in his father's life-time, these estates descended to his son, the present proprietor, during his infancy.
Admiral Child entered the service in 1747, under the auspices of Earl Gower, and as the nautical disciple of Lord Anson. He first went to sea in the Chester, commanded by Sir Richard Spry ; afterwards he entered the Devonshire, Captain Matthew Buckle ; then into the Unicorn, and cruised in the Mediterranean, where he received notice of having obtained his commission, and was ordered to England ; he was then appointed Junior Lieutenant in the Princess Royal, commanded by Sir Charles Saunders. He served at the sieges of Pondicherry and Louisbourg, and commanded the Europe in the two actions off the Chesapeake, in 1781, with such credit as enabled him to obtain preferment for most of her officers. 

The following year his eldest son, Thomas, (a youth of great intrepidity and promise,) perished in the unfortunate Ville de Paris. In 1795, Captain Child took the command of the Commerce de Marseilles, mounting 128 guns, which sailed on a secret expedition with one thousand troops on board, besides five hundred seamen, and stores and provisions for four months ; but she was found not to be sea worthy, and was obliged to be brought back to port after being a few weeks only at sea, to the very great disappointment of her commander ; as he often mentioned in after-life. Captain Child attained his flag on Valentine's Day, 1799. 

He was, during some time previously, the regulating officer of the impress service at Liverpool, and received the honorary freedom of that Borough. After his advancement to the flag, he was not employed in actual service, but resided in Newcastle-under-Lyme for some years ; and, as an honorary member of that Corporation, he was very heartily greeted by a brother Admiral, his late Majesty King William IV., then Duke of Clarence, when he, with the Prince Regent (afterwards George IV.) visited Staffordshire, in 1806.

THIS TOWER
was erected
by Public Subscription
A. D. 1893
in the Town of his birth
and in the 86th year of his age
IN HONOUR OF
SIR SMITH CHILD BART
A PHILANTHROPIST
who foremost by every good
work by generous gifts and wise
counsel sought to brighten the 
lives of the 
WORKING CLASSES
and by noble Endowment of
Convalescent Homes offered a
priceless boon to
THE SUFFERING POOR

The family of Child is said to be of Worcestershire extraction, but the Admiral's immediate ancestors, for several generations, had been seated in the Parish of Audley in this County, where they possessed considerable property, which was mostly dissipated by Smith Child, the Admiral's father, who was a man of polished manners, but wasteful in his habits. Once, during a visit to Scotland, (where he went on mercantile business,) he was introduced to and entertained by the Duke of Hamilton, whom he accompanied in one of his hunting excursions ( such as are described in Sir Walter Scott's Waverley), and being in that country during the expedition of the ill-fated Charles Stuart, in 1745, he was twice arrested, after the defeat of the rebel forces, on suspicion of being the Pretender, to whom he bore a strong resemblance. He travelled from Scotland in company with Lord Glenorchy, who advised him to bring his son up to the Navy, and introduced him to Lord Anson, the Circumnavigator, at that time one of the Lords of the Admiralty, under whose patronage he commenced his career, as we have already stated.

Source: Ward "The Borough of Stoke-upon-Trent" 1843

Mr S J Cartlidge sculptured 
this bust of Sir Smith Child

Subscribers to the tower