1. Roberts Vaux was an American lawyer, jurist, abolitionist, and philanthropist.
17 Facts About Roberts Vaux
1. 2.
Roberts Vaux was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the eldest son of a well-known Quaker family and connected by marriage to another such family, the Wistars.
3.
Roberts Vaux received his education at private schools of Philadelphia.
4.
Roberts Vaux became noted for his interest in abolition, as well as Native American issues.
5.
Roberts Vaux helped found the Pennsylvania Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, the School for the Blind, the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and other benevolent societies of the city and state.
6.
Roberts Vaux had a part in the creation of the Frankford Asylum for the Insane.
7.
Roberts Vaux was a member of scientific societies in Europe, and of the American Philosophical Society.
8.
Roberts Vaux was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1834.
9.
Early in life, Roberts Vaux became interested in prison matters, as an extension of his education concerns.
10.
Roberts Vaux acquired perhaps his greatest distinction as a penologist.
11.
Roberts Vaux served as Secretary and Commissioner of the Philadelphia Prison Society.
12.
Roberts Vaux was one of the commissioners to adapt the law of Pennsylvania to the separate system of imprisonment, and to build the Eastern State Penitentiary, and labored zealously in the cause of prison reform.
13.
Roberts Vaux was among those Alexis de Tocqueville dedicated his book on prison reform after his travels across the United States including Philadelphia.
14.
Roberts Vaux refused several public posts offered by President Andrew Jackson, among which was the mission to St Petersburg.
15.
Roberts Vaux published Eulogium on Benjamin Ridgway Smith ; Memoirs of the Lives of Benjamin Lay and Ralph Sandiford ; Memoirs of the Life of Anthony Benezet ; and Notices of the Original and Successive Efforts to improve the Discipline of the Prison at Philadelphia.
16.
Roberts Vaux died in Philadelphia on January 7,1836, at age 49, of scarlet fever.
17.
Roberts Vaux was buried at the Arch Street Friends Meeting House burial ground.