Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Children, George
CHILDREN, GEORGE (1742–1818), electrician, born in 1742, graduated B.A. of Oriel College, Oxford, in 1762, and was a bencher of the Middle Temple, although he never practised at the bar. He owned much property near Tunbridge, and successfully engaged in business there as a banker for many years, devoting his leisure to scientific pursuits. He lived at Ferox Hall, Tunbridge, and married the eldest daughter of Thomas Marshall Jordan, by whom he had an only son [see Children, John George]. In 1802 the news of the discovery of the galvanic pile by Professor Volta in Italy reached this country. It was at once seen that by enlarging the dimensions of the apparatus employed more powerful effects could be produced. Children and his son became much interested in the subject. His position enabled him to retire from the active exercise of his business, and he devoted all his energies and much of his money to aiding his son in the construction of new and large galvanic batteries. Their principal battery consisted of twenty-one cells, each containing plates of copper and zinc, having a combined area equal to thirty-two square feet. When these plates were properly connected and immersed in acidulated water, they generated a current of electricity which was capable of producing effects considered at that time very surprising. The refractory metals, iridium and platinum, were easily fused by this current, which was able to ignite six feet of thin platinum wire. Children also wrote much verse, and extracts were published in the memoir of his son. In 1816 the failure of the Tunbridge bank, of which he was still a partner, left Children nearly penniless. His son took a small house at Chelsea for him, and there he died on 21 Aug. 1818.
[Gent. Mag. 1818, pt. ii. p. 378; Memoir of J. G. Children, 1853.]