Charles Nelson Crittenton

Who was Charles Nelson Crittenton?

Charles Nelson Crittenton was a manufacturer and distributor of drugs and patent medicines, a Protestant evangelist, and a philanthropist, best known for his founding with physician Katherine Waller Barrett of the National Florence Crittenton Mission.

Born in Henderson in Jefferson County, New York, Crittenton went into the drug business in New York City in 1861. However, after 1882, when his four-year-old daughter Florence died of scarlet fever, he devoted his time and wealth to the establishment of the Florence Night Mission to "rescue" prostitutes, and later Crittenton homes for homeless and unfortunate girls and their infant children. In 1898 the National Florence Crittenton Mission received a federal charter to carry on this work. Of these mission homes more than 70 were organized in Crittenton's lifetime in all the larger cities of the United States and in Marseille, Tokyo, Shanghai, Mexico City, etc. The drug-manufacturing company which bore his name was one of the first profit-sharing concerns in the United States. He was an active member of the Prohibition Party.