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Croaked Cronies: Philadelphia's Political Bosses

Presented by Laurel Hill Cemetery at Laurel Hill Cemetery

November 6, 2011

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Lincoln Steffens notoriously described 19th century Philadelphia as corrupt and contented. Nineteenth-century Philadelphia had rogues and rascals but it also had reformers. On this tour, you'll visit the grave of the Philadelphia patrician who realized that only a political boss could hold the unruly city together, and then set out to become that boss. You'll stand at the burial place of the Philadelphia Congressmen who would have had one of the largest monuments in Laurel Hill if the treasurer of his memorial committee hadn’t run off with the funds. And you'll  remember the scholarly historian who organized the predecessor to our modern Committee of Seventy.

And don’t despair, if party politics was basically a fight between boys’ clubs, Philadelphia women were active on a broad social front. This tour won’t forget the ladies as it visits the graves of the women who opposed segregation on street cars, established model tenements, and fought for a safer food supply.