Elbridge Thomas Gerry

In 1875, as a result of Mary Ellen McCormack's case, he co-founded the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children "SPCC", sometimes called the Gerry Society, together with Quaker philanthropist John D. Wright and Henry Bergh, who he had previously helped found the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. SPCC was known as one of the first child protection societies in the country and he helped pass numerous laws to protect children.[7]

Gerry served as vice-president of SPCC, then as Wright's successor from 1879 to 1901, and finally as legal advisor until his death. The Society's deputies, nicknamed "Gerry men" or "the cruelty," aroused controversy by enforcing various laws, including child labor laws concerning public performances and were allowed to remove children from homes. Some criticized their activities as interfering with family life, or for imposing aristocratic white Protestant values upon immigrants, many of whom were Catholic or black.[8]

After 1903, many such child protection societies changed their focus from police to welfare work, following a Massachusetts model.[8] The U.S. Supreme Court, in the widely reviled 1918 case Hammer v. Dagenhart, found the new federal child protection law, the Keating-Owen Act of 1916, violated the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution, in a case now known for its dissent by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.[9] Two years later, with Gerry as the organization's legal advisor, SPCCC bought the former House of Mercy for use as a temporary facility to house juveniles awaiting judicial action, since they had previously either been held at stationhouses or jailed with adult prisoners, where they were often victimized. House of Mercy had been organized in 1863 by Harriet Starr Cannon to assist abandoned and delinquent women and girls.[10]

Gerry was Commodore of the New York Yacht Club. He held office from 1886 to 1892. The pilot boat Elbridge T. Gerry was named in honor of him.[11][12]

Gerry was a notable member of Tammany Hall, the Democratic political machine of Boss Tweed, for more than 35 years. In 1867, he served as a delegate to New York State Constitutional Convention, but never again sought elective office.

From 1878 until 1912, he served as governor of the New York Hospital and was also a trustee of the New York Life Insurance Company. From 1886 until 1888, Gerry served as chairman of the New York State Commission on Capital Punishment, which replaced hanging with the electric chair. For this decision, a proposed name for this method before "electrocution" was adopted was "gerrycide".[13] He was also chairman of the New York City Commission on Insanity in 1892.

His family's New York mansion at 2 East 61st Street had long been a center of cultivated and fashionable life, even as it came to be surrounded by skyscrapers.[1] When he built it, he told architect Richard Morris Hunt specifically about needing to house his collection of 30,000 law books and cost a reported $3,000,000.[17] After his death, the family mansions in Manhattan were soon demolished, to make way for the Pierre Hotel.[22]

Gerry maintained a summer home named "Seaverge" on Bellevue Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island. His wife's estate in the Catskill Mountains was called "Aknusti", supposedly from an American Indian word meaning "expensive proposition."[23]