1916: Frederick Gardner – Coffin King

The hot market for St. Louis coffins

St. Louis was once preeminent in the manufacture of shoes and booze, white lead, bricks, and crackers. Less famously, it was home to a coffin trust, with a hammerlock on the funeral supply business. Here is the story of Frederick Gardner and the St. Louis Coffin Company.

An 1881 story in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat asserted the city’s dominance in coffin manufacturing. In wording typical of the time, it said there was no rival in the industry furnishing “the last receptacle that shuts out forever from the sight of the living the great army of the dead, that the grim reaper is unceasingly garnering.” This was an introduction to the thriving St. Louis Coffin Company, capable of turning out 1,500 coffins per week, well short of demand. In other words, people were dying to own one. 

Trusts in the late 19th century

Large American industries in the 1880s aggressively bought out competitors, or merged them into trusts, that controlled prices by limiting supply. In 1888, the Missouri legislature passed a law requiring every company doing business in the state to sign an affidavit disavowing involvement with a trust. Some were forced to comply, like the white lead and cracker trusts (yes, crackers). By the next year, the last remaining holdout was the St. Louis Coffin Company. Only by the state moving to revoke its charter did the company give up its defiance.

The coffin factory at 14th and Poplar expanded at least twice, before moving to a larger space. This was the former site of Brown Tobacco Company at 18th Street and Chouteau Avenue, where Ameren now sits. Frederick Gardner purchased the huge building and adjoining lot in May 1902.. The company was then the largest producer of caskets in the world, with 500 employees producing 100,000 units per year. 

A coffin king enters the picture

Along the way, Gardner learned every aspect of the coffin business, and became a shrewd marketer. For example, an early investment in the 1904 Worlds Fair committee ensured his enterprise a spot from which to promote coffins. The casket exhibit, behind a polished mahogany facade, showcased coffins in glass cases. Featured was a $2,500 model, suitable for a wealthy person’s trip to the hereafter.

As death is often unpredictable, St. Louis Coffin Company was always prepared to respond. The sales office never closed, and a team and wagon stood ready 24 hours a day. A casket could be brought to a waiting train within ten minutes of notification by telegraph. A big advantage was the firm’s proximity to the new Union Station, six minutes away. Coffins were shipped around the US and internationally. The company enjoyed standing contracts with both the US Army and Navy. 

The lively business of dealing with the dead

A couple of articles in the papers during the 1890s related the complexity of dealing with the corpse of grossly overweight bodies. There was the death of a 450 pound woman, whose circumference exceeded her height. The extraction of a 700 pound corpse required removal of his house’s door frames. Cases like these called for custom built caskets, and served as free, if macabre promotion for the St. Louis Coffin Company. One gravedigger for such a client complained of being paid for digging a grave that ended up more like a cellar.    

The photo above is from a Post-Dispatch article of 1908. It concerned businesses shuttered by the action of trusts. Ironically, the tobacco trust that put Brown Tobacco out of business enabled St. Louis Coffin to move in. The newcomer joined in another trust with the Mound Coffin Company, also of St. Louis. Seven full floors made this easily the tallest building in the neighborhood. Note the typical Lafayette Square residential architecture immediately west from the factory.

All production was on-site, and St. Louis Coffin even ran a lumber yard and kilns responsible for producing coffin wood on site.

Making a killing in coffins

The St. Louis monopoly on funeral accoutrements extended to the manufacture of hearses, embalming instruments and burial wear. A full staff of tailors worked on custom-made suits and dresses. Designers were employed to keep current with fashions. 

In 1909, the market topped $1,000,000, making funeral gear a major business in the city. St. Louis Coffin had over 1,500 employees. Frederick Gardner boasted of strong demand from Cuba, the Philippines, India and China. The Post-Dispatch wrote that no other city came near St. Louis in this “somewhat gruesome, but very important industry.” 

The coffin king makes a run for governor

Frederick Gardner dipped a toe into local politics with his selection as a member of the city Board of Freeholders. He helped draft the 1914 city charter of St. Louis.

Gardner was notably strategic, and his actions could tip his intentions. Two St. Louis ironworker union members were arrested on a charge of shipping dynamite to ‘cause bodily harm’ to non-union bridge builders. From out of the blue, Gardner posted bond for the two. He claimed to do so from awareness of his own hard working laborers. Whatever the case, it endeared him to the area union movement. 

He said, “I have delved in the soil and preached the soil since I was big enough to hoe a row of potatoes. Soil? Well, I should say, If there’s anybody who is more intimately acquainted with the soil than Fred D. Gardner, let him step forth.”  A pandering St. Louis Times article described his hardscrabble farming youth in Kentucky. Gardner left a broken home with all his belongings in a blue bandanna, and cast about in St. Louis to see what business was adaptable to a man with a thorough knowledge of the soil. He then had his eureka moment when the coffin market beckoned. He was currently raising his three sons in the public schools, “considered the correct manner of educating the sons of a son of the soil.” 

Having it both ways

On the other hand, Gardner was presented a giant silver loving cup by St. Louis labor unions. The inscription read:

For brotherhood, not wine, this cup should pass,
 Its depths should ne’er reflect the eye of malice.
 Drink toasts to strangers with the social glass, 
 But drink to brothers with this loving chalice.

Assured of support from both farmers and union workers, Gardner was a shoe-in. The other candidate resorted to flinging mud. This can be difficult when an opponent has no political record to attack. As a result, there was only Gardner’s vocal opposition to the Anti-Saloon League to turn into an issue. 

The temperance folks strenuously object

The Anti-Saloon League consisted of many Protestant churches in Missouri. In May 1916, it announced dissatisfaction with Gardner’s record, and opposed his nomination for governor. Despite letters of recommendation from Gardner’s pastor and other ministers, the League held its ground. It felt Gardner would not follow through on his vow to support the temperance movement once in office. It then spread a story that the St. Louis Coffin Company shipped liquor in its coffins to undertakers in dry counties. 

Letters from several undertakers in the state verified this. The writers had all received wicker wrapped quart bottles of whiskey stamped “with the compliments of F.D. Gardner.” They further alleged that coffin shipments included eggnog during the Christmas season.

When confronted about the matter, the coffin company secretary commented, “This was entirely gratuitous; we never charged for the liquor. It was simply sent as a present to our customers.” This response forced Gardner to call it, “a mountain from a molehill.” In fact, other coffin firms had been forced by undertakers to adopt the same practice. 

Even this accrued to Frederick Gardner’s benefit. It added to his bandwagon the powerful St. Louis brewers and free wheeling mayor of Kansas City, Thomas “Boss” Pendergast.

Just the thing for a little nip

The Post-Dispatch of June 9, 1916 reported another method of Gardner’s bootleg merchandising. It showed a Gardner souvenir cane, with his name and logo on the hilt. The cane unscrewed to reveal a hollow tube filled with a quarter-pint of whiskey and a small “pony” glass. 

Well, you didn’t need to be packing a coffin to encounter illegal whiskey; it now might be strolling the streets, or sitting beside a teetotaler in the opera house. A spokesman for the coffin company scoffed that these canes were twenty years old, and claimed no liquor was ever sent to anyone who didn’t want to accept it. 

The electoral pressure builds

Opponents chided Gardner for poor working conditions at his factory. It was alleged that employees had to buy ice for drinking water during the hot summer months. Also, that those working the night shift were paid the same as day workers. Only three union members held positions at the plant. Several young girls were said to be working at the factory for as little as $5.00 per week, lining coffins and sewing. 

The Democratic Central Committee stepped in when it saw cards in circulation, that read; 

“STRIKE ON!! at the ST LOUIS COFFIN CO.  Fred D. Gardner, President (Candidate for Governor) Is UNFAIR to the Metal Polishers, Buffers, Platers, Brass and Silver Workers Local 13.” 

The secretary for the St. Louis local wrote that the claims were “faked and misleading.” 

Seizing the opportunity, he added, “Frederick Gardner is by nature a friend of the laborer and farmer. His greatest ambition is to help the common people to be happy.” 

In a last ditch effort to stop Gardner’s bid for governor, this ad appeared in rural papers like the Moberly Monitor-Index of November 5, 1916:

Garner’s satisfying term in Jefferson City 

With 2,000 votes to spare, Frederick Gardner was elected Missouri’s 34th governor in 1916.

Within a month of election, the St. Louis Coffin Company made sure the association of Governor Gardner with the business was reinforced. This, from “the most aggressive funeral supply house in the United States,” in December, 1916:

Gardner served as governor until 1921. He and his wife Jeanette became the social stars of Jefferson City. During his time in office, Missouri passed a $60 million road bond issue which “pulled Missouri out of the mud,” as the newspaper put it. Even so, his administration managed to pay off Missouri’s public debt, and left office with a $3 million budget surplus. Notably, he presided over Missouri’s ratification of the 19th Amendment, granting the vote to women.

Gardner was an adept politician, usually capable of playing things both ways. The women’s suffrage movement grew in large part from organization of temperance leagues in America, and Gardner was, as noted, a staunch opponent of the Anti-Saloon League. 

A wartime governor, Frederick Gardner frequently appeared in patriotic events intended to keep morale high, like the above World War I tribute parade in St. Louis. Gardner is on horseback with Mayor Henry Kiel standing by. He also appeared with General John Pershing during the postwar celebration. 

The Spanish Flu took a huge toll in lives immediately following the war. Business was never so busy for the coffin industry, and a constant plume of smoke issued from the St. Louis Coffin Company. So much so that letters to the editor complained, demanding that a smoke abatement ordinance be enacted to curb the emissions. 

The coffin king returns to Chouteau Avenue

Gardiner rejected overtures to run for reelection, or for the US Senate. He was even proposed as a presidential candidate, as he would “be in position to embalm Republican hopes and lay them with efficiency and dispatch!”He rededicated himself instead to the casket business.

Frederick Gardner never lost his business touch. In 1923, he bought out the residences adjacent to his factory, and expanded with a large two story addition. He and St. Louis Casket were still going strong in 1927, when the ad below appeared. It somehow tied ones passing to that of Napoleon, and enthused about how remains would remain undisturbed through the clever use of a cadmium coating. 

However, the onset of the Great Depression in 1929 forced austerity upon the eternity market. Buyers moved from cadmium plated steel to more prosaic wooden coffins. It marked the end of a boom market for the after life, and St. Louis Coffin was forced to lay off workers and scale back operations. 

The smoke continued, however. This photo from 1931 shows how annoying the coffin company kiln must have been to its surrounding residential area.

The former St. Mary’s Infirmary is seen to the far left.  A city ordinance in 1936 forced an end to smoke from the factory, and resulted in a loss of kiln workers as well.

Death plays no favorites

In 1933, Frederick Gardner had a troublesome tooth extracted. A resulting septicemia spread quickly and he was dead three weeks later at age 64.

So what kind of burial does a coffin king get? A former governor? Well, you can see for yourself at Bellefontaine Cemetery, where Gardner is interred.  

Tying things up for the company and the neighborhood

As for the company, it was renamed St. Louis Casket Company and unionized with formation of the Casket Workers Union in June of 1937. Only 350 employees remained at the Chouteau Avenue factory. By August, the union walked out and set up a headquarters across the street. Resolved shortly, harmony lasted until February, 1939, when the union again walked out for six months. By then there were only 125 employees at the factory. A year later, the 7500 foot addition at 1825 Chouteau was leased to Professional Specialties, Inc. 

During World War II, St. Louis Coffin opened a subsidiary for defense production. The Gardner Metal Products Company was implicated in the fatal crash of a glider carrying St. Louis mayor William Dee Becker and nine others. A metal wing strut fitting made by the subsidiary failed. It was measured at one-twelfth the specified thickness, and a grand jury found the company to have “shirked its moral responsibility.” The last reference I could find to the St. Louis Casket Company was in 1953, and it faded away after that. By 1966, and through 1971, 1821 Chouteau Avenue was home to both the Albert Chemical Company and G&M Lighting Company (employing 68 in 1969). For the next decade, the Gross Chandelier Company at that address provided custom lighting to hotels, churches and funeral homes throughout the St. Louis area. 

In 1986, Union Electric cleared the site for expansion and refacing of its corporate headquarters. Today, Ameren occupies a well-tended and low profile campus there, generating its own power by solar panels, with nary a kiln in sight. In a bit of irony, 500 feet west on Chouteau Avenue sits St. Louis Cremation, a prosperous enterprise with four other locations. No coffin required.

Epilogue

Coffin companies are no different, in the long run, from the people they serve; here today, gone tomorrow. In the 1930’s fewer than 2% of the US population chose cremation after death. Today, that figure is nearly 60%. Egyptian kings, mound builders, business moguls in caskets of steel and cadmium. We make a big fuss over death and grieve over our losses, but ultimately, it’s more important what we get done on this side of the ground. 

Resources

For more information on the St Louis cracker trust, check this essay: https://lafayettesquarearchives.com/1902-the-cracker-castle/

Find A Grave; https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/18467/frederick-dozier-gardner

Wikipedia; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_D._Gardner

St. Louis Globe-Democrat; December 11, 1881 p.3; September 6, 1896 p.12; February 6, 1913 p.1; May 26, 1916 p.4 

Shelbina (MO) Democrat; November 20, 1889 p.4

Clyde (KS) Herald; September 21, 1898 p.7

Saint Louis Republic; May 11, 1902 p.10; February 21, 1904 p.42

St. Louis Post-Dispatch; April 3, 1904 p.12; September 20, 1908 p.54; April 16, 1909 p.19; May 30, 1909 p.2; May 16, 1916 p.2; June 9, 1916 p.15; December 10, 1916 p.46; August 2, 1927 p.8

St. Louis Star and Times; November 12, 1911 p.39; January 12, 1914 p.3; December 18, 1933 p.3; June 23, 1923 p.5; December 18, 1933 p.3

Springfield (MO) News-Leader; May 25, 1916 p.3

Moberly (MO) Monitor-Index; June 6,1916 p.7; November 5, 1916 p.4

Frederick (MO) Democrat-News; June 8,1916 p.1

Crane (MO) Chronicle; October 26, 1916 p.1

Marshfield (MO) Mail; October 26, 1916 p.5

Albany (MO) Capital; September 14, 1916 p.4

Pineville (MO) Herald; September 12, 1919 p.2

Tulsa (OK) Tribune; June 4, 1924 p.16

Jefferson City Post-Tribune; December 18, 1933 p.1, 2

Daily Capital News (Jefferson City, MO) December 19, 1933 p.1, 3

Kansas City Star; April 18, 1928 p.2

Lincoln (NE) Star; December 18, 1933 p.2