Christmas inspires the maudlin strain among the ink-stained wretches who produce our daily scandal sheets. As the year wanes and the candles and carols touch the flinty, cindered hearts of reporters and editors, they all rush to surpass one another in composing the saddest possible stories of all time.



Though opportunity knocks every year, a truly tear-jerking newspaper column requires uncommon skill and the scribes who are able to execute 500 words of blubbering bathos have always been quite rare. Among the best was a Cincinnati Post columnist named Alfred Segal (1884-1968), who wrote under the name Cincinnatus. For Segal, the Free Day Nursery operated by Agnes Webb was a perennial topic, one that he returned to at Christmas when he found, each year as the snowflakes fell, some weepy tale to wrench a few charitable greenbacks from the Scrooge-like grip of Cincinnati’s thrifty Germans.

Segal’s column of 17 January 1930 was among his finest, built upon the letter in that day’s mail sack from Mrs. Webb, who had mailed a report of holiday cheer at the Free Day Nursery. In mid-January, this missive was far too late to be included in the newspaper’s Yuletide wrap-up of festive events. Still, Segal wrote, this was Mrs. Webb, after all, and she was special:

“Oh, we know all about you, Mrs. Webb. You are the one that keeps the day nursery on Liberty-st. We remember that years and years ago a widowed woman brought to you her two children to keep; and afterward she died, leaving the two children in your house. And you kept them, tho it was no orphan asylum that you had, but only a day nursery; and social workers said to you, ‘Mrs. Webb, is this a way? These children should be in an orphans’ home or be sent away for adoption.’ But you sheltered them, being faithful to their mother, having promised her you would guard them. And so you brought them up, tho you had so much else to do, what with the infants that were brought in by their burdened mothers.”

What lugubrious skill! The very rhythm of the prose sings to the tempo of tears falling upon an opening billfold or checkbook spilling forth a donation to this sainted woman!

Agnes Webb is, in fact, a sadly forgotten Cincinnati saint – and the city’s long history has produced darn few of them. For more than 38 years, right up until her death at the age of 71 in 1936, Mrs. Webb kept a house at the corner of West Liberty and Logan streets, where mothers could leave their children while they worked. When she opened the Free Day Nursery, most of these women found themselves in the workforce because their husbands died or deserted them. Toward the end, in the middle of the Great Depression, both parents scrounged for any sort of employment to keep the family together.

Mrs. Webb never charged a cent and as many as 85 children of various ages filled her facility each day. She supported the operation through regular appeals to the local newspapers, and she made good copy and even better photographs with apple-cheeked urchins clustered about her substantial frame, looking every bit the very model of the Deutschland hausfrau.

She was not at all German, though. Mrs. Webb was born in England, christened Agnes Dingley, and somehow found her way to Cincinnati where she married Joseph Webb, with whom she raised four children; a daughter, Nellie, and three sons, Howard, Albert and Harold. At her funeral, the Post [18 May 1936] reported, everyone talked about her boundless compassion for her little clients:

“‘That was Mrs. Webb,’ they said. ‘She never complained though most of the work was on her hands … cleaning and cooking, scrubbing all the faces, all that. Mrs. Webb’s house was always spic and span. It troubled her only that her pantry might go empty and there wouldn’t be enough for everybody.’”

Each Christmas, the children of the Free Day Nursery made gifts for their hard-working mothers and had the sort of celebratory holiday meal that they would not likely find at home. All of this was private charity. Mrs. Webb operated solely on her own, without any church, charity or government supporting her work. For 38 years, she kept the nursery going with quiet appeals and generous friends.

Sadly, the need never waned. At one time, Mrs. Webb thought she would give these children a head start and they would become successful and return to endow the day nursery with grateful gifts. Instead, the little ones with dirty faces matured into the same cycle of poverty their parents had suffered. When they returned, they brought another generation of children requiring care while their parents slaved for insufficient wages.

After Mrs. Webb’s death, several churches and social organizations picked up her mission and started day care centers. Few had the charisma of the uniquely sainted Mrs. Webb, and even fewer inspired classic Christmas tear-jerkers.

Here is Mrs. Webb’s 1930 letter to “Cincinnatus” at the Post [17 January 1930]:

“The Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays at the Cincinnati Free Day Nursery were very happy occasions for the little folk and their hard-working mothers. Generous gifts of food, clothing, toys and money from numerous friends and well-wishers made possible two worthwhile celebrations which meant so much in the lives of the nursery’s charges.”

One can almost picture Tiny Tim on a little stool next to the fireplace.