Camden People - Dr. Wilson Gill Bailey

DR. WILSON GILL BAILEY was born in Paulsboro NJ on September 2, 1865, one of at least 10 children born to Joseph B. and Amanda Wheeler Bailey. His father was a carter. The 1880 Census shows five younger siblings at home. He graduated from Paulsboro High School and Pierce Business College, then went on to Jefferson Medical College, from which he received his doctorate in 1891. He interned at Cooper Hospital and remained in Camden, practicing general surgery into the 1930s.

Dr. Bailey served during the Spanish-American War with the New Jersey National Guard as an Assistant Surgeon with the rank of First Lieutenant. He was a member of the Camden County Medical Society, the Camden City Medical Society, the Camden City Medical and Surgical Society, the American Medical Association, the Order of Military Surgeons, and the New Jersey Medical and Surgical Society.

The 1900 census shows Dr. Bailey and his wife Anna May at 710 Broadway. Dr. Bailey made his home and had his office at 712 Broadway as early as 1906. He was still at that address in 1910. The 1914 1917 City Directories shows his home at 302 South 5th Street, and his office at 511 Walnut Street. By 1921 he had consolidated home and office at 512 Broadway.

Dr. Bailey was married Anna May Sachse around 1893. This marriage produced two children, Hazel, born in June of 1896 and Orville, born after the 1900 census was taken. Sadly, by 1910 he was a widower. By 1914 there was a second marriage, to Sophie Katherine Gootz, which saw two daughters born, Eva and Minerva.

Dr. Bailey's life away from medicine was also quite interesting and in his own words full of adventure. A dog fancier, he helped introduce the Borzoi, then known as the Russian Wolfhound, to the United States and was in great part responsible for the breed's acceptance in this country. He was among the first to own an automobile in Camden and the first Camden resident to own an airplane, which he kept in a hanger near the White Horse Pike and Collings Avenue in West Collingswood.

Dr. Wilson Gill Bailey passed away on August 2, 1937. He was buried at Harleigh Cemetery. Dr Gill's nephew, also named Wilson Gill Bailey, born in Camden in 1893, became was a practicing physician in Philadelphia by 1930.

Camden Courier-Post - January 2, 1928

BABE PARADISE ADMITS HE IS NARCOTIC KING
3 Others Held by Camden Police as Leaders in Dope Peddling Gang
OPERATIONS COVERED ALL OF SOUTH JERSEY
Tell of Making Buys With Auto Used as ‘Silent Salesman’

Captured after a lengthy investigation, Anthony ‘Babe’ Paradise, of Camden has confessed to being the head of a narcotic ring operating throughout South Jersey, it was declared yesterday by Captain John Golden, head of the city detective bureau.

Paradise also admitted that he is a drug addict, Golden said, making the fact known when he became ill in his cell at the city jail and calling for Dr. W.G. Bailey, who has been treating him for the drug habit.

With three other men, who are accused as accomplices, Paradise is being held for a preliminary hearing in Police Court tomorrow morning. The four men, Golden said, will probably be held without bail pending grand jury action and be committed to the Camden County Jail. At the jail, detainers will be lodged against the quartette by Federal narcotics agents, who co-operated with city and county authorities in the investigation, which resulted in the arrests.

Golden declared that city detectives had purchased more than $500 worth of drugs from Paradise and his agents, in obtaining evidence against the ring, which authorities said reaches into Atlantic City and other South Jersey communities as well as Camden.

The three men arrested with Paradise are James Mucci, 18 years old, of 324 Stevens Street, Rocco DeCord, 21 years old, of 221 Spruce Street, and Andrew Hill, of Locust Street, near Kaighn Avenue. According to the detectives, the base of operations of the “ring” was in the Third Ward. Mucci and DeCord were arrested in a barbershop at Third and Locust streets, three blocks from the Wiley M. E. Church where the pastor, Rev. John S. Hackett, recently exposed vice conditions existing in the Third ward and assailed the Department Public Safety for laxity. The arrest of Paradise and the others is believed to be a result of the result of the clergyman’s scathing sermons.

Paradise and Hill were arrested several hours before the other two men. Fearing that they get word to other members of the “ring” police took the two men to Merchantville police headquarters, where Assistant Prosecutor Joseph Varbalow and Chief County Detective Lawrence T. Doran were waiting. Statements were obtained from the two, and meanwhile Mucci and DeCord were taken into custody. Paradise, who is 34 years old, served a year In State Prison five years ago for selling narcotics.

Detectives George Ward, Louis Shaw, and Thomas Cheeseman, of the city, and M.H. Shapiro and J.H. McFadden, of the federal office in Philadelphia, arranged the purchase of a ‘deck” of heroin from Paradise, and ‘caught him with the goods’ when he met them at Nineteenth Street and River Road, near his, home at 927 North Nineteenth Street.

Paradise was in his expensive automobile when arrested. It was the machine he had used to distribute narcotics to his agents and addicts during the past few years, the detectives said.

Decks of dope which sold for $1.50 each, police said, were placed in the automobile which was driven to a certain point as prearranged, and then Paradise would leave it parked, the detcrt1ves said.

Peddling Scheme Bared

At a stated hour an agent or addict would approach the machine, take the “dope” inside, and leave money as payment. Paradise would return and collect the money received, it was said.

That the ring extended to Philadelphia, New York, and other large Eastern cities was indicated by the many times the automobile was parked at Camden bridge plaza for hours, when exchanges would be made, the detectives said.

Camden Courier-Post - June 14, 1933

Does Prohibition Prohibit?

To the Editor:

Sir-To the writer of a letter, in the Mail Bag and signed a Graduate Nurse I address this letter. What physician can sit idly by and read such haranguing and not answer for the benefit of all whom it may concern?

So the graduate nurse has had vast experience. She does not say in what city, and where all this misery was caused by drink. We have always had our slum districts, but we do not since the prohibition law went into effect. We can go up and down most any street and you will see plenty of intoxication that did not exist prior to prohibition days. Graduate Nurse, have you looked up the statistics on our institutions, namely, the poorhouses, the insane asylums and our prisons? They are all filled to overflowing. No room for any more, and contrary to the prohibitionists' cry, give us prohibition and we will tear down the prisons and build churches. Instead, we need all the stone and lumber to build more prisons and wings to our older ones.

Nurse, please answer this question in your next letter: Did prohibition ever prohibit? And what is the difference between temperance and prohibition? If I understand humankind, what is denied one, that is just what he or she will have.
Be ye temperate in all things is my advice- at the table, etc., etc.

Now, Graduate Nurse, one cannot delve into nursing, economics, sociology and prohibition and do justice to all. I am sure if you would ever be fortunate to nurse for me, you would be called upon to administer alcohol in one form or another, for without whiskey, wine, etc., I would not care to practice medicine, for I have never found any drug equal to whiskey, wine or beer in rundown conditions; nor have I ever seen any evil come of it when properly used and to the patient that requires stimulation or general constructive treatment.

So, in conclusion, Trained Graduate, do not try to prohibit- through a law we call prohibition, for it never has prohibited and never will; but please differentiate between prohibition and temperance.

Poor old prohibition is at present very ill and I prognosticate his demise in less than one year; and may his death be as silent and as peaceful as his birth, for he was born so quietly that we had no chance to protest against him, but I am sure no one will mourn his going but a few who can only see through smoked glasses.

WILSON GILL BAILEY, M.D.
Camden

	Camden Courier July 28, 1913 Dr. Wilson Gill Bailey William C. Story Broadway - Pine Street Alpha Club

...continued...

Philadelphia Inquirer - December 18, 1921