Background
He was born at Bungay, Suffolk, and carried on there the family printing business founded in 1795.
He was born at Bungay, Suffolk, and carried on there the family printing business founded in 1795.
With Joseph Ogle Robinson, he projected the series of "Imperial octavo editions of standard authors", which sold well for many years. lieutenant passed successively through the hands of Westley and Davis, Ball, Arnold & Company, and H. G. Bohn. Childs, a staunch nonconformist, suffered imprisonment on account of a conscientious refusal to pay church rates.
This occurred in May 1836, and led to the agitation presaging the Braintree case.
His incarceration was the subject of a debate in the House of Commons, and a reference by Sir Robert Peel to "the Bungay martyr." In 1841 the two Childs brothers, Alderman Besley, and others, established The Nonconformist newspaper, for many years edited by Edward Miall. Miall"s early work was supported by a group including Childs and Robert Halley, George Hadfield and Adam Thomson of Coldstream.
Their son Charles Childs (1807–1876) became the head of the firm of John Childs & Son. Childs died at Bungay on 12 August 1853, in his seventieth year.