1868-1955
Advocate of "Physical Culture " and Publisher
Born 16 August 1868 in Mill Spring, Missouri, Bernarr Macfadden was the son of farmer William McFadden and his wife, Mary. Bernard (who later changed the spelling of his first and last names) received only a grade-school education. By the time he was eleven, his parents had divorced and then died — his father from alcoholism and his mother from tuberculosis. After a brief period spent with farmer relatives, Macfadden left home and worked a series of odd jobs that included farm laborer, delivery boy, printer's assistant, bookkeeper, and bill collector. Years later he would observe about this period that he "had no chance to indulge in those exercises so necessary to the health of boys of that age. . . . At the age of sixteen I was a complete wreck. I had the hacking cough of a consumptive;.....
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