SIMS, simz, GEORGE ROBERT (I 847— ) . An English journalist and playwright. He was horn in London, and made his home there. becoming almost as familiar with the darker sides of Lon don life as was Dickens. He was educated at Hanwell College and at Bonn. On the death of Thomas Hood the younger in 1874 he joined the stair of Pun and in the same year he began writing for the Dispatch, in which first appeared his sketches under the title of Social Kaleido scope, the Three Bras.s Balls, and The Theatre of lrife. These were exceedingly popular and were translated into French and German. From the feuilleton he drifted into light verse, contributing to the Referee the Dagonet Ballads (collected in 1882). Among other volumes of verse from his pen are Ballads and Poems (1879), The Land of Gold (1883), and Dagonet Ditties (1893). Turn ing to the drama, Sims wrote a large number of plays, beginning with farces like the Crutch and Toothpick (1879), which was followed by Mother-in-Law and The Member• for Slocum. His
greatest success, however, awaited him in melo drama. The Lights. o' London, first produced at the Princess's Theatre in 1881, had an extraordi nary run in London and afterwards in the colonies and in the United States. Almost equally popular was In the Ranks, first performed at theAdelphi Theatre in 1883. AmongSim's other plays are: The Romany Rye; The Golden Ring; Jack in the Box; The Harbour Lights; Two Lit tle ragabonds; In Gay Piccadilly; and A Scar/et Sin. In these and other plays Sims has presented striking phases of contemporary London life. His How the Poor Lire (1883) and his various contributions to the London Daily News on the housing of the poor awakened much attention and led to reforms. In 1901 and the following years he edited Lining London, Its Work and Its Play, Its Humour and lts Pathos, Its Sights and Its Scenes. Consult for Sims's early work, Archer, English Dramatists of To-Day (London, 1882).