Beechams, 1848-2000: from Pills to Pharmaceuticals

At the age of 28 a poorly educated but resourceful Oxfordshire shepherd took the historic step of moving 200 miles north to Lancashire in order to attempt a new career making and selling medicinal pills. Thomas Beecham already had a passing interest in pharmacy and for many years had concocted remedies for the farm animals under his care, but even he could not have believed that the firm he began with faltering steps would endure and prosper into the twenty-first century. Mr Beecham's 'Patent Pills' found a ready market in the North West and beyond. Beecham took care to ensure the consistency and quality of his machine-made products and from an early date marketed them vigorously. When Thomas retired in 1895, Beecham's Pills were easily the best-selling patent medicines in the country. The Beecham family ceased to own or control the firm just after the First World War following a disastrous land deal in London pursued by Thomas's son Joseph. But the pill-making continued to make good profits and despite the family's affairs being tied up in the Court of Chancery for several years after Joseph's death, and the near-bankruptcy of his musically brilliant son (Sir) Thomas Beecham, there was easily enough value in the St Helens firm to see it transformed during the 1920s from family firm to a professionally managed joint-stock venture. In the 1930s the company grew by acquiring brands such as Macleans toothpaste, Eno's, Brylcreem and Lucozade. Later it tentatively began to experiment in the new - and potentially very lucrative - area of penicillins and pharmaceuticals, a crucial change of direction that culminated in the series of company takeovers which eventually saw the Beecham brand name disappear within the Anglo-American GlaxoSmithKline in 2000. Manufacture of Thomas Beecham's famous pills had ceased just two years earlier. This lively and thoroughly researched book traces Beecham's progress from home-made pills to the most advanced antibiotics. Early chapters describe, in a readable and engaging style, a number of colourful and turbulent episodes involving the talented but wayward founding family. Musical enthusiasts will welcome new background detail about Sir Thomas Beecham, while business historians, management specialists and economists are given an authoritative account of how a modest firm managed to survive and prosper over a century and a half. Many others will just enjoy a good read.

Table of Contents:
Contents List of tables vii Acknowledgements viii Abbreviations and chronologies xii Introduction 1 1 Not quite a Smilesian hero, 1820-1865 7 2 Britain's patent medicine industry in the nineteenth century 22 3 From workshop to factory, 1865-1882 40 4 New factory and bold marketing, 1882-1895 52 5 Beecham and the world of patent medicines 70 6 Machines and manpower in the firm 88 7 Into the twentieth century, 1895-1914 104 8 The Covent Garden estate, 1914-1916 119 9 In Chancery, 1916-1924 132 10 Beecham Estates and Pills Ltd, 1924-1928 147 11 The Beechams Pills company, 1928-1944 160 12 The Beecham Group adrift, 1944-1951 178 13 Lazell: creator of a pharmaceutical company, 1951-1968 194 14 Edwards and the bid for Glaxo, 1968-1975 211 15 From Wilkins to SmithKline Beecham, 1975-1988 228 16 Towards GlaxoSmithKline, 1988-2000 243 Epilogue 262 Appendices 1 Sir Thomas Beecham's ancestry 266 2 Thomas Beecham and the hymn books 272 Notes and references 275 Bibliography 302 Index 313

About the Author :
After wartime seagoing services in the Royal Navy and a history degree at Oxford, Anthony Corley joined the Bank of England, being seconded in 1953-55 to the Central Bank of Iraq, Baghdad, to take charge of Iraq's currency. A subsequent research post at the Department of Applied Economics, Cambridge, was followed by lectureships in Economics at Queen's University, Belfast, and from 1962 onwards at Reading University. In between bringing up four children as a single parent, after his wife's premature death, he has published extensively on the history of the oil, consumer goods and pharmaceutical industries. He has also contributed nearly 100 entries, mostly on business leaders, to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004). Currently a member of Reading's Centre for International Business History at the Henley Business School, in 2005 he was awarded an honorary D.Litt. by Reading University.