by Robert Curphey
Since my last update we have been continuing to catalogue the Thackray Museum of Medicine’s fascinating archive with the help of our superb volunteers.
All of our volunteers have recently been busy assisting me with cataloguing one of the major collections in our archive – the Chas. F. Thackray Company, which is now available online for researchers to view here:
(Material from the Chas. F. Thackray Company on display in the Archive)
(Photograph of an aerial view of the Thackray factory at Beeston, Leeds, taken from a company brochure, 1978)
The Chas. F. Thackray Company is our most significant collection, as without the success of this company, our wonderful Museum may well not have existed! The company was established in 1902 by Charles Frederick Thackray (1877-1934) and Henry Scurrah Wainwright (1877-1968). After qualifying as a pharmacist, Thackray opened a small family-run chemist shop on Great George Street, Leeds in 1902 with his friend and financial partner, Wainwright, purchased from Samuel Taylor, who had previously owned a chemists and druggists at Great George Street since 1862. Thackray developed the business into a major medical supply firm, manufacturing and supplying drugs and medical instruments and equipment across the world. In 1906 Thackray had purchased the sterilizer which he used to supply dressings to Leeds General Infirmary, and that same year sold his first surgical instruments, and made instruments for well-known surgeons such as Berkeley Moynihan. During the First World War, the company became recognised throughout the North of England as a major distributor of a broad range of surgical supplies, supplying drugs and equipment directly to Yorkshire hospitals, and were accepted by the War Office as a standard for supplying field dressings. This caused the business to prosper and by 1921 Chas. F. Thackray was included in the list of Leeds Chamber of Commerce members under “Scientific Instrument Makers”.
(Charles Frederick Thackray and Henry Scurrah Wainwright, founders of the Chas. F. Thackray Company)
During the 1920s and 1930s the company changed their emphasis from pharmaceuticals and dressings to surgical supply and the company took over a new building in Park Street, Leeds. While the retail pharmacy shop continued to thrive, the company increased its manufacturing capacity, making hospital sterilizers, operating tables and other hospital furniture. At that time, the Thackray Company also began to export products overseas, sending representatives to the Mediterranean, the Middle East and West Africa. Chas. F. Thackray died in 1934 and the company became a limited company, with Wainwright as Chairman, Mercer Gray as Managing Director, and Thackray’s sons, Noel and Tod serving as directors, who would later succeed Gray in 1956. After the Second World War, the Thackray company created a subsidiary company in South Africa, which lasted until 1969.
Already highly respected, the company’s long-term collaboration with Professor John Charnley brought about its major achievement in contributing to the development of the Charnley Hip System in 1963, the first successful total hip replacement procedure which is still the best-selling cemented hip system in the world. Charnley had first asked the Thackray Company to make surgical instruments in 1947, but sixteen years later Charnley and Thackray developed an artificial hip, which comprised a ball-ended stem which fitted into the patient’s thigh bone, and a cup, which took the place of the socket in the pelvis. The Thackray Company continued to establish new products and services throughout the twentieth century, including Thackraycare, which employed trained nurses to work in the community, fitting appliances required by customers and providing advice. The success of this appliance centre meant that Thackraycare centres were opened across the United Kingdom. Following the sale of the company in 1990 to DePuy Synthes (a subsidiary of Johnson and Johnson), one of the directors, Paul Thackray (Chas. F. Thackray’s grandson) established the Thackray Museum of Medicine (then Thackray Medical Museum), to support the company’s collection as a resource for research and public education.
The Chas. F. Thackray Company archive consists of finance records, personnel records, recipe books, publicity material, staff publications, pattern labels, correspondence, operational records, instrument drawings, magazine files, press cuttings, scrapbooks, catalogues and photographs. Arguably the most interesting area of this collection is the order books compiled by Sidney Beardmore.
Medicine in the twentieth century became a global trade, and the horizons of medical sales representatives expanded to the Mediterranean, the Middle East and West Africa. The Chas. F. Thackray company began exporting surgical instruments and hospital supplies overseas in the 1920s, and Beardmore, one of Thackray’s first overseas representatives who later went on to become one of Thackray’s managing directors, travelled the world selling Thackray products.
(Order book recording Beardmore’s visit to the International Surgical Congress, Cairo, 1935-1936)
Across thirteen notebooks, Beardmore reported on visits to hospitals and surgeries across Africa, Europe and the Middle East during the 1930s.
The books are filled with extensive observations on the medical capabilities, governance, and economies of countries he visited, sending requests for orders of equipment back to Thackray’s offices here in Leeds. He even represented the Thackray company at the International Surgical Congress in Cairo in 1935-1936, reporting back on meetings with prestigious surgeons from across the world, and in between his observations of local hospitals, Beardmore found time for sightseeing, recording a trip with hospital board members to South Africa’s scenic ‘Valley of Desolation’.
The collection also contains a series of fascinating press cuttings compiled by Thackray employees catalogued in fine detail by Pauline, one of our Monday volunteers. They contain a detailed account of the activities of the company, particularly during the 1970s, with articles ranging from the launch of new products and equipment by the Thackray company, social activities, visits across the world to supply surgical equipment, and even extracts about the emergency supply of two heart valves made by the Thackray Company to a hospital in Paris to save the life of a young boy in September 1978.
The collection also contains a series of surgical instrument design drawings, of products made by Thackray for clients including famous surgeons such as Berkeley Moynihan and Sir John Charnley, who collaborated with Thackray to develop the Charnley Hip System in 1963, the first successful total hip replacement procedure which is still the best-selling cemented hip system in the world.
(Book of Surgical Instrument Drawings compiled by the Chas. F. Thackray Company, 1935-1958)
These drawings were catalogued by Sam, one of our brilliant volunteers at Thackray who is sadly leaving us soon. As well as working on the Thackray Company collection, Sam has catalogued two other collections while volunteering: the W. Locking and Son Archive and the Herbert Agar Papers where she catalogued a range of material including correspondence, personal papers and advertising material. Sam’s enthusiasm for the museum and the archive project has been wonderful to witness over the past two years, and she will be missed by all who work here.
(Volunteer Sam looking through the Chas. F. Thackray Company archives, which were on display recently for a tour of the archives)
And finally…
We recently came across a three-page guide to making Lard in the archives! This was from a book of recipes compiled by the Mottershead and Co. chemists, based in Manchester, whose collection we hold.
(Mottershead and Co. Recipe Book, 1892-1912)
The firm of Mottershead and Co. chemists was established in 1790. Its aim was to ‘be of service to the public in the supply of trustworthy medicines and articles used in the treatment of disease and the preservation of health’. They kept and sold a full stock of English and Continental medicines. The business was owned by F. Baden Benger and Standen Paine from 1866, having previously been owned by Thomas Roberts, and later A.E.H. Blackburn took the business over from Benger and Paine from the late nineteenth century when they formed their own business (F.B. Benger and Co.) in 1891. The chemists existed into the twentieth century.
As well as a three-page guide to making Lard, the book contains recipes for Essence of Vanilla, Toothpaste, Cold Cream, Hair Dye, Hair Cream, Currie Powder, Ear Drops, Eye Ointment and remedies for sea sickness!
The catalogue is still being updated regularly with new material from the archive, and is available at Discover – Thackray Museum of Medicine, alongside our fascinating museum and library collections. We are still continuing to add new collections on a regular basis.
Thanks for reading!
Robert