May & Baker

May & Baker was a British chemical company founded by John May and William Gerrard Baker in Wandsworth, London in 1839.[1] They initially specialized in the manufacture of chemicals derived from mercury and bismuth. Over the years they diversified into other chemical fields including photographic chemicals, pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, and chemicals for research and development.

For the football club, see May & Baker F.C.

The company was bought by Établissements Poulenc Frères (later to become Société des Usines Chimiques Rhône-Poulenc) in 1922,[2] and subsequently moved to Dagenham, Essex, although it continued to trade under the May & Baker name.

During this time May & Baker branched into pharmaceuticals, with one of their major discoveries being sulphapyridine (M&B 693) in 1939. This compound was used to treat Winston Churchill's bacterial pneumonia in 1942[3] — his condition was extremely poor prior to the application of the drug.

Post-war, May & Baker expanded into many countries round the world, particularly those in the Commonwealth, and comprised three divisions, Pharmaceuticals, Fine Chemicals and Agrochemicals. The 1960s were a boom time for the company, unofficially known as 'the Brittox Years' after one of its world-leading agrochemicals. There were agrochemical manufacturing sites in Sweet Briar Road, Norwich, Barton Moss in Manchester and Belvedere in Kent, a research station at Ongar in Essex and a head office at Regent House in nearby Brentwood.

The Agrochemical Division also contained Environmental Products (amenity horticulture) and Garden Care (retail), the latter being sold to Pan Britannica Industries (Sumitomo Group) in 1991. A subsidiary, Hortichem, was based in Ongar.

In 1978, potassium cyanide (KCN) manufactured by May & Baker was used by Jim Jones to kill over 900 people in the Jonestown mass murder-suicide in Guyana. The chemical, purchased under the guise of a laboratory chemical necessary for gold cyanidation, was mixed with grape-flavoured Flavor Aid, Valium, Promethazine, and Chloral hydrate.[4] [5]

In 1986, a survey of the river bed sediments of the River Yare, near Norwich, Norfolk was undertaken by Imperial College, London, and showed significant pollution by mercury and copper with lesser amounts of cadmium, lead and zinc present. The pollution was traced to the May and Baker factory at Sweet Briar Road.[6]

In 1990 the company came under the direct supervision of Rhone-Poulenc, which later merged with Rorer, an American pharmaceutical company, to form Rhone-Poulenc Rorer.

In 1999 the company was split — the Dagenham site (now just pharmaceuticals), merged with Hoechst and changed the company name to Aventis, removing R&D from the site in July 2000. The Norwich site became part of Bayer Agrochemicals. The Nigerian subsidiary, bought out in 2002, remains as May & Baker Nigeria plc.[7]

Later on, a further merger with Sanofi-Synthélabo in 2004 changed the Dagenham site owner to Sanofi-Aventis. In 2009 Sanofi-Aventis announced their intention to close the Dagenham plant by 2013.[8] Sanofi's plans to turn the former site into a state-of-the-art science park were put in doubt by a lack of funding from London mayor Boris Johnson's Growth Fund.[9]

Club

The original works club still exists as The May & Baker Club,[10] and still uses the original M&B logo made using the old symbol for Mercury, surmounted with a five-pointed star. They also host a football club of the same name.

References
  1. "May and Baker". www.gracesguide.co.uk.
  2. "History of Rhône-Poulenc S.A. – FundingUniverse". www.fundinguniverse.com.
  3. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-10-13. Retrieved 2008-12-28.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  4. https://www.aetv.com/real-crime/jonestown-how-did-it-feel-to-die-of-cyanide-poisoning
  5. Hall, John R. Gone from the promised land : Jonestown in American cultural history. Transaction Books. p. 282. ISBN 978-0-88738-124-9.
  6. Sion, Charle E (1995). The behaviour of mercury and copper contamination in a lowland river system and their accumulation by some biota. Ph.D thesis, Imperial College, University of London.
  7. "May & Baker Nigeria Plc". Retrieved 8 September 2011.
  8. "Sanofi pulls out of Dagenham". pharmafile. Retrieved 5 May 2014.
  9. "Sanofi's Dagenham Science Park legacy in turmoil as Boris Johnson denies funding". Barking and Dagenham Post. Retrieved 5 May 2014.
  10. "M&B". www.mayandbakersclub.co.uk.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.