Wellcome Home to the Wellcome Foundation Archive

The Wellcome Foundation Archive (WFA) comprises the surviving records of The Wellcome Foundation Ltd, the pharmaceutical company from which the fortunes of Henry Solomon Wellcome (1853±1936), and the Wellcome Trust, were derived. 1 The Wellcome Foundation Ltd was formed in 1924, as an amalgamation of Wellcome's business and other interests (including the Wellcome Bureau of Scientific ResearchÐ incorporating the Wellcome Physiological Research Laboratories and the Wellcome Chemical Research Laboratories, and also including the Wellcome Tropical Research Laboratories, and the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum) under one umbrella. 2 Before 1924 the business was known as Burroughs Wellcome & Company (BW&Co.), and it had its origins in the 1880 partnership between Wellcome and Silas Mainville Burroughs (1846±1895). 3 The Burroughs Wellcome name continued to be used in some parts of the worldÐand indeed is still used as the name for the US equivalent of the Wellcome Trust today. 4 The WFA was acquired by, or rather returned to, the Wellcome Trust in 2001, from the now-defunct GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) Heritage Archives at Green-ford, Middlesex, and it is now part of the Wellcome Library's Archives and Manuscripts holdings. Even before they were passed to what were then GlaxoWellcome Heritage Archives as a result of the 1995 Glaxo±Wellcome merger, the records that now form the WFA were well travelled, and they have a complex custodial history. For many years, the records remained with BW&Co. or The Wellcome Foundation Ltd at various sites, including: Snow HillÐ their City of London headquarters; Dartford in KentÐsite of their main manufacturing plant from 1889; Beckenham (also in Kent)Ðsite of their British research laboratories from the 1920s; and later in the Euston area of Central London. The offices at Snow Hill were destroyed by enemy action in 1941, and exactly which records were lost in the bombing is unknown. Other records were sent for salvage during the war, something the company was not alone in doing. 5 From the 1970s, a number of records were stored at Enfield in Middlesex, for a time. Some were held at Berkhamsted in HertfordshireÐprincipally those relating to Cooper McDougall & Robertson Ltd. Over time, many of the records were brought together at what had become the company's Euston head offices, and the process was accelerated as the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the company in 1980 loomed large. Reminiscences of staff were collected too. In 1980, Gilbert Macdonald's company history In pursuit of …