A pharmaceutical business (John Bell & Co.): rooms for manufacture, dispensing, and shop. Etching by R.W. Macbeth.

The pharmacy business of John Bell at 338 (later renumbered 225) Oxford Street, London. The firm was founded in 1798 by John Bell (1774-1849). In 1819 "he established a manufacturing laboratory at the rear of his shop, where he manufactured galenicals & chemicals used in his dispensing business" (British Pharmaceutical Industry Records Database, CD-ROM at the Wellcome Library)

An enfilade of rooms. Foreground, a factory with vessels and machinery for chemical and/or pharmaceutical manufacture, with five men at work, all wearing protective clothing. Middle, a room with smaller vessels, possibly a pharmacy for making up medicines for retail. Background, a shop, with a lady customer or a shop assistant. Beyond, the street, with a horse passing along

A photograph of the same view of the room, dated 1871, is published by Tallis and Arnold-Forster, loc. cit.: "the 'elaboratory' was totally rebuilt in the late 1850s by John A. Godfrey, when it was fitted as a pharmaceutical manufacturing plant capable of making everything except chemicals on a a large scale"

[Place of publication not identified] : [publisher not identified], [between 1890 and 1899?]

1 print : etching ; sheet 19 x 24.3 cm

R.W.M. Wellcome Library impression bears artist's signature in pencil: ("Robert W. Macbeth") in addition to initials on the lower left corner of the plate

N. Tallis and K. Arnold-Forster, Pharmacy history: a pictorial record, London 1991, pl. 88 and p. 46

Wellcome Collection 585841i