Friday Sep 9 2022 7:00pm – 8:00pm
On September 9th at 7pm, author Julia Sheppard will give a talk to the Medina Historical Society at Lee-Whedon Memorial Library about her new biography of Silas Burroughs, a Medina man who went on to be senior partner of an internationally known pharmaceutical manufacturing firm called Burroughs Wellcome & Co.
Her book, Silas Burroughs, The Man who Made Wellcome: American Ambition and Global Enterprise,will be available to purchase at the event and at Author’s Note.
“Besides a thoroughly engaging story of the American-born entrepreneur, manufacturer and advertising innovator, Julia Sheppard has also given us an important and fascinating insight into the history of the British drug industry and the making of a global pharmaceutical market. This is biography at its very best.”
-John Harley Warner, Avalon Professor of the History of Medicine, Yale University
ABOUT THE BOOK Silas Burroughs, a Medina man, arrived in London from America in 1878 and proved himself an exceptional entrepreneur, taking the pharmaceutical business by storm. He was the brains and energy behind Burroughs Wellcome & Co. With his business partner Henry Wellcome he created an internationally successful firm, the legacy of which can be found in the charity the Wellcome Trust, yet few now remember him and the impact he made in his short lifetime. A consummate salesman, Burroughs was also an astute businessman, with new ideas for marketing, advertising and manufacturing: his writings describe sales trips around the world and the people he met. He was also a visionary employer, supporting the eight-hour working day, profit-sharing, and numerous social and radical political movements including the single tax movement, free travel, Irish Home Rule and world peace. In this first biography of Burroughs, Sheppard explores his American origins, religion and marriage, and his philanthropic work, as well as reevaluating the dramatic deterioration of his relationship with his partner Wellcome.
ABOUT THE AUTHORJulia Sheppard graduated in history from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and has spent her career working with military and medical archives. She was recently Chair of the British Records Association, and as Head of Research and Special Collections at the Wellcome Library, she was instrumental in the acquisition of Burroughs’ papers. He has fascinated her ever since. Her previous publications include British Archives: a Guide to Archive Resources in the United Kingdom.