The Wellcome Research Institution
The Wellcome Research Institution is the name which Sir Henry Wellcome used to describe collectively the Museums and the various research undertakings of the Wellcome Foundation Ltd. Before outlining the development of the individual units I must first briefly relate the history of the Wellcome Foundation itself. The firm of Burroughs Wellcome and Co. was founded in London in 1880 by two young American pharmacists, Silas M. Burroughs and Henry S. Wellcome. This proved a most successful undertaking, and after the death of Burroughs in 1895 Wellcome became the sole owner of a flourishing business with commercial offices in Snow Hill, chemical works at Dartford and the beginnings of his earliest research enterprise, the Wellcome Physiological Research Laboratories. The next 30 years saw the development not only of the business in this country but of associated houses in U. S. A. and other parts of the world, and in 1924 Wellcome consolidated all his interests in a single company, the Wellcome Foundation Ltd. This fusion was done with a deliberate purpose later to be revealed by his will. Within the framework of the business itself he had already developed the laboratories for scientific research and the educational museums that I shall presently describe. Beyond these the will provided for scientific work outside the business itself, for, on Wellcome’s death in 1936, all the shares in this Company were vested in five trustees who were to receive the whole of the distributable profits and use them in certain specified ways for the advancement of research in medicine and its related subjects anywhere in the world.