History of Norwich Pharmacal Company - Part 2

Birth of an Industry - Norwich Pharmacal Company

Dr. Reuben Jeffery - written in 1916
 Published in Norwich Percolate, January 15, 1935

 

Continuation of posting of June 19, 2016

 

"In 1916, Dr. Reuben Jeffery wrote an historical sketch of the company -- this article is prized very highly by the executives of the company....it is..., with a great deal of pleasure, that we reprint Dr. Jeffery's article in this historical issue of the Percolate."

 

Bell never gave up.  He said that if he could raise $200.00 he would leave miller's and "go it alone."  I went with him to the late Mr. Isaac S. Newton and Mr. Newton kindly loaned him the money.

 

I am a little uncertain at this time of the date that Bell came to me and said that if her could raise $800.00 he thought he could make a go of it.  He wrote to an old friend, Charles B. Norris, of Boonton, New Jersey, and told him of his prospects.  Norris invested $200.00.  Later he moved his family to Norwich and remained with the company until his death.  Although the latter few months of his life were spent in California, with his family, in an effort to regain his health.

 

It was in 1888 or 1889 that Manley P. Green and Cyrus P. Thomas invested $200.00 each.  I do not recall under what firm name the company did business at this time, but on Feb. 22nd, 1890, Bell, Norris, Green & Thomas associated themselves together as a manufacturing corporation to be known as The Norwich Pharmacal Company with a capital stock of $20,000.00.  The company was incorporated on March 31st of the same year. Thomas and Green sold out their interest on Sept. 24th, 1892--Green sold to John Hicks and Thomas to Chas. H. Stanton.  After a short interval Judge Hicks transferred a portion of his stock to R.C. Stofer--the present president of the company [in 1916]--who came with the house about this time.  The balance he sold to Oscar G. Bell.  Stanton later sold his stock to Mr. Norris.  It seems too bad that some of these early stockholders did not know what the future held in store and did not hold on.  Had they done so they could occasionally afford to go to Atlantic City and be pushed along the board walk in a wheel chair.  On Nov. 16, 1892, the capital stock was increased from $20,000 to $100,000 and has since been increased to many times that figure.

 

The first time the word "Pharmacal" was ever used, was in connection with the Norwich company.  According to the dictionaries of the English language there is no such word as "Pharmacal," the correct word being "pharmaceutical."  The word however has proven popular--at present there are a number of "Pharmacal" companies in the United States and several in England and Australia.  Bell unconsciously coined the work.  Possibly it is to be regretted that it was not copyrighted.

 

Unguentine

 

Under the name of Jeffery's Universal Family Ointment, what is now known as Unguentine was made in Geneva, New York, as long ago as 1828 and continued to be made there until after the Civil war.  The formula was given to my grandfather, Dr. Samuel Jeffery, about the time he left England to make his home in America in 1827, by Sir Astley Cooper, the famous surgeon.  He made the ointment in a washtub; the kitchen of his home was his laboratory, and 100 pounds at a time was the output.  This he packed in one ounce tin boxes and peddled it around central New York at twenty-five cents a box.  He died Feb. 15, 1877, in his eighty-sixth year. 

 

The ointment was not made commercially from about 1868, until its manufacture in Norwich under the name of Unguentine, although my father occasionally would make up a little and give it away to charity.  I had told Bell and Moore about it, and during the fall of 1886, at my request my father sent me the formula.  The original plan was that I was to make it and not give them the formula; their part was to sell it.  Consequently, in December, 1886, on the third floor over Nash's book store the first bath of Unguentine was made.  It was a sorry looking chemical mixture and when completed, I proudly called Bell in to see my achievement as a chemist. Bell took one look at the washtub, then a whiff and said:  "Do you think we are going to sell axle grease?"  Several years elapsed after this before anything more was done with Unguentine.

 

To be Continued