Henry Solomon Wellcome, 1906:
three-quarter length. Oil painting
by Hugh Goldwin Riviere, 1906.
Portrait of H.S. Wellcome aged
about 16
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Henry Solomon Wellcome (1853–1936) was a remarkable
man with many facets to his complex character: a scientist,
businessman, philantropist, archaeologist, collector and
Freemason. He left behind a legacy that has immortalised
his name in each of the fields in which he excelled with
equal success.
His philanthropy is manifest in The Wellcome Trust,
established as an independent research-funding charity, as
required in his will, on his death on 25 July 1936. Two years
earlier he had witnessed the opening of the present Wellcome
Building in Euston Road, London, much of it designed to his
own specifications.
In business, as recently as March 1995, Glaxo took over
Wellcome for the staggering sum of £9.4 billion, in what was
then the biggest merger in UK corporate history. And in
January 2000, Glaxo Wellcome announced its merger with
SmithKline Beecham to form the world’s largest
pharmaceutical company.
All this began in 1880 when Henry Wellcome, then just 27,
left the United States to join his college friend Silas Burroughs
in London and form the pharmaceutical company, Burroughs
Wellcome. The firm flourished from the start, marketing and
later manufacturing American compressed tablets.
Burroughs was a Freemason, initiated in Clapham Lodge
No. 1818, but more importantly, he had employed as an
accountant an English Freemason of standing and ability,
Robert Clay Sadlow, whose subsequent life-long friendship
with Henry Wellcome is the catalyst that brought Wellcome
into Freemasonry.
Henry Wellcome’s 17th century ancestors were French
Protestants named Bienvenue, who fled religious persecution
to seek asylum in England, changing their name to Wellcome.
They emigrated to New England in 1640, settling in
Massachusetts. Solomon Wellcome, Henry’s father, married
Mary Curtis in 1850 and Henry Solomon, their second son,
was born in a Wisconsin log cabin on 21 August 1853.
It was almost natural for Henry to adopt England as his
mother country. He was nationalised in 1910, received his
Knighthood, following on many other honours, in 1934 and
he died an octogenarian in London in 1936. His initial
partnership with Burroughs unfortunately ran into difficulties
within two years of its formation, and litigation ensued
culminating in an 1889 court case, which found in favour of
Henry Wellcome.
Notwithstanding the tensions between them, the company
continued to prosper. When Burroughs died suddenly from
pneumonia in 1895, Wellcome found himself in total control
to implement his many whims – scientific and philanthropic –
unhindered by financial or other restrictions.
It is a reflection of Wellcome’s enthusiasm for
Freemasonry, that during this troublesome period in his life,
he pursued his Masonic activity well beyond its basic needs
and principles. He was initiated into Lodge of Fidelity No. 3
on 11 of February 1885, and his passing and raising
ceremonies, which were carried out in the same year by
Robert Sadlow, was reportedly at Eastes Lodge No. 1965.
On 19 March 1891, Henry Wellcome was the founding
Senior Deacon of Columbia Lodge No. 2397 (he resigned in
1904) and a year later he was serving as Master of his mother
Lodge. This is the year that he began his Masonic activities
beyond the Craft.
On 4 April 1892, he was exalted into the Royal Arch at the
Old King Arms Chapter No. 28 and advanced in the Mark a
year later. He was elected Master of Hiram Lodge of Mark
Master Masons No. 13 on 25 March 1896, exactly three years
after his advancement. He resigned the Mark in 1904.
On 9 November 1894, he was perfected into Tuscan
Chapter No. 129 of the Ancient and Accepted (Scottish) Rite
(Rose Croix), reaching the 30th Degree in that Order in July
1898. Rather unusually, he only became Sovereign eight
years later, in August 1906 and resigned from this Order, too,
in 1920.
He was also installed a Knights Templar in 1893 and took
the Malta Degree in May 1895. By now he had become
Master of the Columbia Lodge, in a ceremony again
conducted by his good friend Robert Sadlow. This followed
on his duties as First Principal of the Old King Arms Chapter,
in 1897, the year of the foundation of the Columbia Chapter
in which he was Second Principal.
He was also, in 1890, an honorary member of Savage Club
Lodge No. 2190. Notwithstanding all this intense Masonic
activity, his enthusiasm and devotion to the Craft during these
two decades is most manifest in the extra curricular activities
associated with the unattached Clarence Lodge of Instruction
in which he was elected Treasurer in 1893, a post that he
actively filled until 1904. The Clarence Lodge of Instruction
was founded by members of the Bank of England Lodge and
was effectively a daughter Lodge to the well-known and
long-standing Emulation Lodge of Improvement.
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