After a long time with the Walkers the posts are reverting to the Gerrard family; the 2 families will feature together when I write anout my grandparents, meanwhile there are few posts about AW and the early years of Cuxson Gerrard and Co. Limited.
This post was written some time ago but I failed to publish it.
The company is, of course, Cuxson Gerrard and Co Ltd. (CG), whose origins go back 136 years to 1878 when John Cuxson formed a partnership, Gibbs, Cuxson, & Co. with his brother in law Robert Darton Gibbs Ph C. Cuxson was the administrator and Gibbs was the pharmacist. They registered a trademark, photo right.
The company was mainly a wholesaler of medical and related equipment to pharmacies and doctors in the Midlands and they also had a factory in Wednesbury, in the West midlands, in which they manufactured medicated plasters. It was a successful business and they were generally considered to be the pioneers of Antiseptic Surgical Dressings in the UK with the major portion of the output going to the army.
In 1885 they bought a site in Fountains Lane Oldbury that later became the main factory of CG until 1995. In1890 AW became a sleeping partner; I don’t know what the financial arrangements were (see below) and he obviously took no part in the day to day running of the company. However, knowing what an energetic and pro-active man he was, I suspect that he provided information and advice regarding the pharmaceutical products.
The CG archives contain 2 Gibbs Cuxson catalogues from the 1890s with a wonderful range of products of the time; a page of the catalogue shown on the right is the header for this post.
I have previously written about the departure of Robert Gibbs in 1897 for making pills next door, and shown the notice in the London Gazette the following year regarding the new partnership: Cuxson, Gerrard & Co. I can’t find any information about the financial arrangements concerning this change. However when the partnership was sold 7 years later (see below) AW was an equal partner with John Cuxson and both were worth a lot of money.
How did AW become an equal partner in a major enterprise? I can’t believe that he had enough cash just to buy in (Mary-Ann specifically said life was hard until about 1904). Was he given his share based on what he would bring to the partnership in the future? Or did he “buy in” by providing advice and pharmaceutical information in lieu of cash? If so, and I think this is highly likely, when did it start?
The tribute to him in the Pharmaceutical Journal says that “….he never hesitated to furnish information thus acquired in the general interest of pharmacists…… and to render assistance…. in the way of advice or hints…” So he believed that his discoveries and knowledge should be put to use. What better way to do so and further his great ambition for his family, an ambition that needed money, than to use his knowledge and ability to buy into a pharmaceutical company?
If he did so then I suspect that it started before 1890 and that he originally bought into Gibbs Cuxson & Co. Was R Darton Gibbs a good enough pharmacist to build up a company that was: “the pioneers of Antiseptic Surgical Dressings in the UK” I know that AW was. Dressings and plasters were a speciality of his (along with highly poisonous plants and dangerous compounds!)
Such action would probably raise ethical and legal questions today. Should the head pharmacist of a hospital have any interest in a private company, especially if it involved remuneration for information obtained from research in the hospital’s laboratory? Such concerns might not be raised in the freewheeling capitalist world of the 19th Century. However even today many scientists move out of academia to set up spin-off companies, particularly in new disciplines such as bio-medical sciences, like 
those in and around Cambridge. So could CG be regarded an early, or even the first, spin-off pharmaceutical company?
In 1899 the new company, Cuxson, Gerrard & Co. produced a new catalogue, right, which had a more modern look and also contained an announcement of the change, shown below. The products were largely identical to the previous catalogue but I noticed a page of “Gerrard’s Specialities” which is shown at the bottom of this post. I’m particularly taken by the Nutrient Meat Suppositories. Other products are shown on the right of this post. The dressings side of the business was obviously still doing well since they supplied the vast majority of the army’s requirements during the 2nd Boer War.
On the 21st of April 1904 a new company, Cuxson, Gerrard & Company Limited, was incorporated under the Companies Acts 1862 to 1900. The document specifically states that the company is Limited. The fees were £18, 2 shillings and 6d. The stamp duty on the capital was £125.
Five days later, on the 26th of April, the first meeting of the new company was held at the offices of Messrs R Jeffery Parr & Hasell, Solicitors in Birmingham. Mr JohnCuxson, Mr A W Gerrard, Mr W J Edwards and Mr R Jeffery Parr were present. Mr Edwards was elected Chairman of the Board and Secretary of the Company. Messrs R Jeffery Parr and Hasell were elected Auditors.
The meeting then got on with the real business of the day: formally authorising and implementing the purchase of the partnersip: Cuxson, Gerrard & Co. There were 7 signatories to the CG memorandum and articles each of whom was allotted 1 ordinary share for which they paid £10 (roughly £1000 in today’s money); they were the 4 members at the meeting plus Messrs: H Laws, J Amos and E George. I don’t know who the last 3 were – a situation that will continue since this blog is a family history, not a company history.
The vendors were paid £29,517-19-0 (about £3 million in today’s money), £26,000 in shares and the remainder in cash. AW and John Cuxson each received 530 preference shares and 650 ordinary shares. 240 preference shares were allocated to another 7 people in various small amounts; Miss Mary-Ann Gibbs received the largest number of 50. The 2 main partners became millionaires in today’s money.
Cuxson Gerrard & Co. Limited was up and running and carrying on the business of Cuxson, Gerrard & Co.
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