THE MENTAL ABILITY OF THE QUAKERS 659 



pioneer of railway enterprise and played an active part in the agitation for 

 abolition of the slave trade. 



Rowntree & Co., of York, is another well-known cocoa manufacturing firm 

 of Quaker origin. 



The firm of Cadbury, cocoa manufacturers, of Birmingham, was founded 

 by a Quaker of whom it is recorded that a piano was never allowed in his 

 house, and who never sat in an easy chair till he reached the age of 60. He 

 had twelve employees when he gave over the business to his two sons. 

 Under their hands the business grew till it employed 3,400 workmen. 



Quakers early recognised the wide demands for medicines. Names of 

 well-known firms of chemists and druggists of Quaker origin are shown in 

 the following list : 



Date of founding or (in brackets) 

 dates of life of founder. 



Allen & Hanbury ..... (Allen, 1770-1843.) 



Corbyn 



T. Bell & Sons 



Howards 



Reynolds & Bransome 



(T. Corbyn, 1711-1791.) 



(J. Bell, 1774-1849.) 



1793- 

 1816. 



The son of J. Bell was the founder of the Pharmaceutical Society. 



Perhaps the most remarkable proof of the foresight and shrewdness of the 

 Quakers is furnished by the part they played in the introduction of mechanical 

 transport. " The railway system may almost be said to owe its existence to 

 their enterprise." Friend Edward Pease (1767-1859) aided George Stephenson 

 in his experiments. It is recorded that he watched Stephenson running 

 alongside his first locomotive stoking its furnace. The sight of this imperfect 

 machine encouraged him to furnish capital for the first railway, namely the 

 Stockton and Darlington (1821), and also to provide capital for the first factory 

 for steam locomotives. Friends also were the backbone of the Liverpool 

 and Manchester line. Friend Francis Fry, the cocoa manufacturer, has 

 already been mentioned as a pioneer of railway enterprise. Friend John 

 Ellis (1789-1862) promoted the Leicester and Swannington Railway and was 

 the originator of the Midland Railway, of which his son, E. S. Ellis (1817-1879), 

 wa.s afterwards chairman. William Hutchinson was another Quaker manager 

 of the same railway. " In the matter of rails Friend Ransome devised the 

 best form of chair for holding them, and Charles May the compressed oak 

 trenails that pin them to the ties. When the lines began working under a 

 cumbrous system of passenger booking, continued from the coaching days, 

 it was Friend Edmundson who devised the present effective system of railway 

 tickets, and likewise invented the machine in general use for stamping them, 

 and it is Friend Bradshaw who still enlightens the public as to train move- 

 ments by his Time Tables." ^ 



Quakers were also prominently connected with early steam navigation. 

 Sir Samuel Cunard (1787-1865) was of Quaker descent. Friend James Beale 

 sent the first steamer across the Atlantic. This was the Sirius, which started 

 on its voyage on March 31, 1838. Friend Joseph Robinson Pim (1787-1858) 

 founded the St. George Steam Packet Co., running between England and 

 Ireland, in 1824. He was described by James Clerk in 1835 ^-s " an Irish 

 Friend well known as principal manager of, I suppose, nearly half the steam 

 packets in the kingdom." 2 



1 The Friends — Who they are and what they have done, by William Beck. 

 Edward Hicks, London, 1893. 



* Irish Friends and Steam Navigation, article in Journal of the Friends' 

 Historical Society, vol. xvii. No. 4, 1920, p. 105. This is based on an article 

 in the Journal of the Cork Historical and Archcsological Society for 1917, vol. 

 xxiii. 



