WILLIAM ALLEN, F.R.S. 



Born August 29, 1770. Died December 30, 1843. 



William Allen, the eminent chemist, was born in London. His 

 father was a silk manufacturer in Spitalfields, and a member of the 

 Society of Friends. Having at an early period shown a predilection 

 for chemical and other pursuits connected with medicine, William 

 was placed in the establishment of Mr. Joseph Gurney Bevan in 

 Plough Court, Lombard Street, where he acquired a practical know- 

 ledge of chemistry. He eventually succeeded to the business, which 

 he carried on in connection with Mr. Luke Howard, and obtained great 

 reputation as a pharmaceutical chemist. About the year 1804, Mr. 

 Allen was appointed lecturer on chemistry and experimental philo- 

 sophy at Guy's Hospital, at which institution he continued to be 

 engaged more or less until the year 1827. He was also connected 

 with the Royal Institution of Great Britain, and was concerned in 

 some of the most exact experiments of the day, together with Davy, 

 Babington, Marcet, Luke Howard, and Dalton. In conjunction with 

 his friend Mr. Pepys, Allen entered upon his well known chemical 

 investigations, which established the proportion of Carbon in Car- 

 bonic Acid, and proved the identity of the diamond with charcoal ; 

 these discoveries are recorded in the ' Philosophical Transactions' 

 of the Royal Society, of which he became a member in 1807. The 

 ' Transactions' for 1829 also contain a paper by him, based on elabo- 

 rate experiments and calculations, concerning the changes produced 

 by respiration on atmospheric air and other gases. Mr. Allen was 

 mainly instrumental in establishing the Pharmaceutical Society, of 

 which he was president at the time of his death. Besides his public 

 labours as a practical chemist, he pursued with much delight, in his 

 hours of relaxation, the study of astronomy, and was one of the 

 original members of the Royal Astronomical Society. In connec- 

 tion with this science, he published, in 1815, a small work entitled 

 ' A Companion to the Transit Instrument.' 



Many years before his death Mr. Allen withdrew from business, 

 and purchased an estate near Lindfield, Sussex. Here while still 

 engaged in public schemes of usefulness and benevolence, he also 

 carried out various philanthropic plans for the improvement of his 

 immediate dependants, and poorer neighbours. He erected com- 

 modious cottages on his property, with an ample allotment of land 

 to each cottage, and established Schools at Lindfield for boys, girls, 

 and infants, with workshops, outhouses, and play-grounds. About 



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