May & Baker
British chemical company
May & Baker was a British chemical company founded by John May and William Gerrard Baker in Wandsworth, London in 1839. They initially specialized in the manufacture of chemicals derived from mercury and bismuth. Over the years they diversified into other chemical fields including photographic chemicals, pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, and chemicals for research and development.
The company was bought by Établissements Poulenc Frères (later to become Société des Usines Chimiques Rhône-Poulenc) in 1922, and subsequently moved to Dagenham, Essex, although it continued to trade under the May & Baker name.
During this time May & Baker branched into pharmaceuticals, with one of their major discoveries being sulphapyridine (M&B 693), first synthesised in 1937 by research chemist Montague Phillips, working under the direction of Arthur Ewins. This compound, May & Baker's most famous product, was one of the first generation of sulfonamide antibiotics. During WW2, M&B 693 saved many thousands of lives, including Sir Winston Churchill who was treated with it for pneumonia infections twice during the war. In a subsequent wartime radio broadcast on 29 December 1943, he said: "This admirable M&B, from which I did not suffer any inconvenience, was used at the earliest moment; and after a week's fever, the intruders were repulsed." The 693 numeric still features on the badge of May & Baker FC.
Post-war, May & Baker expanded into many countries round the world, particularly those in the Commonwealth, and comprised three divisions, Pharmaceuticals, Fine Chemicals and Agrochemicals. The 1960s were a boom time for the company, unofficially known as 'the Brittox Years' after one of its world-leading agrochemicals. There were agrochemical manufacturing sites in Sweet Briar Road, Norwich, Barton Moss in Manchester and Belvedere in Kent, a research station at Ongar in Essex and a head office at Regent House in nearby Brentwood.
“May & Baker” enters the record as british chemical company. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Baker, British and chemical can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6796231. VIAF identifies the subject as 136546563. The Library of Congress control number is n86024472. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1839, 1922, 1937 and 1943.
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This entry incorporates text from “May & Baker” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.