Microscope Museum

Collection of antique microscopes and other scientific instruments

 

    

Microscope 54 (J Parkes & Son, retailed by Burgoyne, Burbidges & Co; Medical microscope; c. 1890)

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Based in Birmingham, England, Parkes produced good quality microscopes and other scientific equipment and supplies from the mid-1800s until well into the twentieth century. Recognizing the burgeoning market of students and middle-class amateurs, they focused on inexpensive instruments. James Parkes began his business in 1815 as a manufacturer of small items such as jewellery cases and other metal devices. James’ only son, Samuel, became a partner in about 1846, forming J Parkes and Son. By the 1850s, J. Parkes and Son were producing a variety of microscopes. Their 1857 catalogue prominently featured microscopes and prepared slides. Large numbers are known of later microscope models that were manufactured by J Parkes and Son but sold by other retailers. Samuel continued the business under the same name after his father’s death in 1877. Samuel had only one son, also named Samuel. That son, and a nephew, James Moulton, continued the business after the elder Samuel died in 1896. Moulton left the partnership in 1908, and Samuel T.H. Parkes continued alone for a number of additional years, at least until the late 1920s. Microscope 54 came with its original wooden box and is most probably a Parkes and Son’s medical microscope model from c. 1890 (Figure 1). However, this microscope is signed on the tube by the retailer ‘Burgoyne, Burbidges & Co., London’, which was a company of manufacturing chemists in London from c. 1714 until 1952. The company was established at 16 Coleman Street, London in c. 1714 and began a small-scale production of glassware and chemicals. There is no further documentation of the history of the company until 1864 when the business was being run by Thomas and Frederick Burbidge under the name of Burgoyne, Burbidges & Squire. By this time the firm was producing pharmaceuticals, photographic chemicals and equipment, surgical instruments, medicines and perfumes. By 1875 the company was known as Burgoyne, Burbidges, Cyriax & Farries. In 1892 the company name reverted to Burgoyne, Burbidges & Co and the business moved to a factory in East Ham in east London. It is not clear when this company started selling microscopes.

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Figure 1. Parkes and Son’s medical microscope as shown in an engraving from an 1880 issue of ‘The Journal of the Royal Microscopical Society’.

 

References

J. Parkes and Son (http://microscopist.net/ParkesJ.html), last accessed on 12.08.2020

Antique Optics - Antieke JAs.Parkes & Son-microscoop (https://antiqueoptics.eu/home/landen/verenigd-koninkrijk/j-parkes-son/), last accessed on 02.01.2021

 

 

LAST EDITED: 15.08.2020