I started chemistry with a boxed set in 1962. In those days they contained serious amounts of chemicals, but I very soon ran out of most of them. Two discoveries turned what might have been a typical discarded christmas present into a lifelong career and hobby.
The first was 60 Stoke Newington High Street in north London, the home of Albert N. Beck, Chemist (or his son; my information comes from a historical listing of the shops present on the high street in 1921). I would set out from our home in London SW6 on the #73 bus route (top deck) and it would take about an hour to arrive. On entering the shop, I ventured down a set of stairs into the basement to replenish the chemicals with sensible stocks, and purchase the odd glassware, filter paper, etc. And then venture back across London carrying the proceeds of many weeks, possibly months worth of hoarded pocket-money (apart that is from 1 shilling every two weeks which I reserved for football at Craven Cottage). At some stage, health and safety legislated against 12-year-old boys (and certainly also girls) purchasing chemicals in this manner! However, I can assure you all that I never came to any harm with anything I purchased at A. N. Beck and Sons. Apart that is from giving my parents a good fright.
The second was coming across this book by A. J. Mee. I had thought it was well and truly lost; imagine my delight when I recently found it at home, complete with chemical stains, and dated as from a reprint in 1959.
The pages of this book list 289 experiments, and I assiduously recorded a tick against all the ones I actually did. This is a typical page (click to expand).
Lost unfortunately is the laboratory book where I recorded my results, but one or two samples still exist!
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I wonder how many other children were given chemistry sets as a child and then went on to study/practice as an adult.
I certainly did, ending up with a Masters from Oxford. I also used to buy from A N Beck in Stoke Newington.
As a child of 8 or 9 I was given a chemistry set by my father’s employers, the GPO. (This was in the 50s! I’m now 72). My imagination was fired, and a little later I found an ad for Beck and sons in my Boys Own Paper. I found I could order some pretty scary stuff in those days, and with parents’ help I still remember the Xmas days when I fervently opened the packages from Becks
I took over my parents’ shed, and shocked them with the smells and explosions I created. Nitrogen Trioiodide!
At 16 I became a lab assistant for a large company, and I stole a fist-sized lump of potassium from their chemical supplies, and threw it in a river. One hell of a bang!
However, music took over my life, and for the last 50 years I have been a piano teacher, jazz pianist and composer. I name most of my pieces after the Chemical Elements! I have written about 50 so far, and a CD of my piano duets named after the Elements will soon be released on the Convivium label, called ‘Elements of London’ Has anyone read this? All thanks to Beck and Sons,,
I remember AN Beck and Son very well and the basement emporium. I loved to journey there from Harlow by train to Liverpool Street and then the number 73 bus.
They were exciting times and I enjoyed hunting further afield and finding a chemist north of Birmingham city centre, Hoggs by name where I first got my own supply of bromine sodium and the materials to undertake the thermite process with my cousin in Edgbaston.
They were exciting times when I learnt science in safety.
I remember A Beck and Sons and ordering things by post! The strongest acid you buy was 10% nitric or sulphuric in a small medicine bottle. But my Dad said many years ago in the 1900s you could even buy white phosphorus at a chemist...even Becks would not sell that. As you say, happy times! And I never came to any harm either!
I have just come across an old AN Beck& Sons catalogue from 1973
Happy Days when we were young and truly able to "experiment with life"
Indeed being able to bur potassium permanganate enabled me to colour the school and escape detection because it had NOT been taken from the school lab.
In the early sixties I used to cycle 12 miles from Enfield on a 14" wheel bike to collect chemicals from Beck's. If you had a letter from your Dad you could get strong acids and I remember riding carefully back with a burette sticking out of the saddle bag and Sulphuric and Nitric acid for making gun-cotton! I am still here to tell the tale and I have worked in laboratories all my life wherein H&S seems to prevent any experiments sufficiently exciting to enthuse new recruits?
Talking of H&S reminds me of some asymmetry in the process of acquiring interesting chemicals from Beck's. My regular visits stopped at the age of 18 when I went to university, but this did leave behind a small stockpile of the various acids and other stuff that could not easily be poured down a drain. My father eventually contacted the local council to ask how these might be disposed of. I do recollect the council officials being rather mystified by how this might be done, although it was eventually (and at no cost to my father as I recollect, or perhaps he withheld that information from me). I strongly suspect nowadays that such a request of a local council would certainly be accompanied by a very large bill indeed!
My Father was Kingsley Beck, who ,with his brother Carl, were sons of Albert Neve Beck, all dispensing chemists. I don't know when they started the Chemistry set business , certainly pre war. I used to work in the shop on Saturdays in the late 40 s and early 50 s. I remember the smell of the basement where two women did all the bottling, packing and dispatching
Thenks to all for your entertaining memories
In 1959 my sister Mary married Hugh Beck, grandson of Albert Beck, who was running the laboratory furnishing part of the business in the basement. Upstairs was an ordinary Chemist shop. I worked with Hugh for a while in 1965/1966 and left to work for Davey and Moore Ltd in Brimsdown, Enfield who manufactured glass laboratory ware. All the equipment A N Beck and Sons sold was proper laboratory equipment unlike the Lotts chemistry sets. The chemicals were in reasonably sized and priced bottles. I may well have served some of you at sometime.
I received a letter recently describing a house clearing where two A. N. Beck catalogues had been discovered, dating from 1937 and 1938. Thanks Anthony for sending these catalogues; very much appreciated!
The scans below show the front page of the 1938 edition, which I selected because it includes a four-digit phone number to the local exchange and an apology for 10% inflation! Inside, some items marked with a * (e.g. oxalic acid) can be sold only to approved students (one achieved this status I think by presenting a letter from a responsible person, quite likely a school teacher).
This is their home laboratory, available for 42 shillings (£2.10 in today's money), and including 80 chemicals (amounts are not described).
The chemicals list is mostly inorganic; I think the organic items only came later.
I fondly remember my trips to a chemicals shop in Stoke Newington - I think it must have been A.N.Beck - when on visits to London with my parents in the mid-late 60s when I was a young teenager. I stocked up with the most exotic chemicals I could find without being entirely sure what I was going to do with them - bromine. sodium metal, concentrated acids, potassium permanganate and others. In today's climate it is surreal and amazing I was able to do this!