William Henry Perkin - Later Years

Later Years

William Perkin continued active research in organic chemistry for the rest of his life: he discovered and marketed other synthetic dyes, including Britannia Violet and Perkin's Green ; he discovered ways to make coumarin, one of the first synthetic perfume raw materials, and cinnamic acid. (The reaction used to make the latter became known as the Perkin reaction.) Local lore has it that the colour of the nearby Grand Union Canal changed from week to week depending on the activity at Perkin's Greenford dyeworks. In 1869, Perkin found a method for the commercial production from anthracene of the brilliant red dye alizarin, which had been isolated and identified from madder root some forty years earlier in 1826 by the French chemist Pierre Robiquet, simultaneously with purpurin, another red dye of lesser industrial interest, but the German chemical company BASF patented the same process one day before he did. Over the next few years, Perkin found his research and development efforts increasingly eclipsed by the German chemical industry, and so in 1874 he sold his factory and retired from business, a very wealthy man.

Perkin died in 1907 of pneumonia and appendicitis. He had married twice: firstly in 1859 to Jemima Harriet, the daughter of John Lissett and secondly in 1866 to Alexandrine Caroline, daughter of Helman Mollwo. He had two sons from the first marriage (William Henry Perkin, Jr. and Arthur George Perkin) and one son (Frederick Mollwo Perkin) and four daughters from the second. All three sons became chemists. Perkin was a Liveryman of the Leathersellers' Company for 46 years and was elected Master of the Company for the year 1896-97; his father and grandfather had also been Liverymen of the same Company.

Today blue plaques mark the sites of Perkin's home in Cable Street, by the junction with King David Lane, and the Perkin factory in Greenford.