Surely, we tell nothing new by saying that the English company Bradbury, Wilkinson & Co. is one of the most important printers of bond & share certificates in history. They fit in the illustrious line of names made up by De La Rue (GB), Waterlow & Sons (GB) and American Bank Note Company (USA). To that list, one could add the names of Chaix (France), Enschedé (the Netherlands), Giesecke & Devrient (Germany), the Belgian printer Imifi (=Imprimerie Industrielle et Financière) as printers which had very strong positions in their home markets, but not on a global level.

Despite the historic importance of Bradbury, Wilkinson & Co., we have the impression that much more is known about the certificates the company printed than about the printer itself. Information seems to be scarce, but we have tried to put the bits and pieces together…

The original company was founded by Henry Bradbury (1831-1860) in the 1850s. He was the son of William Bradbury, of the firm of Bradbury & Evans. This was a wellknown printer company who founded multiple major periodicals (such as the Daily News and Punch) and published amongst others the work of the novelist Charles Dickens and the so-called Lake Poets Wordsworth, Tennyson and Coleridge.

Growing up in a printing family, it was decided that Henry would continue the family tradition. So, his father sent him – at the age of 19 – to Vienna were he became a pupil in the Imperial Printing Office. At first, he focused on the art of nature-printing (his Austrian mentor, Alois Auer, had just brought the process of nature-printing to ‘a practical state of perfection’ that was previously unknown in England).

Later on, his field of interest shifted to the printing of bank notes and the security of paper money. He wrote multiple works upon the subject, culminating in 1860 with his magnum opus ‘Specimens of Bank Note Engraving’. It is a very detailed account of the technology at the time and the author’s recommandations to curb the counterfeiting of bank notes.

Still in the same year however, Henry Bradbury died by his own hand (2 Sept. 1860). Aged only 29, he had shown enough proof to the world of his genius…

The bank note printing business he had started in 1856 was luckily carried on and in 1861, a new and independent company was established in the town of New Malden in the English county of Surrey under the name of Bradbury, Wilkinson & Co. The firm soon established a strong international reputation in the printing of bank notes, stamps and bonds & shares, competing strongly against American Bank Note Company, Waterlow & Sons and De La Rue.

In 1890, the company was taken over for £95.000 and a new company – with exactly the same name - was registered on the 4^th of January. The new Bradbury, Wilkinson & Co. was made a public company and had a capital of £100.000.

Some years later, in 1903, American Bank Note Company took over Bradbury, Wilkinson & Co. All its ordinary shares and half of the preference stock were acquired by the American company whose traces go back to 1795. The motivation for ABNC behind this operation was that it had the ambition to expand beyond North America. For them, the English printer was a major acquisition and lifted their revenues significantly.

Despite the fact that Bradbury, Wilkinson & Co. became as such a subsidiary of ABNC, it continued to print under its own (strong) brand name. Moreover, from 1923 until the late 1940s, the (preference) shares of Bradbury, Wilkinson & Co. were traded again on the London Stock Exchange. Both elements prove the strong and fairly independent position Bradbury, Wilkinson & Co. kept versus ABNC.

Under the energetic direction of H. L. Hendriks, who ran the company for at least 25 years, an important capital increase took place in 1921: from £100.000 to £400.000. In the same year, a new production plant was constructed in New Malden and a few years later, another factory was constructed in South Africa as well.

During the 1920s, the business of printing certificates floorished strongly. In the period 1924-1929 for instance, the American Bank Note Company was able to double its net income to 4 million USD and to triple its profits to 1.2 million USD. Yet, after the ‘roaring twenties’, the Depression Years came and revenues took a free fall. In 1932, the worst year, net income was but a mere 60.000 USD and the operational loss accumulated to 464.000 USD. This despite the fact that half of the staff was laid off, some 2000 people. Luckily, American Bank Note Company, and with them Bradbury, Wilkinson & Co. survived and a floorishing new period began in the 1940s. Indeed, when the second World War came to an end, many countries contacted ABNC to print their bank notes since most of their own production plants were destroyed during the war.

For Bradbury, Wilkinson & Co., the post-war period soon proved to be difficult: their focus on the plate printing technology turned out to become out of fashion and resulted in the fact that by 1967, they had almost completely withdrawn from the stamp printing business. In the area of bond and share certificates, the tendency towards the dematerialisation of the papers was of course unstoppable. In their third pillar, bank note printing, they began experimenting with plastic banknotes in the 1980’s. Success was very limited and in 1990, the Bradbury, Wilkinson & Co. printing factory was finally shut down. A sad ending for a great company. This text is copyright protected. If you wish to use on the web or in print – for any purpose whatsoever – any part of this text or any of the illustrations, you must obtain prior written the Centrum Voor Scriptophilie (e.boone@glo.be). Infraction is not only morally totally reprehensible towards the authors and publishers who invested much effort and time in their research and writing, it will also be legally pursued.