John Cadbury

John Cadbury (12 August 1801 – 11 May 1889) was a Quaker and English proprietor, tea and coffee trader and founder of Cadbury, the chocolate business based in Birmingham, England. Life John Cadbury was born on 12 August 1801 in Birmingham to Richard Tapper Cadbury and his wife Elizabeth Head. He was from a wealthy Quaker family that moved to the area from the west of England. John went to school at Joseph Crosfields Quaker School at Hartshill, Warwickshire. As a Quaker in the early 19th century, he was not allowed to enter a university, so could not pursue a profession such as medicine or law. Founding Cadbury As Quakers are historically and typically pacifist, a military career was also out of the question. So, like many other Quakers of the time, he turned his energies toward business. After being apprenticed to a tea dealer in Leeds in 1818, he opened a grocer's shop at 93 Bull Street, Birmingham in 1824. He prepared drinking chocolate, and eventually decided to start commercial manufacture, opening a warehouse in Crooked Lane. In 1842, he was selling sixteen lines of drinking chocolate, and eleven lines of cocoa. In 1846 he entered into a partnership with his brother Benjamin, establishing Cadbury Brothers, which moved to a new factory in Bridge Street in 1847. In 1850, the Cadbury brothers pulled out of the retail business, which was passed to John's son, Richard Barrow Cadbury (Barrow's remained a leading Birmingham store until the 1960s). The partnership was dissolved by mutual consent in 1856 and John retired in 1861, following the death of his wife. Control of the manufacturing business passed to his sons Richard and George. John Cadbury also campaigned against animal cruelty, forming the Animals Friend Society, a forerunner of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.