Adcock Ingram and the Tannenbaums

(Author: Arnold Tannenbaum, Vol. 66, #2, Rosh Hashanah 2011)

When Charles and Tilly Tannenbaum settled in the small town of Roodepoort in the late 1800s, their name was anything but synonymous with pharmacy. They ran a general store. It was their four sons¹ who would change things.

When the oldest son, Hyme, was ready to start work, he was apprenticed to Jack Blair, who owned the E.J. Adcock pharmacy in Ockerse Street, Krugersdorp. Hyme had found his passion and encouraged his younger brother, Jack, to follow in his footsteps. The third brother, Len, soon followed and in due course the youngest brother, Arthur (Archie), also joined Adcocks.

With so many Tannenbaums, the small pharmacy in Krugersdorp had to expand. This is the story of that expansion.

Hyme Tannenbaum was blessed with a special gift. He could recognise success and had an instinctual feeling about potential areas for new pharmacies. He bought some existing pharmacies and established new ones all along the western reef, from Johannesburg to Carletonville. He also instituted the idea of co-ownership, offering the manager appointed to run the pharmacy a half share in the business. The manager made no initial payment for this share. He was paid to manage the business and his 50% of the profits was used to purchase his share.

Hyme was a giant among men, a paternal figure, loved by his staff. He was impulsive and sometimes made dreadful mistakes, but his impulsiveness was tempered by a natural humility.

In his entire working career, Hyme lived in a small house at 34 Burger Street, close to the centre of Krugersdorp, and for years, his office was in the bottom of a lift shaft. He also drove the smallest of Ford cars, the Anglia. He drove fast and collected so many speeding tickets on his way to visit his brothers in Johannesburg that he eventually realised it would be easier and cheaper to hire a driver. The new driver looked at the Anglia and refused point blank to drive it. Hyme was forced to buy the next car in the Ford range – a Zephyr.

Hyme hated ostentation. He never wore a tie and usually didn’t bother with a jacket, preferring to work with rolled up sleeves. Generous to a fault, he was typically quiet about his generosity, preferring to be an anonymous donor. In fact, many pharmacists owe their success to the help Hyme gave them, and many partner managers became wealthy men as a result of joining the Adcock family business.

When he qualified Jack, the second Tannenbaum brother, was sent to manage Keatings Pharmacy in Pretoria Street, Hillbrow. It was not a very busy pharmacy, so Jack began looking for ways to exploit the time on his hands. In 1925, Hillbrow and the adjoining suburbs housed several nursing homes. Jack approached the matrons of some of them, offering his services as dispenser and medical supplier. In a short time, he had gained the custom of the Norman, the Joubert Park, the Frangwen and the Esselen nursing homes. Keatings had become a very active business.

Jack soon found other business opportunities. Doctors practising in the nursing homes would read about new medications in overseas medical journals and ask him if these were available. Instead of simply giving up on the request when local sources were unable to supply, Jack wrote to the overseas manufacturers, not only ordering supplies, but offering to become the South African agent for the company concerned. In this way, Keatings obtained sole rights to distribute the products of some of the largest overseas pharmaceutical manufacturers, including Abbott, G.D. Searle and Baxter in America, Organon in Holland and Chinoin in Hungary. Jack also gained the franchise for the Belgian company Gevaert, manufacturers of X-ray films and all photographic supplies.

Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, the Hungarian agency Chinoin sent their medical man Dr Bondi Janovics, a brilliant doctor and medical scientist, to assist Jack in the sales of their product. For two months, he battled to get South African doctors to prescribe Chinoin products, but was not very successful. His results hardly covered the expense of his visit.

Jack was ready to send Bondi home, but Bondi refused to go. By then, Hungary was under the shadow of Nazi Germany and Bondi would rather have starved in South Africa than return to his homeland. Jack asked Bondi for a plan of action, and Bondi said he could make pharmaceuticals in South Africa. In those days, other than dispensed liquids, hand rolled pills, hand-folded powders and cachets, all pharmaceuticals were imported. There were no locally made injection ampoules, no tablets, no capsules and certainly no intravenous drips. Bondi approached his compatriot, the chemical engineer Kuno Hoffer. He was in the same position, having being sent to South Africa to open a factory producing chloride of lime. This project had never gotten off the ground, and Kuno was also left stranded, not wanting to return to his homeland.

As Jack’s business expanded, he had purchased the house next door to Keatings, using the main rooms for storage and as an office. Jack put Bondi and Kuno on the payroll and set them up in the kitchen to experiment and eventually manufacture pharmaceuticals. The two men duly went on to accomplish all kinds of things. They went to the abattoirs to collect glands and livers, thereafter making a liver tonic called Bethtone, manufactured injections of pituitary extract and even considered making insulin. Things looked so promising for the Hungarian venture that Jack built a small factory in the quiet southern suburb of Ophirton.

In 1939, Bondi and Kuno gave Jack a birthday present – a box of ampoules containing Ethyl Chloride. This was an anaesthetic manufactured by combining ethyl alcohol with hydrochloric acid.  It was a volatile substance that had to be packed in sealed glass containers, with a spray nozzle. The Ethyl Chloride plant at the factory consisted of six huge vessels bubbling away, with tubes collecting and freezing gas. This was the first really big venture of Saphar, as the new laboratory was now called.

The Hungarians were willing to tackle anything and everything. They even grew penicillin mould and made eye drops and ointment. Tablets quickly became a big business, with Saphar making tablets for several overseas companies. Bondi’s wife Susie, a qualified pharmacist, was put in charge of the ampoule division, which soon developed a large repertoire of injectables, including dental cartridges. Within five years Saphar had become a big business.

Keatings’ Baxter agency, acquired in the middle 1930s, was also doing well.  Large quantities of onelitre bottles of intravenous solutions were shipped by sea – and during the war, several consignments were lost when a ship was torpedoed.

Shortly after the war ended, Bondi and Kuno visited Baxter in Chicago and asked for permission to manufacture the solutions in South Africa. Bill Graham, president of Baxter and a good friend of Jack Tannenbaum, laughed at the audacity of the two Hungarians. The manufacture of intravenous solutions required many specialised skills, which few companies could supply.  Baxter had not given anyone the right to make their products.  How could they even think of talking to someone in a place as obscure as South Africa?

Bondi and Kuno were blessed with irresistible continental charm. They were also supremely confident in their ability to meet any challenges in this specialised process. To everyone’s surprise but theirs, they were given the contract. Baxter and Keatings formed a new company called Keagrams and Baxter agreed to supply material and men who would travel to South Africa and install a plant to make the precious solutions. Within six months, Keagrams was in full production, and several formulations of locally made Intravenous solutions were available to the medical profession. After just a few years, Saphar/Keagrams had grown so large that new premises had to be found. A large plot of ground was purchased in Aeroton and a new plant built.

Jack was a gentle man, loved by all who knew him. He, too, was a father figure to the staff. There was something special about this paternalism, something which has been lost in the hard, competitive climate of today’s world. People loved their work and their bosses.

Len Tannenbaum, affectionately known in the family as “Long Len” to distinguish him from a first cousin with the same name, was the third brother. Long Len was sent to manage Fred Ingram, the new pharmacy in Hillbrow.  Under his guidance and initiative,  Ingram’s became the largest pharmacy in South Africa.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

The four Tannenbaum brothers and their wives, 1960: From left, Leonard, Jacob (‘Jack’), Jeanne (wife of Len), Sarah Phyllis (‘Sally’, wife of Jack), Pauline (‘Polly’, wife of Hyme), Rachel Regina (‘Reggie’, wife of Arch), Hyman (‘Hyme’), Arthur (‘Arch’).