Attitudes to Political and Commercial Endorsement in the Business Papers of Silas Mainville Burroughs, with Particular Reference to Henry Morton Stanley

On ‘‘social and political questions,’’ said Henry Wellcome, ‘‘Mr Burroughs held very advanced views . . . supported by lavish contributions and with great expenditure of time’’. Wellcome was providing the editor of Christian Commonwealth with comments that would be incorporated—unattributed to Wellcome—in the journal’s obituary for his business partner, Silas Mainville Burroughs, who had died suddenly from double pneumonia in Monte Carlo, 6 February 1895. Wellcome’s dictated comments were less than fulsome. Viewed in the context of the last acrimonious years of their business partnership—a context still emerging from the vast Wellcome Foundation archive that is presently being catalogued— his chosen turns of phrase were indirect and deflecting. Wellcome’s views on