John Cadbury (1801-1889) John Cadbury was born in Birmingham, England, on 12th August 1801.

He was from a Quaker family and did not have the option to go to university as this was against Quaker beliefs. Instead he became an apprentice to a tea dealer in Leeds in 1818. He opened a grocers shop at 93 Bull Street, Birmingham in 1824, selling amongst other things, cocoa and drinking chocolate, which he prepared himself using a mortar and pestle. Tea, coffee, cocoa and drinking chocolate were seen as healthy alternatives to alcohol, which as a Quaker he believed was bad for society. After several years, John decided to start manufacturing on a commercial scale. In 1831 he purchased a warehouse in nearby Crooked Lane. The earliest preserved price list from 1842 shows that he was selling 16 lines of drinking chocolate in cakes and powder format, and eleven lines of cocoa in powder, flakes, paste and cocoa nibs formats. He was only selling one line of eating chocolate at this time. In 1846 John took his brother Benjamin into partnership and the name of the firm was changed to Cadbury Brothers. In 1847 the business moved to a new factory in Bridge Street. . The partnership with Benjamin was dissolved by mutual consent in 1856 and John retired in 1861, handing over complete control of the business to his two sons, Richard and George. The following decades saw the Cadbury business grow to become an industry leader by harnessing the opportunities of industrialisation and creatively marketing to a growing consumer class. John Cadbury spent his retirement engaged in civic and social work in Birmingham. Philanthropy had been important to him all his life; over the years he had led a campaign to ban the use of boys as chimney sweeps, campaigned against animal cruelty and formed the Animal Friends Society, a forerunner of the RSPCA. John died on May 11th 1889, aged 87.