For much of the nineteenth century, Britain was the largest and most dynamic industrial economy in the world. The size of the British economy and of the imperial British state created many employment opportunities for chemists. It is thus not perhaps surprising that Britain was one of the first countries to develop both a professional chemical community and chemical societies. Moreover, self-governing societies, be they learned, campaigning, professional or interest-based, played a prominent role within British, and particularly middle-class, society.² By the First World War, British chemists operated in a dense institutional network: in 1912, Official Chemical Appointments (OCA), the directory of chemical posts published by the British professional association of chemists, the Institute of Chemistry, listed 24 “Societies and Institutions directly interested in the advancement of chemical science and technology”.³