Early Life
William Allen was the eldest son of devout Quakers Job and Margaret Allen. They were a well-to-do family, Job earning his wealth as a silk manufacturer. As a young man, in the 1790s, William Allen became interested in science. He attended meetings of various scientific societies, including lectures at St. Thomas's Hospital and Guy's Hospital, becoming a member of 'The Chemical Society' of the latter establishment.
In the first year of the new century, William Allen's father died, and the family silk business was thereafter managed by his father's assistant. This left William free to grow his own business in the field of pharmacy, gradually becoming independent and establishing his own business. In 1802 he was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society and lectured on chemistry at Guy's Hospital. A year later he was made president of the 'Physical Society' at Guy's, and on the advice of Humphry Davy and John Dalton also accepted an invitation from the Royal Institution to become one of its lecturers.
In 1807, Allen's original research (on carbon) enabled him to be successfully proposed for election to Fellowship of the Royal Society, bringing him into contact with those who were publishing much of the original scientific research of the day. This strengthened his ties with the eminent Humphry Davy, and in due course with his long-standing friend Luke Howard who was likewise elected to Fellowship of the Royal Society, though some years later.
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“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)