He went to Clapham Grammar School in 1833, and in 1841 started work at his father's firm, Allen & Hanbury's in the City of London.

[1][2] While there he had come into contact with pharmacist-botanists including Jacob Bell, Jonathan Pereira and Theophilus Redwood, and had become interested both in botany and in pharmacognosy, the knowledge of medicines, and particularly of their geographical and botanical origins.

He retired from business in 1870, and in 1874, in partnership with the Swiss botanist Friedrich August Flückiger, published his Pharmacographia.

[1] He died on 24 March 1875 in Clapham of typhoid fever, and was buried in the burial ground of the Society of Friends at Wandsworth.

It was followed, regularly, by a stream of articles and papers describing the pharmacological applications of various plants, insects, and chemicals, and published in such distinguished sources as the Pharmaceutical Journal and the Transactions of the Linnean Society.