Sayers, Allport & Potter

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Sayers, Allport & Potter, later Sayers, Allport Proprietary, was an Australian wholesale pharmaceutical and veterinary supply business based in Sydney, serving farmers and graziers across New South Wales. It began in 1890 when Roland and Robert Allport formed Sayers and Allport; Andrew L. Potter joined in 1891. The name Sayers may have been a silent partner or a fiction. The first office was at 297 George Street, then moved to 10–12 Hunter Street after Potter joined. Potter left around 1902, but his name stayed with the firm until 1912. The company later became Sayers, Allport and Taylor, and moved to 53–55 Macquarie Street in 1912, staying there until it was bought by International Products Ltd in 1948. The business sold a wide range of farming and veterinary goods, including drench guns and castration/tailing tools, cattle syringes and needles, and, in the 1940s and 1950s, drench brands such as Blue-Nik, Green Seal, Phenmix, and Barconite for fly-blow in sheep.

Two products gave the firm notoriety. In 1902 they started marketing S.A.P., a phosphorus-based poison aimed at rabbits, and in 1906 they bought Rabbo’s manufacturing rights. Phosphorus could be effective but risked starting grass fires, so rivals marketed safer options. The other main poison was Thall-Rat, based on thallium sulphate from Germany; it was odorless, tasteless, fast-acting, cheap, and easy to obtain without a licence, but it did not degrade and could be detected long after death. After a spate of poisonings in Sydney in the early 1950s, sales were prohibited. The founders were Roland and Robert Allport; their brother Alfred Allport was a surgeon who helped found St Paul’s Hospital in London. Andrew L. Potter, a partner known for his athleticism, left the firm in the early 1900s and helped start Potter & Birks Ltd in 1904.