A Respectable Occupation: - University of Hertfordshire Research ...

Correll who passed the examination in 1895 at the age of 36 and by 1901
was the Matron of a Cottage Hospital with no nurses and five patients.
Amelia Colman was in a similar position in 1901 as the Matron of a hospital
with three nurses and 11 patients.
Some having passed the assistant‘s examination went on to qualify as
chemists and druggists or as pharmaceutical chemists. Hilda Caws, having
passed the assistant‘s examination in 1899 at the age of 22, went on to
study at the School of Pharmacy in Bloomsbury Square in 1903 and
succeeded in passing the ‗major‘ examination. 176 Catherine Perkins passed
the assistant‘s examination in 1889 at the age of 23 and then the
Pharmaceutical Society‘s ‗major‘ examination in 1895. Flora Minshull who
was a wood engraver in 1871, passed the assistant‘s examination in 1899,
aged 47, but progressed no further. Her sisters Jane and Rose were
described as medical dispensers in the 1871 census, but there is no record of
either of them taking the examination. As they were aged, respectively, 29
and 25 at the time, they could not have been working under the provisions
of the ‗no-prejudice‘ clause included in the Apothecaries Act (1815) and must
have been working informally. Jane died in 1873, but Rose went on to
register as a Pharmaceutical Chemist in 1879, having passed the Society‘s
‗major‘ examination.
It is not unusual for children to take up the same occupation as their
fathers and in the case where a father owned his own business, at least one
of his children was usually encouraged to do so in order to ensure the
176 „Women in Pharmacy‟, Pharmaceutical Journal, 76, 22, (6 Jan. 1906) 15.
196