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

continuation of the business. Doubtless some of the subjects discussed in
this thesis developed an interest in their father‘s medically related work and
took the apothecaries‘ assistant‘s examination so as to be able to work as a
dispenser. They would then have been in a position to assist in the family
business as a dispenser, thereby avoiding the cost of employing a third party
dispenser. A chemist and druggist would have been able to employ a
similarly qualified son or daughter in his business. But in neither case
would these children have been able to succeed their fathers in the practice
or business unless they subsequently qualified respectively as a doctor or a
chemist and druggist.
Among the apothecaries‘ assistants surveyed in this thesis, we have a
number of relevant examples. Ellen Howell, Dora Notley, Caroline Horsley,
Amy Coles and Bertha Nix were assistants who could have been employed
in their fathers‘ medical practices, but it is not possible to say whether they
were or not. Ethel Gayton was employed as a dispenser in the North
Western Hospital of the Metropolitan Asylums Board where her father was
the medical superintendent. Lilian Kennard and Constance Bradbury were
both daughters of medical men, but were working as dispensers away from
home. Mabel Voight, Alice Brookes and Louisa Brookes were the daughters
of chemists and druggists. Both Alice and Mabel might have been employed
as dispensers by their fathers, but Louisa Brookes has no recorded
employment in 1901. Ada Taylor and Clara Lloyd could both have been
dispensers in their fathers‘ businesses and both had brothers who were
chemists and druggists and who would have succeeded their fathers. This
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