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

fairness and equity.‖ 184 It would seem that it was his persistence that
finally won the day rather than any other strategy on his part. This can, in
part, be judged by the reported opinion of Mr Robbins, a Council member,
who said that, ―… the matter had come before Council several times, and he
thought the members were getting tired of it.‖ It had taken from 1870,
when Hampson first joined the Council, until 1878 for the first women to be
registered as members of the Society by examination. 185
The members of the Pharmaceutical Society voiced a number of
objections against the prospect of women joining the register. There was a
general fear that the employment of women would threaten men‘s
livelihoods. A chemist‘s assistant, that is a man who had passed the ‗minor‘
examination, but was working for another who owned a shop, wrote to the
Pharmaceutical Journal complaining that chemists‘ assistants were in a
perilous situation. Their wages were not so high that they could withstand
competition for their jobs from ladies, who were paid at a lesser rate. He
feared that the result would be to force good men to resign from the
Society. 186
Others thought that pharmacy would be an unsuitable job for women
because of the unpleasant aspects of some of the work. A correspondent to
the Pharmaceutical Journal wrote about the distasteful features of some of
the illnesses that a chemist and druggist was called upon to discuss with his
184 Jordan, „The Great Principle of English Fair Play‟, 397.
185 Jordan, „The Great Principle of English Fair Play‟, 401.
186 Pharmaceutical Journal and Transactions, 3, (22 Feb. 1873) 679 quoted in Jordan, „The Great
Principle of English Fair Play‟, 393, note 53.
201