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

The Society also believed that a greater principle was at risk. If the
company chemists were permitted to use restricted titles, the precedent
might well be extended to other professions. The prospect of limited
companies being set up to provide medical or dental services excited the
other professions and they expressed their support for the Pharmaceutical
Society. 118 In response, the company chemists pointed out that they had
spent a lot of money erecting shop fronts that featured the word ‗chemist‘
and in any event each shop was to be controlled by a registered chemist and
druggist. Consequently, the public would be adequately protected. They
saw it as an attempt to injure the company chemists‘ businesses by creating
a doubt in the public‘s mind as to their competence. 119 This issue was
settled by a compromise in the 1908 Act whereby the company chemists
were permitted to use the terms ‗chemist‘, ‗druggist‘, ‗chemist and druggist‘,
‗dispensing chemist‘ and ‗dispensing druggist‘ providing at least one of the
company‘s directors was a registered chemist and druggist.
The opposition to the clauses in these Bills that related to company
chemists was led by Jesse Boot and his campaign started while the
Pharmacy Acts Amendment Bill of 1898 was passing through the House of
Lords. It had had inserted into it a clause that would have prevented
grocers and other retailers from trading as company chemists. To counter
this Jesse Boot with other company chemists such as Days, Hodders,
Inmans, Taylors, Parkes, and Lewis and Burroughs, formed the Drug
118 „Chemists‟ Titles and the Public Interest‟, Pharmaceutical Journal, series 4, 76, 22, (26 May 1906)
633 and 'Medical Sympathy‟, Pharmaceutical Journal, series 4, 71, 17, (14 Nov. 1903) 699 and „The
Pharmacy Bill‟, Pharmaceutical Journal, series 4, 71, 17, (11 Jul. 1903) 56.
119 „The Poisons and Pharmacy Bill‟, Pharmaceutical Journal, series 4, 76, 22, (19 May 1906) 574.
251