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

Companies Association Ltd to safeguard their interests from action in the
Courts and in Parliament. 120 When the 1908 Bill mounted a similar attack
on the company chemists, the Army and Navy Stores, Harrods Stores and
the Cooperative Stores also joined this association.
Part of the campaign mounted by the Drug Companies‘ Association
was to appeal directly to the public by taking out large advertisements in a
number of newspapers including The Times, The Daily Mail, The Daily
News, 121 The Bradford Daily Telegraph, and The Belper News and
Derbyshire Telephone. 122 The Association had also supplied information to a
member of The Times advertising staff, who had written three
advertisements that appeared in the newspaper. They dealt respectively
with the position as it existed after the 1868 Act, the objectives of the 1905
Bill and what the effect of this Bill would be on the public if passed into
law. 123 Their argument was that the Pharmaceutical Society was trying to
re-establish the monopoly its members had previously enjoyed. This would
be accompanied by high prices; a situation that the company chemists‘
competition had prevented, to the benefit of the public.
They also poured scorn on the Society‘s demand that directors of
company chemists should be qualified chemists and druggists, on the
grounds that reputable companies such as theirs already employed a
qualified man in each of their shops. The skill and knowledge in dispensing
prescriptions and the care exercised in selling poisons was the same
120
Chapman, Jesse Boot of Boots the Chemists, p. 113.
121
„Limited Companies and the Pharmacy Bill‟, Pharmaceutical Journal, series 4, 74, 20, (25 Mar. 1905)
467.
122
„Pestle Work‟, Pharmaceutical Journal, series 4, 70, 16, (30 May 1903) 770.
123
The Times, 4 May 1905, p. 7, 5 May 1905, p. 7 and 6 May 1905, p. 15.
252