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

them. In contrast, the members of the Pharmaceutical Society had worked
very hard from 1841 to achieve protective unity. In 1911, the
Pharmaceutical Society was in a position to mobilise the 16,500 pharmacists
on its register; they each sent a telegram to their MP urging them to vote in
support of the pharmacists‘ interest in the National Insurance Bill. 228 The
assistants did begin to organise themselves by founding the Association of
Certified Dispensers in 1906. But it concentrated on lobbying the Society of
Apothecaries in an attempt to have it intervene with the government on the
assistants‘ behalf, rather than directly engaging with the legislators
itself. 229
In short the assistants were unable to forecast the eventual outcome.
Neither did they have the imagination to realise that change was inevitable,
nor that the change when it occurred might not be to their advantage. They
were late in organising themselves and then failed to lobby aggressively
enough and to direct their lobbying to the appropriate quarter. The closest
they came to influencing government was through the efforts of an
individual, Mr Smith, who obtained an interview with Mr Braithwaite,
Lloyd George‘s principal assistant in formulating the Act. But Smith was
acting in his own interests and was too late to make any real change. The
apothecaries seem to have done very little to ensure their assistants‘ long
term protection; perhaps they also relied on the Apothecaries Act to
maintain the status quo. Certainly, once their income had been increased
after the passing of the National Insurance Act in 1911, they lost interest in
228 Anderson Stewart, „Jubilee of the National Insurance Act‟, 34.
229 Society of Apothecaries Archive, Box 9, E/4/4/1/1, Open Letter, F. Trayner to Potential Members of
the Association of Certified Dispensers, not dated.
284