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

occasions between 1909 and 1920, was the exchange between Major Archer
Shee (Unionist member for Finsbury Central) and the Home Secretary on 30
March 1914. He wished to know whether the Pharmaceutical Society had
made any progress in formulating a byelaw to permit apothecaries‘
assistants and army dispensers to register under the Pharmacy Acts. He
also pointed out that a recent Departmental Committee had found the
Society‘s reluctance to do so as ―… constituting a serious grievance of four
years‘ standing.‖ The Home Secretary replied that the Society was
experiencing difficulties in doing so, but it was promoting a Bill to create a
register of qualified dispensers. 5
This interest on the part of parliamentarians was probably promoted
by a fear held by the apothecaries‘ assistants that the Pharmaceutical
Society wished to annex the dispensing business. In 1903, when the Bill,
which was a forerunner of the Poisons and Pharmacy Act (1908) was
introduced, some of the apothecaries‘ assistants noticed that in Clause 2 it
restricted to pharmacists, the keeping of an open shop for ―the retailing,
compounding or dispensing of poisons or of medical prescriptions.‖ 6 It is
likely that their concern was raised by the phrase ―medical prescriptions‖,
which as we have seen, were at that time largely their preserve. None of
the previous Pharmacy Acts had succeeded in creating a closed shop in
respect of dispensing prescriptions; the only restriction had been in the 1868
Act and that had restricted to pharmacists, the sale of poisons, including
those in dispensed medicines.
5 Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, fifth series, vol. LX, 23 Mar.-8 Apr. 1914, col. 811.
6 Bills Public, vol. 3, session 17 Feb.-14 Aug. 1903, pp. 581-590.
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