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

the Privy Council. Mr Trayner and three other assistants, all dispensers
from London dispensaries or infirmaries, met with the President, Secretary
and Assistant Secretary of the Pharmaceutical Society in May 1912. The
pharmacists made some encouraging comments to the effect that they
understood the difficult position into which the National Insurance Act had
placed some of the assistants. They went on to state that they would have
no hesitation in accepting onto the register, assistants of the calibre of those
who formed the delegation. However, the difficulty they were facing was
how to distinguish between assistants who would be capable of keeping open
shop and the remainder.
The Pharmaceutical Society insisted on its examination being the
only means of registration and objected to the Society of Apothecaries
attempting to set up an alternative route. They would need to ascertain
why the assistants, who wished to be registered without examination, had
not adopted the normal route of qualifying by taking the Society‘s ‗minor‘
examination. The pharmacists did suggest that they might be able to
register nearly all the assistants, were the Society of Apothecaries to
discontinue the assistant‘s examination. 46 This offer to accept onto their
register, most of the existing assistants, as a full and final settlement of the
requirements of Section 4(b), was probably the best offer the assistants were
to receive. However, this offer was not going to be acceptable to either the
Society of Apothecaries, or the rank and file members of the Pharmaceutical
Society.
46 Society of Apothecaries Archive, Box 9, E/4/4/1/1, „Précis of statements made at a meeting of certain
members of the Pharmaceutical Society‟s Council on 5 May 1912‟.
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