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

opting for the better-paid jobs available in private hospitals, private nursing
homes and in the domestic field. 258 It could be suggested that the popularity
of nursing as a subject in the literature results from the fact that it
attracted many more women, from a wider range of society, than did
dispensing. Nurses had greater public visibility and nursing still exists as a
profession, while the apothecaries‘ assistants were relatively few in number
and have effectively ceased to exist.
The female apothecaries‘ assistants were young women drawn almost
exclusively from the middle class; they had an interest in science, had
received a secondary education, had gone on to qualify as apothecaries‘
assistants and obtained employment as dispensers. Jordan and Holloway
are the only authors who have given them anything more than a mention.
However, Jordan‘s interest is in the general field of feminism. Her two
articles examine the work of the women‘s movement in its endeavour to find
paid employment for women; in particular the part played by The Society
for Promoting the Employment of Women (SPEW). This organisation was
founded in 1859, with the intent of ―… assisting middle class women whom
misfortune had left without means of financial support.‖ 259
She offers the female apothecaries‘ assistants as one example of a
group of women that SPEW helped. It had, she says, been successful in
obtaining apprenticeships for girls in hairdressing and dial-printing, 260 but
had failed to make inroads into the medical profession, which was one of its
258 L. Holcombe, Victorian Ladies at Work: middle class working women in England and Wales 1850-
1914 (Hamden, Connecticut, 1973), pp. 92-93.
259 Jordan, „Suitable and Remunerative Employment‟, 433.
260 Jordan, „Suitable and Remunerative Employment‟, 435.
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