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

Laboratory. She tells how the Dispensary patients were initially a little
unsure about the abilities of a lady dispenser, having never seen one before,
but were soon won over and declares that there are opportunities for women
dispensers given the necessary theoretical and practical knowledge. 282
Caroline Bonner is reported in The Standard, London in 1897 as
donating an annual sum of £1 0s. 0d. to the Prince of Wales Hospital Fund
for London. 283 This is possibly the Caroline Bonner, who passed the
assistant‘s examination in 1899. Miss Catherine Perkins is reported in the
Birmingham Daily Post in 1895 as having passed the Pharmaceutical
Society‘s ‗major‘ examination. 284 She had previously passed the assistant‘s
examination in 1889. Constance Bradbury seems only to have obtained a
mention in the press because of the report of General Calthorpe‘s speech at
the opening of the Dispensary and because subsequently she published an
article in The Hospital. Catherine Perkins is mentioned because of her
success in an examination; the fact that it has medical connections is
entirely coincidental.
As apothecaries‘ assistants were not permitted by law to keep open
shop for retailing or dispensing or compounding of poisons 285 there was little
probability that they would appear in the trade directories and this proved
to be so. However, it was possible to trace the fathers of a sample number of
them and demonstrate that they lived and worked at the addresses recorded
in the censuses. The search was developed further in the case of those
282 „A Lady Dispenser‟s Experiences‟, Isle of Wight Observer, 15 Sep.1900, p. 2.
283 „The Prince of Wales Hospital Fund for London‟, The Standard, London, 22 Feb. 1897, p. 6.
284 Birmingham Daily Post, 16 Jan. 1895, p. 4.
285 Pharmacy Act, 31 & 32 Victoria, Cap. XXI.
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