Suitable and remunerative employment': The feminization of hospital dispensing in late nineteenth-century England

Social History of Medicine

Volumn 15, Issue 3, 2002, Pages 429-456

  Jordan, Ellen ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NEWCASTLE   (Australia)

Author keywords

Dispensing; Hospitals; Nineteenth century; Pharmaceutical Society; Society for Promoting the Employment of Women; Society of Apothecaries; Women; Work

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; HISTORY; HOSPITAL PHARMACY; HUMAN RELATION; PHARMACY; UNITED KINGDOM; WOMEN'S RIGHTS; WORKMAN COMPENSATION;

GREAT BRITAIN; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS; PHARMACY; PHARMACY SERVICE, HOSPITAL; WOMEN'S RIGHTS; WORKERS' COMPENSATION;

EID: 0036987485     PISSN: 0951631X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/shm/15.3.429     Document Type: Review

References (147)

1. A. Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (London, 1920);
2. A. Christie, An Autobiography (Glasgow, 1978);
3. London Guildhall Library, MS 10,987.
4. The candidates were required to give a residential address when they registered for the examination, and I have been able to find about half of them by checking the enumerators' books for the 1891 census.
5. S. W. F. Holloway, Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain 1841-1991 (London, 1991);
6. E. Jordan, ' "The Great Principle of English Fair-play": The Admission of Women to the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain', Women's History Review, 7 (1998), 381-409.
7. The terms 'dispensing', 'dispenser', and 'dispensary' were used in a variety of ways in the 30 years under discussion here. 'Dispense' was generally used to mean making up medicines to a prescription written by a medical practitioner, and this could be done by the practitioner himself, by an assistant in his rooms, by a chemist in a retail establishment given the written prescription by a customer, or by the 'dispenser' in a public institution such as a voluntary public hospital, a workhouse infirmary, or one of the 'dispensaries' established by the provident funds to which working people increasingly subscribed as a form of medical insurance. The term 'dispensary' was not, however, restricted to these institutions. What would now be called out-patients departments of hospitals sometimes went by this name, as did other out-patient facilities established under various guises. On the other hand, some public hospitals and workhouses restricted the term to the department devoted to the dispensing of medicines ordered by its doctors.
8. L. Holcombe, Victorian Ladies at Work: Middle Class Working Women in England and Wales, 1850-1914 (Newton Abbot, 1973), pp. 18, 142-4;
9. S.O. Rose, 'Gender Segregation in the Transition to the Factory: The English Hosiery Industry 1850-1910', Feminist Studies, 13 (1987), 163-83;
10. C. Cockburn, 'The Gendering of Jobs: Workplace Relations and the Reproduction of Sex Segregation", in S. Walby (ed.), Gender Segregation at Work (Milton Keynes, 1988), 2942, pp. 22-5;
11. C. R. Littler, The Development of the Labour Process in Capitalist Societies: A Comparative Study of the Transformation of Work Organization in Britain, Japan and the USA (London, 1982), p. 18.
12. C. Cockburn, In the Way of Women: Men's Resistance to Sex Equality in Organizations (London, 1991), p. 63;
13. S. Cohn, The Process of Occupational Sex-Typing: The Feminization of Clerical Labor in Great Britain (Philadelphia, 1985), pp. 93-7;
14. R. Crompton and" G. Jones, White Collar Proletariat: Deskilling and Gender in the Clerical Labour Process (London, 1984), p. 243;
15. F. Scudamore, Report by Mr Scudamore on the Re-organization of the Telegraph System of the United Kingdom (London, 1871), pp. 78-9.
16. E. Jordan, "The Exclusion of Women from Industry in Nineteenth Century Britain', Comparative Studies in Society and History, 31 (1989), 273-96.
17. E. Jordan, The Women's Movement and Women's Employment in Nineteenth Century Britain (London, 1999), pp. 15-16.
18. C. Kent, 'Victorian Social History: Post-Thompson, Post-Foucault, Postmodern', Victorian Studies, 40 (1996), 97-133;
19. J. W. Scott, 'Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis', in Gender and the Politics of History (New York, 1988), 28-50.
20. M. Barrett, The Politics of Truth: From Marx to Foucault (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 202-4;
21. N. Fraser and L. Nicholson, 'Social Criticism without Philosophy: An Encounter between Feminism and Post-modernism', in A. Ross (ed.), Universal Abandon? The Politics of Postmodernism (Minneapolis, 1988), 83-104, pp. 91-2.
22. C. Maggs, The Origins of General Nursing (London, 1983), p. 7;
23. G. Rivett, The Development of the London Hospital System 1823-1982 (London, 1986).
24. Athenaeum (1851), p. 631.
25. E. Jordan, ' "Women's Work in the World": The Birth of a Discourse, London 1858', Nineteenth Century Feminisms, 1 (1999), 12-38;
26. E. Helsinger et al, The Woman Question: Society and Literatim in Britain and America 1837-1883, vol. 2 (New York, 1983), pp. 114-19;
27. B. R. Parkes, 'The Profession of the Teacher', English Woman's Journal, 1 (1858), 1-13.
28. P. Hirsch, Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon 1827-1891: Feminist, Author and Rebel (London, 1998), pp. 142-7, 184-90;
29. J. Rendall, ' "A Moral Engine?" Feminism, Liberalism and the English Woman's Journal', in J. Rendall (ed.), Equal or Different: Women's Politics 1800-1914 (Oxford, 1987), 112-38;
30. Jordan, The Women's Movement and Women's Employment, pp. 151-9.
31. B. R. Parkes, 'A Year's Experience in Woman's Work', Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science (1860), 811-19;
32. M. E. Tusan, ' "Not the Ordinary Victorian Charity": The Society for Promoting the Employment of Women Archive', History Workshop Journal, No. 49 (2000), 221-30.
33. J. Boucherett, 'Adelaide Anne Procter', English Woman's Journal, 13 (1864), 17-21. Until recently, archivists and historians of the Women's Movement believed that the papers of this organization had vanished. In 1997, however, it emerged that the Society was still flourishing, having changed its name in the 1920s to the Society for Promoting the Training of Women, and that Minute Books and Annual Reports dating back to the 1860s were still in existence. These were presented to the archive of Girton College, Cambridge, and have since been listed, boxed, and made available for scholars.
34. Society for Promoting the Training of Women, Minute Books and Annual Reports, Library Archives, Girton College, Cambridge (SPTW), Minute Book 1860-9.
35. This woman's surname is frequently spelt 'Crow' in biographies of Women's Movement members, but this is a mistake, and seems to stem from the fact that Emily Davies spelt it like that in her Family Chronicle, written towards the end of her long life and now held in the Girton Archives. In all the records of the SPEW, however, both the printed lists of members and in the Minutes of the Committee, the earliest of which she wrote herself, it is spelt 'Crowe'.
36. SPTW, Minute Book 1860-9, 6 March 1860, 8 January 1861.
37. SPTW, Annual Reports 1859-1958.
38. B. Abel-Smith, A History of the Nursing Profession (London, 1960);
39. M. E. Baly, Florence Nightingale and the Nursing Legacy (London, 1988);
40. M. A. Nutting and L. L. Dock, A History of Nursing, 2 vols (New York, 1907);
41. S. W. F. Holloway, 'All Saints' Sisterhood at University College Hospital, 1862-1899', Medical History, 3 (1959), 146-56.
42. J. Manton, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (London, 1965), pp. 116, 176.
43. Jordan, ' "The Great Principle of English Fair-play" ', p. 409.
44. SPTW, Annual Reports 1859-1958.
45. Jordan, ' "The Great Principle of English Fair-play" ', p. 390.
46. Abstract of the New Apothecaries' Act Commencing August 1, 1815 (London, 1815).
47. B. Bernard, 'Pharmacy as an Employment for Women', Englishwoman's Review, 1 (1868), 336-58, p. 352;
48. Pharmaceutical Journal and Transactions, 4 (1862), 141-3.
49. Holloway, Royal Pharmaceutical Society, pp. 230-43.
50. W. J. Reader, Professional Men: The Rise of the Professional Classes in Nineteenth Century England (London, 1966), pp. 25-7;
51. E. Freidson, Professional Dominance: The Social Structure of Medical Care (New York, 1970), pp. 83-7, 93-9;
52. R. Collins, 'Changing Conceptions in the Sociology of the Professions', in R. Torstendahl and M. Burrage (eds), The Formation of Professions (London, 1990), pp. 11-23.
53. 'Official Appointments in Pharmacy', Chemist and Druggist, 41 (1892), 489.
54. J. M. Benn, The Predicaments of Love (London, 1992);
55. E. M. Bell, Storming the Citadel: The Rise of the Woman Doctor (London, 1953);
56. Manton, Elizabeth Garrett Andersen;
57. S. Roberts, Sophia Jex-Blake:A Woman Pioneer in Nineteenth-century Medical Reform (London, 1993);
58. J. Donnison, Midwives and Medical Men: A History of Inter-Professional Rivalries and Women's Rights (New York, 1977).
59. Hampson was one of a group of radical chemists interested, for example, in democratizing the Society by having a reporter at Council meetings and in organizing a relief fund for chemists caught in political and legal tangles. He moved to London in 1875. His wife was a midwife and later ran a successful refuge for prostitutes (Holloway, Royal Pharmaceutical Society, p. 256).
60. Holloway, Royal Pharmaceutical Society, pp. 256, 262;
61. Jordan, ' "The Great Principle of English Fair-play" ', pp. 389-90.
62. London Guildhall Library, MS 8200, vol. 14, 28 January 1868.
63. London Guildhall Library, MS 10,981, vol. 1;
64. Pharmaceutical Journal and Transactions, 3rd ser. 3 (1872), 308, 429.
65. Jordan, ' "The Great Principle of English Fair-play" ', pp. 390-1;
66. Pharmaceutical Journal and Transaction, 3rd ser. 3 (1873), 590, 591.
67. Benn, Predicaments of Love, p. 120;
68. Manton, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, pp. 116, 176.
69. 'Lady Pharmacists', Pharmaceutical Journal and Transactions, 3rd ser. 3 (1872), 294.
70. Holloway, Royal Pharmaceutical Society, pp. 263-4;
71. Jordan, ' "The Great Principle of English Fairplay"1, pp. 391-9.
72. Holloway, Royal Pharmaceutical Society, pp. 264-5;
73. Jordan, ' "The Great Principle of English Fairplay"', pp. 398-401.
74. Chemist and Druggist, 14 (1873), 123;
75. Jordan, ' "The Great Principle of English Fair-play'", p. 400.
76. Only the 1881 census is searchable in this way. The census enumerators' books for this year were transcribed onto computer by members of British local history societies, and these have been transferred to CD-Roms by the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints. A Viewer has recently been made available which allows one to identify all household records containing a particular word or section of a word. The records must, of course, be taken only as giving a general impression of the situation. Some of the women giving their occupation as dispenser may have been out of work, or purely fantasizing. The names of others who were definitely working for hospitals during this year, for example Louisa Stammwitz in London and Kate Charlton in Birmingham, do not appear in the census records.
77. Englishwoman's Review, new ser. 1 (1870), 221-2.
78. The Annual Reports of this hospital have survived and are housed in the Birmingham City Archives.
79. Englishwoman's Review, new ser. 1 (1870), 227. The campaign for women in medicine had considerable support in Birmingham. In 1873, just after the door was closed on the women students at Edinburgh University and before the London School of Medicine for Women was even planned, a young woman applied to be admitted as a student in medicine into the Queen's College, Birmingham. When she was refused, a Ladies' Association for the Education of Women for the Medical Profession was formed, with the long-term aim of gaining admission for female medical students into both the college and the hospitals, and with the short-term intention of arranging a course of medical lectures for women to be given by professors from Queen's College who disapproved of the exclusion.
80. Within a few months, £, 100 had been raised for the purpose (Englishwoman's Review, new ser. 4 (1873), 226-7).
81. Birmingham City Archives, HC/WH/1/10/1-2. When they were first employed, neither Louisa Atkins nor Edith Pechey was on the British Medical Register because at that date no British medical institution would examine women. However, when in 1876 King's and Queen's College, Dublin (later the Dublin College of Physicians), took advantage of the Enabling Act of that year which allowed medical schools to over-ride their charters arid open their examinations to women, they were among the first group of women to gain places on the Medical Register by passing its examinations (I. Thorne, Sketch of the Foundation and Development of the London School of Medicine for Women, Hunter Street, Brunswick Square, W.C. (London, 1905), p. 22).
82. Birmingham City Archives, HC/WH/1/10/1, 1872, pp. 12-13.
83. Ibid., HC/WH/1/10/1, 1873, p. 13.
84. Ibid., HC/WH/1/10/1, 1879, p. 12.
85. Kate Charlton seems to have been missed by the 1881 census takers, while the fact that Elizabeth Swain was recorded as a dispenser suggests that she had moved on to another Birmingham hospital.
86. Birmingham City Archives, HC/WH/1/10/1, 1883, p. 13.
87. 'Lady-pharmacists', Chemist and Druggist, 41 (30 July 1892), 143-6. I have riot been able to identify the hospital in which Florence Brittain worked. Although the Annual Reports of a number of Birmingham hospitals are held in the Birmingham City Archives, none, apart from the Birmingham arid Midlands Hospital for Women, contains a clear record of the dispensing arrangements.
88. 'Lady-pharmacists', pp. 143-4;
89. E.J. Shellard, 'Some Outstanding Women Pharmacists of the Late 19th century', Typescript, Museum of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain (London, 1996);
90. E. Jordan, ' "Admitting ... a Dozen Women into the Society": The First Women Members of the British Pharmaceutical Society', Pharmaceutical Historian, 31 (2001), 18-26.
91. 'Work for All', Girls' Own Paper, 5 (1883), 120;
92. SPTW, Annual Reports 1859-1958;
93. L. M. Hubbard, The Year Book of Women's Work (London, 1875);
94. idem, L. M. Hubbard Englishwoman's Year-Book for 1881 (London, 1881);
95. E. Faithfull, 'Women's Work, with Special Reference to Industrial Employment', Journal of the Society of Arts (1871), 378-83.
96. SPTW, Managing Committee Minute Book 1875-94, 15 June 1883; General Committee Minute Book 1869-1901, 12 October 1883, 2 July 1886. The Society had more luck with a young woman who applied for help in May 1884. She was the daughter of a Pharmaceutical chemist in Gloucestershire (and had presumably got her training there) but wished for extra instruction in preparation for the Minor examination. The Society lent her money for a month of lessons with Mrs Clarke Keer arid to pay her examination fee. In November the Minutes reported that the Committee had received a letter from her 'saying that she had obtained a situation as dispenser to a doctor at Dartford who has a large practice among poor people. Her dispensing is like that of a Hospital and is very useful to her. She is very grateful to the Committee for the help she received from them which enabled her to take this situation'
97. (SPTW, Managing Committee Minute Book 1875-94, 23 May 1884, 7 November 1884;
98. General Committee Minute Book 1869-1901, 4 July 1884).
99. 'Lady-pharmacists', p. 144.
100. I b i d.
101. The Pharmaceutical Journal and Pharmacist, 3rd ser., 60 (1898), 596.
102. R. K. Spencer, 'Pharmacy as an Employment for Girls', Girls' Own Paper, 21 (1899), 19.
103. London Guildhall Library, MS 8240, vol. 9. On this occasion only Florence Brittain passed. Two of the others, Blanche Thompson and Marion Wolsley, tried again the next year and passed while the third, Gertrude Manning, passed the Pharmaceutical Society Minor examination in 1894. The pioneering Catherine Perkins passed the Major Examination of the Pharmaceutical Society in January 1895, while a further woman from Birmingham, Mary Hadley, who had gained the Apothecaries' Assistant's Certificate in 1895, passed the Minor in 1896.
104. One piece of evidence, the action of Rose Minshull's sister, Flora, suggests that these women (and possibly also the men) were not necessarily recent recruits to hospital dispensing. The 1881 census recorded Flora E. Minshull as a dispenser aged 33, yet it was not until 1899 that Flora Emma Minshull was recorded as sitting for the Apothecaries' Assistant's examination (London Guildhall Library, MS 10,987).
105. Spencer, 'Pharmacy as an Employment for Girls', p. 20.
106. M. E. Baly, Nursing and Social Change (London, 1980), pp. 129-31;
107. Maggs, The Origins of General Nursing, pp. 6-11.
108. S. W. F. Holloway, 'Neglected Foundations: Public pharmacy 1897-1922', Pharmaceutical Journal Supplement (28 February 1998), 62-4;
109. Rivett, The Development of the London Hospital System, pp. 119-31.
110. Crompton and Jones, White Collar Proletariat, p. 243;
111. Littler, The Development of the Labour Process, p. 18.
112. L. G. Anderson, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson 1836-1917 (London, 1939), p. 67;
113. 1881 Census CD-Rom; London Metropolitan Archives, H2/WH/A40/3.
114. London Metropolitan Archives, ST/P/BG/254.
115. 'Hospital Dispensing', Pharmaceutical Journal and Transactions, 3rd ser., 2 (1872), 851;
116. Chemist and Druggist, 14 (15 April 1873).
117. Poor Law Dispensers', Pharmaceutical Journal and Transactions, 3rd ser., 25 (1895), 841;
118. London Metropolitan Archives, ST P/BG/255/2. When I tried to check the qualifications of the dispensers whose names appear in the London Metropolitan Archives I found that at least four of those appointed in the 1870s and 1880s had only passed the Modified Examination open to those working as assistants in chemist shops before the 1868 Act.
119. Holloway, Royal Pharmaceutical Society, pp. 280-4.
120. 'Hospital Medicines', Chemist and Druggist, 38 (1891), 172-3.
121. Pharmaceutical Journal and Transactions, 3rd ser., 23 (1892), 432-3;
122. Pharmaceutical Journal and Transactions, 3rd ser., ibid., 24 (1893), 71;
123. 'Hospital Medicines', p. 172.
124. Chemist and Druggist, 43 (1893), 464;
125. Chemist and Druggist ibid., 45 (1894), 163;
126. Pharmaceutical Journal and Transactions, 3rd ser., 25 (1894-5), 505, 841.
127. Holloway, Royal Pharmaceutical Society, pp. 273-9.
128. Chemist and Druggist, 39 (1891), 832.
129. Ibid., 49-50, 52-4.
130. London Metropolitan Archives, B/BG/660/1.
131. Chemist and Druggist, 39 (1891), 54;
132. 'Official Appointments in Pharmacy', Chemist and Druggist ibid., 41 (1892), 489;
133. 'Qualifications of Public Dispensers', Pharmaceutical Journal and Transactions, 3rd ser., 25 (1895), 1178-9.
134. There is a copy of this pamphlet in the box containing the Public Dispensers' Association records, at the Museum of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain.
135. Chemist and Druggist, 47 (1895), 35.
136. Ibid., p. 301.
137. Holloway, 'Neglected foundations'; Museum of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, Public Dispensers' Association records, Packet 34.
138. London Metropolitan Archives, ST/P/BG/254.
139. The only additional evidence of the particular institutions where women were employed comes from a list in the Pharmaceutical Society's Register of Chemists and Druggists of those 'Registered under 1908 Act Section 4'. This section empowered the Pharmaceutical Society to place additional names on the register if it was satisfied 'that they are persons of sufficient skill and knowledge to be registered' (PDA, Packet 45). Of the 45 individuals listed, 15 are women, and quite a number, both male and female, give institutional addresses. The women are listed as working in the Parish Infirmary, Southampton; the County Hospital, Ryde; the Nunhead Dispensary in London; the Victoria Hospital for Children in Hull; and the Bootle Borough Hospital, Lancs.
140. SPTW, Managing Committee Minute Book 1875-94, 4 May 1894, 16 July 1897.
141. SPTW, General Committee Minute Book 1869-1901, 11 October 1895. The entry in the Minutes reads: 'Also that Miss Bradbury of the Dispensary at Ryde has a vacancy for an apprentice to live in the house for 3 months for 30/- a week, she will prepare the apprentice for the Examination at the Apothecaries Hall.' A check in the Society of Apothecaries' records found that Constance Bradbury, 4 St Peter's Terrace, Cambridge, had gained the Apothecaries' Assistant's Certificate on 28 November 1894.
142. SPTW, Managing Committee Minute Book 1875-94, 16 July 1897, 22 October 1897;
143. General Committee Minute Book 1869-1901, 3 July 1897.
144. SPTW, Annual Reports 1859-1958; 1899, p. 9.
145. 'Apothecaries' Assistants' Certificates', The Pharmaceutical Journal and Pharmacist, 65 Supplement (1900), 13.
146. M. Buchanan, 'Pharmacy', in Spencer (ed.), The Fingerpost.
147. S. J. Gould, Eight Little Piggies (Hamiondsworth, 1994), p. 7.