The apprenticeship bindings, membership records, candidates’ entry books, and the lists of Licentiates and pharmacy technicians (originally examined as ‘Assistant to an Apothecary’) especially are very useful sources of information for family historians and genealogists.

 

 

1. As a City Livery Company, the Society’s jurisdiction over the trade/profession of the apothecary between 6 December 1617 (when it was incorporated) and 1 August 1815 (when the Apothecaries Act, 1815, came into force), was restricted to the City of London and the area within a seven-mile radius of it. Unless an apothecary was a freeman of the Society, or was apprenticed to a member, there will be no record of that individual in the archives. 

 

2. Although apothecaries were originally what we call community pharmacists today, they became legally ratified members of the medical profession in 1704 as a result of a ruling in the House of Lords in a key lawsuit (the Rose Case). By the early 19^th century, apothecaries had evolved into general practitioners of medicine (defined as doctors who dispensed their own medicines), or today’s GPs. Consequently, the Society’s archives do not contain the records of chemists, druggists or pharmacists, or of their shop premises, nor the papers of pharmaceutical drugs manufacturing firms or companies other than the Society’s own stock companies.

 

3. From 1 August 1815 until 31 December 1858 anyone wishing to practise as an apothecary anywhere in England and Wales had to hold the Licence of the Society of Apothecaries (LSA). The LSA was recognised as a fully registrable medical qualification by the General Medical Council, itself set up as a result of the Medical Act, 1858.

 

4. The Society licensed medical students to practise as apothecaries and it licensed surgeons who wished to engage in general practice. It did not license surgeons to practise as surgeons. Apothecaries were not trained in surgery unless they had been apprenticed to a surgeon, to a surgeon-apothecary or to a surgeon, apothecary and man-midwife. However, after the Medical Act, 1886, was entered on the statute book, anyone qualifying to practise medicine also had to be examined in surgery. The postnominals LSA were altered to LMSSA (Licence in Medicine and Surgery of the Society of Apothecaries) by the Apothecaries Act, 1907, to denote the all-round competence of the Society’s Licentiates. The majority of Licentiates did not become members of the Society.

 

5. The Society’s historical records are those of the organisation (the Company) and not of individuals, whether members, Licentiates or “Assistant to an Apothecary” (today’s pharmacy or dispensing technicians). Details of their private lives and personal and family histories are not kept on file. The professional career paths of the medically qualified practitioners may be traced in the Medical Directory and Medical Register, which have been published annually, the former since 1845 and the latter since 1859.

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