The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 268 No 7186 p233-237
23 February 2002

This article
Reprint
Photocopy

News summary

Life-member, Reginald Davis, celebrates his centenary next week

Reginald Davis, MRPharmS, one of two known surviving life-members of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, is to celebrate his 100th birthday next week.

More than 1,000 pharmacists took up life-membership between 1841 and 1933. However, when the Pharmacy and Poisons Act came into force in 1933, such membership was no longer offered.

Mr Davis became a life-member in 1930. The cost was 25 guineas and included The Pharmaceutical Journal in the fee, which he said was "good value for money". He could remember collecting his membership certificate and was proud to be a life-member.

Before joining the register in 1928, he was apprenticed to his uncle, Sidney Davis, in Cheshire, and studied at the Bath and West College of Pharmacy. Mr Davis worked in both hospital and community pharmacy. He went on to buy his own pharmacy at Polperro, Cornwall, and worked there until the age of 86 years, when he retired. Asked whether life-membership should be reintroduced, he said: "It would be nice if it was."

Mr Davis has three sons and a daughter. He is expecting two of his sons to return from Australia to join him in celebrating his birthday with the rest of his family in Cornwall.

In 1988, there were 17 remaining life-members of the Society (PJ, 30 January, 1988, p160). The Journal is aware of one other surviving life-member, Isabella Keiller. Mrs Keiller became a life-member of the Society on 4 December 1933. Life-membership was bought for her as a gift by her father. She now lives in a nursing home in Perth, Scotland.