Last life member dies at age of 98
The last life member of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, Eileen Brown, of Tunbridge Wells, Kent, has died at the age of 98.
Mrs Brown’s life membership was a gift from her pharmacist father
when she qualified in 1928. His generosity cost him 25 guineas (£26.25)‚ a
substantial sum at the time.
The Society stopped offering life membership a few years later when the
Pharmacy and Poisons Act 1933 came into force and required all pharmacists
to be members and to pay an annual retention fee.
Mrs Brown was from a family of pharmacists. Her father, George Adama
Cawkwell, registered in 1901 and practised until his death in 1947. He
himself had been articled as an apprentice by his own pharmacist father,
John Cawkwell, in 1892. Mrs Brown’s husband, Charles Henry Brown,
was also a pharmacist. He registered in 1936 and remained on the register
until his death in 1985. Their daughter, Janet Ditchett, registered as
a pharmacist in 1963 and practised continuously until retiring in 2003.
To complete the picture, Janet is married to pharmacist Peter Ditchett,
who also registered in 1963.
Mrs Brown had been the Society’s sole life member since June 2002,
when Isabella Keiller, of Perth, Scotland, a life member since 1933,
died at the age of 95. Like Mrs Brown, she had received her life membership
as a gift from a pharmacist father.
Four months before Mrs Keiller’s death, another life member, Reg
Davis, died a few days after celebrating his 100th birthday at his home
in Polperro, Cornwall. He had bought his life membership in 1930, two
years after first joining the Society.
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