The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 277 No 7432 p791-792
23/30 December 2006

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Elephants, hens and Bradford women!

Ray Sturgess discovered that his first article in The Journal was published 50 years ago. In this article, he reviews his experiences since

Christmas miscellany 2006 index

Life in England and men in suits Poultry Community pharmacy and writing

I am getting on a bit, but not actually old. Or so I thought until one day this summer when I was looking through some files and discovered the 22 December 1956 issue of The Journal. In it, I found my first Journal article, “Pharmacy in Sarawak”. Of course I was young then. At that time I was on my first home leave after two and a half years as pharmaceutical chemist to the Sarawak government.

Sarawak was an intriguing place, occupying a slice of north western Borneo and being ruled for over a hundred years by the Brooke rajahs. Vyner Brooke, the last of the kingdom’s white rajahs, had handed Sarawak over to the British government in 1947, realising that he had not the resources to repair the ravages resulting from the Japanese occupation. In keeping with the exoticism of the place, the job was interesting too; I was the first pharmacist to work in Sarawak and, after exhaustive research, I later discovered that I was the first pharmacist to live and work in Borneo. I was young, exuberant, somewhat self-satisfied and in my article pulled out all the stops:

The appearance in my office of a Dyak, complete with parang (a sword previously used for head-hunting, now domesticated) and/or blowpipe, and a list of the names of eligible recipients in his longhouse (for UNICEF skim milk powder as a nutritional supplement) is not uncommon …

I went on to describe my many non-pharmaceutical duties, including the purchase, storage and distribution of outboard motors for the 16 travelling dispensaries used by the Sarawak equivalent of barefoot doctors on up-country river routes, deciding on the comparative merits of inboard and outboard engines on the various and often formidable Sarawak rivers, and being roped in to advise on the choice of a new automated steam laundry for the main hospital in Kuching. The hospital carpenters, being housed in the medical stores compound, were my responsibility too and when the rocking horse in the children’s ward needed repairing, it was my telephone that rang. The article went on:

Sometimes pharmacy does come into its own, as when the following prescription was brought to me by a worried looking dispenser:

Arsen. Trioxid. 5 grains
Strychnin. Hyd. 1 grain
Ft. pil. mitte 200

He was eventually reassured on learning that this was only a repeat of our Elephant Tonic pills.

The elephants used by the timber company on the Rejang river occasionally got bored with dragging logs around and needed a pick-me-up.

In 1959, after five and a half years in Sarawak I decided that it was time to return to England and reality. We had servants, free and lavish accommodation, and I was earning the then princely sum of £2,000 a year tax free (there was no income tax in Sarawak). Alcohol and tobacco were free of duty and freely indulged. Any longer among the fleshpots, I thought, prompted by my primitive methodist hair shirt unbringing, and I should be ruined for life.

Life in England and men in suits

I decided that I would go into industry and as my wife wanted to return to Yorkshire, the county of her birth, I applied to join Reckitt & Colman in Hull. By one of those strange coincidences which have been a feature of my life, on the arrival of The Journals that had been sent out to Sarawak and rerouted to me in England I discovered that the company had been advertising for an executive in its pharmaceutical division. When I was interviewed by the personnel director — this was before the days of human resources departments — he was so impressed by my having applied to the company without knowing of their advertisement that he gave me the job.

Sarawak had spoiled me. I was no longer on a princely salary and I paid tax. After being my own boss, I was now beholden to a corporate hierarchy. Even worse, I discovered that my boss, the head of the pharmaceutical division, whom I was supposed to succeed, was the sort of taciturn martinet I thought had gone out with Dickens. He was not a pharmacist and probably felt threatened.

There were, however, some redeeming features. The technical information section came under my supervision and each week I got to read every medical and trade journal that mattered. At one stage I learnt that the company was interested in expanding its pharmaceutical interests and I carried out a review of smaller British pharmaceutical companies and put a convincing case to my boss that the most suitable candidate for acquisition was Westminster Laboratories, the makers of Senokot. Three weeks later the board made an approach to Westminster Laboratories and after due negotiations bought the company. My boss took the credit.

Poultry

After five years my boss still had seven years to go to retirement and I had had enough. I applied for the post of general manager of a small chemical company, went over to Manchester to an agency for the interview and discovered that the firm was in Hull, about half a mile from Reckitt & Colman. I popped in to see the managing director a couple of times and got the job. The original company had been linseed oil refiners for Hull’s paint industry and the founder, nearly 90-years old, still came in twice a week and told me tales of how he started up with a cast-iron vat in a back room, crossing the river Hull by ferry daily on his bicycle. He had built up a substantial business, married an Ellerman Wilson shipping line heiress and now lived in a splendid East Riding country mansion. The linseed oil trade was gone, superseded by acrylic-based paint, but its chemical company offshoot had survived. It had made good profits supplying vast quantities of coal tar disinfectants and the chloroxylenol antiseptics of the pharmacopoeias to the countries of the British empire, mainly India. I was to bring it up to date.

The laboratory was basic and run by a self-taught character called Bill Marshall. With 30 years’ experience, he had become a wily chemist. After visiting the company’s main customers I could see that we needed to offer them new lines. Some came out my head, while others were copies of existing products. Whatever problem I set Bill, he solved it and came up with a formula that was manufacturable, stable and effective.

I became interested in the veterinary field. Poultry were beginning to be housed in large sheds on deep sawdust litter and were prone to infections. I formulated aerosol disinfectants and some mornings I found myself in buildings the size of aircraft hangars, taking air samples by torchlight before and after spraying with the antibacterial, standing on deep litter and surrounded by several thousand chickens. I am embarrassed now to think that I colluded with factory farming but the tests showed that our products did reduce aerial bacteria counts.

I spent five enjoyable years innovating new products. I also designed the advertising literature, got it printed, bargained with Liverpool oil refiners over prices for the palm and coconut oil we bought for making three-ton batches of Soft Soap BP, negotiated with the unions and went out selling to our larger customers. I had no intention of doing anything else.

Then I rang a friend, who was an astrologer. He said he had just been about to telephone me; I was going to change my job and it would entail moving house. I told him he was talking nonsense but, that Sunday, I found myself looking in the situations vacant section of the newspapers. And there was the job: the managing director designate of the second largest veterinary pharmaceutical company in the UK. I applied. Three days later I got a call from Sandy McTigg, the managing director, whom I had done business with. There were 104 applicants but he thought I would be on the shortlist. The company was in Glasgow. I went up for an interview and was offered the job at double my salary. Unbeknown to me, Sandy had been impressed with my record and had bulldozed me in.

I was supposed to understudy Sandy for a year but the day I started he was off sick with a knee problem. It turned out that he had an aggressive cancer of the leg and he never came into the office again. Within six months, he was dead.

The other directors, having had an Englishman forced on them, now had a chance to appoint a Scot. I had a watertight contract but did not wait for the knives to be drawn. I made a case that my contract terms had not been honoured and that I was entitled to depart with severance pay. I duly collected my tax-free golden handshake and left.

There were no other managing directorships vacant in veterinary pharmaceutical companies. What to do? It took me 10 days before the penny dropped and I realised that with the golden handshake I could buy a pharmacy.

Community pharmacy and writing

I had had no experience of community pharmacy for 20 years and needed to get up to date. I applied for the managership of a pharmacy in Bradford. The owner, feet up on his desk, interviewed me in Leeds. He had developed other interests, importing wigs from Europe among other things, and needed a manager for his pharmacy. I explained that I intended to buy my own pharmacy but I was rusty. I was prepared to buy my experience, named a modest salary and the owner thought he had got a bargain.

Things seemed to have changed since my last spell in a community pharmacy. Either that or it was because I was in the West Riding. The people were different. The pharmacy assistants, girls aged 16 and 15 years old, informed me on a regular basis and in detail of their amours and, after years closeted with men in grey suits, their openness was refreshing. I liked the customers too and I decided to try to buy a pharmacy in the area. After three months one came on the market and that was that.

Community pharmacy was satisfying in that I was now dealing with people rather than products. We took a little time to adjust, my customers and I. I had spent 20 years conversing mainly with male graduates. Most of those coming into my pharmacy were women, blunt Bradfordians with little tolerance for those on high horses, and I soon learnt that I needed to dismount to gain their trust. Once gained though, their faith was touching. It was no good my attempting to sell mothers proprietary medicines from the shelves. Little Billy’s cough needed a mixture made up by me in the dispensary. Faced with such belief, I could not do other than oblige.

One thing that running a pharmacy did allow was time to write. I had always liked drama and decided that there was a gap in the television market for a life of Jung. The BBC’s Freud series in the 1980s had been dull, but Jung, having charisma and mistresses, was an ideal subject. I planned a six-part series, sent the first episode to the head of the television script unit, Tony Dinner, and was surprised to get an enthusiastic response. There was only one snag. As a new writer I couldn’t be given a six-part series. It would have to be a single film. Not seeing how Jung’s life could be compressed into one and a half hours, I dropped the idea and it was almost a year later before I thought of a way to comply. I would cover Jung’s early life. I sent the film script off and after three weeks, puzzled by no reply, I telephoned the BBC. Tony Dinner had been axed. The Corporation was going through one of its periodic cost-cutting exercises and was no longer accepting unsolicited scripts.

My future as a television writer thwarted, I was reading through an article in The Journal one day when I thought “I could do as well as that”. The outcome, copies of Journals in which I have been fortunate enough to have had articles printed, fills several shoe boxes.