Qualla: Worshipful Society of Apothecaries

Worshipful Society of Apothecaries: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Edwardx, CC BY-SA 3.0. Agatha Christie sat the Apothecaries' Assistants exam in 1917 and passed. She was twenty-six. The First World War was on, and she was working as a hospital dispenser at the Red Cross Hospital in Torquay. The qualification she earned at Apothecaries' Hall in Blackfriars taught her how to measure, mix, and recognise the substances that, two decades later, would kill more than eighty characters in her crime novels - cyanide, strychnine, arsenic, digitalis, thallium. Christie is only one of many notable people who passed through the Society of Apothecaries on their way to becoming someone else. The poet John Keats qualified as a licentiate here in 1816. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson qualified in 1865 and became the first openly female recipient of a UK medical qualification. Nobel laureate Sir Ronald Ross qualified in 1881. All of them sat exams in a Blackfriars hall that, with the exception of the Stationers', is the oldest standing livery hall in the City of London.

Image: Edwardx | CC BY-SA 3.0

Worshipful Society of Apothecaries: Breaking Away from the Grocers

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Philafrenzy, Public domain. For most of the Middle Ages, London's apothecaries were a sub-group of the Grocers' Company. The trade was described in 1365 as the Mistery of Grossers, Pepperers and Apothecaries, since spices and medicines came in through the same Mediterranean trade routes and were sold throug...

Image: Philafrenzy | Public domain

Worshipful Society of Apothecaries: The Rose Case

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Whispyhistory, CC BY-SA 4.0. Once the apothecaries had their charter, they fought a long battle with the College of Physicians over who could legally practise medicine. The college argued that apothecaries were dispensers, not doctors; the apothecaries countered that they had been treating patients for centu...

Image: Whispyhistory | CC BY-SA 4.0

Worshipful Society of Apothecaries: Apothecaries' Hall

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cmglee, CC BY-SA 3.0. The society moved into Cobham House in Blackfriars in 1632. The building was originally part of the Dominican priory of Black Friars, abandoned at the dissolution of the monasteries a century earlier. The Great Fire of 1666 destroyed much of it; a new hall by Edward Jerman was co...

Image: Cmglee | CC BY-SA 3.0

Worshipful Society of Apothecaries: The Chelsea Physic Garden

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Daderot, CC0. In 1673 the society founded a four-acre garden in Chelsea, on the north bank of the Thames upstream of the city, for the cultivation and study of medicinal plants. Sir Hans Sloane - whose collection later founded the British Museum - granted the apothecaries the rights to the man...

Image: Daderot | CC0

Worshipful Society of Apothecaries: What the Society Does Now

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Daderot, CC0. The society stopped manufacturing drugs in 1922. It stopped issuing primary medical qualifications in 1999. What it still does is run postgraduate diploma examinations in specialisms that no other body covers: medical jurisprudence, history of medicine, philosophy of medicine, me...

Image: Daderot | CC0