125 stories for 125 years

A.G. Horner

Born in 1876, Arthur George Horner was apprenticed to master pharmacist George Eakins Gulliver in 1891. The terms under which his ‘good and faithful services’ were carried out included a payment of £100 made by George Horner to George Gulliver, who paid his apprentice 10 shillings a week during the second and third years, increasing to £1 weekly in the fourth year, returning the initial cost of the apprenticeship.

The hours of work were long, beginning at 8am and finishing at 10pm. Time off was at the whim of the master pharmacist. Arthur’s formal and technical learning took place at the college in Swanston Street. Like all apprentices he attended part time. His fees contributed 49 per cent of the cost of his education, the remainder being a government subsidy of 38 per cent and a Pharmaceutical Society of Australasia contribution of 13 per cent. Arthur applied himself well, winning silver medals in 1895 for materia medica and for chemistry. He successfully passed his exams in 1897.

This was a time of economic depression combined with an over-supply of pharmacists on the Melbourne market and Arthur had difficulty finding work. In April 1897 he was engaged for one month as dispenser to the Launceston General Hospital. Temporarily freed from the worry of unemployment, Arthur crossed Bass Strait to Launceston. In May, when applications were again called for, he was reappointed. One of the vagaries of such an appointment in Tasmania was non-recognition of the pharmacist qualification from Victoria. Although Tasmania had no college of pharmacy, Arthur was compelled to present himself annually to a board of medical examiners in Hobart in order to demonstrate his ability to act as dispenser at a public hospital, and each year he was issued with a new certificate to that effect.

In 1905 he resigned from the Launceston General Hospital. Widening social contact with the business community of Launceston led to the establishment of his own pharmacy. Arthur was one of nine pharmaceutical chemists, exclusive of the hospital dispensary, serving a population of some 18,500. The pharmacy opened in January 1906.

At the outbreak of World War I, Arthur, in a reserve occupation,became a member of the Launceston Volunteer Rifles. Following the armistice the deepening economic depression in Tasmania concerned Arthur. He became active in a group known as the 50,000 League. Their objectives included a ‘buy locally made’ policy, the establishment of further manufacturing plants in Tasmania, and stemming the exodus of enterprising individuals from the island. On a personal level he was not immune to the effects of the Great Depression which he masked for several years but which ultimately contributed to an early death from stroke in 1938. The pharmacy Arthur had established was sold in 1949.

Source: Bomford, J, Victorian College of Pharmacy: 125 years of history, 1881–2006, 2006.