Elsie Higgon

Elsie Seville Higgon (; 5 September 1879 – 6 May 1969) was a British pharmacist, researcher, lecturer and Suffragette. Higgon was the first Joint Secretary of the (National) Association of Women Pharmacists; researcher for King's College, the British Medical Journal and the British Pharmaceutical Codex; Lecturer in Chemistry at Portsmouth Municipal College; proprietor pharmacist of two businesses in Hampstead and proprietor of the Gordon Hall School of Pharmacy for Women in Gordon Square.

Early life and education Higgon was born Elsie Seville Hooper on 5 September 1879 at 174 Amhurst Road in West Hackney, London to Cleeve Hooper (1842–1910), a leather factor, and Elizabeth Hooper (née Mack; 1843–1921).

Graduating from the University of London in January 1899, Higgon enrolled at the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain (PSGB) School of Pharmacy.

Career Hooper was awarded the Redwood Research Scholarship in 1902, the first woman to achieve this since its foundation in 1888. She was awarded a Burroughs Scholarship by the Pharmaceutical Society in 1903, also the first woman to do so. She undertook her research with Professor Greenish, including a joint paper in 1904 on "The So-called Beilschmeide Bark" (later published in the Pharmaceutical Journal in 1907). Having made a detailed anatomical study of the bark, she established that it was not a Laurearceous bark. She had a number of other notes and papers published in the Pharmaceutical Journal: with Greenish on "Constituents of Simarouba Bark" in 1902, on "Exhaustion of Belladonna Root with Alcohol" in July 1904, and on "Liquid Extract of Cinchona" in October 1904.

After a year's analytical work for Professor Huntington at King's College, she worked with Mr E.F. Harrison on Secret Remedies (1909), a publication produced by the British Medical Journal to expose the previously unknown formulae of popular medicines. After a year, she left to take up a chemical lectureship at Portsmouth Municipal College, which she held for four and a half years, setting up and leading the pharmacy course. During World War One, she worked as an analyst in charge of the laboratory at Ucal in Cheltenham.

From 1920, she remained London-based for the rest of her working life. During 1921 her registered address changed to Gordon Hall School of Pharmacy, Gordon Square, London, where she had trained under Margaret Buchanan. In 1923, she presented a paper with her colleague Katherine King at the British Pharmaceutical Conference on "International Standardisation of Colchicum Preparations". Hooper also owned two pharmacies, where she was keen to apprentice female pharmacy students from the school: from 1924 until 1945 at 12a Belsize Terrace, London NW3 and at 1 Flask Walk, Hampstead, London NW3 until 1961. She served as the Association's Vice President in 1926, and its President in 1928.

A short report in The Chemist and Druggist on 24 June 1911 informs the reader that Elsie Hooper B.Sc.has taken part in the Science Section of a march to call for women's suffrage. Although she is not pictured in the piece which focusses on the small women pharmacists' section, she was one of 40,000 women who marched from Victoria Embankment to the Royal Albert Hall on Saturday 17 June 1911.

Personal life On 31 July 1920, aged 40, she married William John Higgon (1886–1966) at Hendon Register Office. The marriage certificate records her profession as analytical chemist whilst her new husband was an aeronautical engineer, having previously served with the Royal Air Force. In 1939 they were recorded as living at 43 Belsize Avenue, London where William Higgon was listed as of independent means and Elsie Higgon as a chemist and ARP warden. There were another 17 people living at the address including Elsie Higgon's colleague Katherine King.