Rose Coombes Minshull

Rose Coombes Minshull (1845–1905) was one of the first two women members (with Isabella Clarke) of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain (PSGB), admitted in 1879.

Early life and education She was born on the 3rd of August 1845 at 19 Bradford Street, St Martin's, Birmingham, and baptised on 22nd of August. Her father, John Bellamy Minshull (c. 1811-1884), a wood turner, and her mother Elizabeth (c. 1813-1878) already had one daughter Jane (born c. 1842), and went on to have Flora (born c. 1847) and Albert (born c. 1851). The family had moved to London before Albert's birth, and by the 1871 census were at 149 Mile End Road, with an intriguing mix of craft and professional skills and occupations. Jane and Rose were both listed as “medical dispenser”, while their father was a bristle merchant, Flora was an engraver on wood, and Albert was an apprentice to the brush trade.

Historian Ellen Jordan discovered that Rose was one of the pioneering women pharmacists who were supported to go into dispensing via The Society for Promoting the Employment of Women, which had been founded in 1859. The Society appears to have arranged for Rose, alongside Louisa Stammwitz and Isabella Clarke, to be mentored by Elizabeth Garrett (later Anderson) at her St Mary's Dispensary for Women and Children in Marylebone, which opened in 1866. The women were also aided by Robert Hampson (1833-1905), a champion for equality within the PSGB Council.

Rose was a very talented student, coming top of 166 candidates in the PSGB Preliminary Exam in 1873. However, Hampson's motion at the PSGB Council meeting in February 1873 to allow Minshull, Stammwitz and Alice Hart to become "registered students” was rejected by one vote. Minshull and Stammwitz, alongside Isabella Clarke all studied at Dr Muter's South London School of Pharmacy which opened in Kennington in 1870, allowing these aspiring women pharmacists to receive a comprehensive pharmaceutical education. Louisa Stammwitz recalled later "Miss Minshull and I had considerable difficulty in obtaining instruction in a chemical laboratory until Dr Muter very kindly opened his to women." Although never excluded from the PSGB exams, women were only allowed to attend lectures at the PSGB school of pharmacy from 1872, and were not permitted to enter its chemistry laboratories. Minshull, Hart and Stammwitz petitioned the PSGB Council to allow ladies access to its labs, stating in a letter to the Pharmaceutical Journal that “All we ask is to be allowed the same opportunities for study, the same field for competition and the same honours, if justly won.” Permission for women to work in the labs was granted in 1877 after Minshull and Stammwitz had passed the PSGB Minor examination, the two of them achieving the top two places in the chemistry exam.

In 2019 she was added to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.