The Apothecaries' Garden by Sue Minter

Author:Sue Minter [Karin Cadwell, Cindy Turner-Maffei]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2013-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

5

1899–1970: A NEW BENEFACTOR

AND A NEW ROLE

The last days of the Society of Apothecaries at the Chelsea Physic Garden had been marked by a declining interest in the study of plants in relation to medicine and increasing financial stringency within the Society. Casting these issues aside a new benefactor stepped in to rescue the Garden, at the instigation of the Charity Commissioners and, in so doing, completely transformed its role.1

The City Parochial Foundation was a new charity, founded in 1891, for applying funds to ‘the poorer classes of the Metropolis’. Before the entry of the state into the financing of public education beyond the age of fourteen under the Education Act of 1944, it was common for secondary education to be supported by charity. The City Parochial Foundation gave considerable support to technical education, especially polytechnics, in its early years. A Treasury enquiry had identified a need for educational provision to students of botany from the Royal College of Science and from London polytechnics. This could be provided at the Garden. And it was this charitable educational role which the Foundation decided to accept as within its objects as its first long-term commitment as a charity. The objects of the Garden under its new scheme were that:

The Charity and its endowments shall be administered exclusively for the promotion of the study of Botany, with special reference to the requirements of

(a) General Education

(b) Scientific instruction and research in Botany including Vegetable Physiology, and

(c) Instruction in Technical Pharmacology as far as the culture of medicinal plants is concerned From the Charity Commission scheme of 1899

Provided the costs did not exceed about 2 per cent of the gross income of the Central Fund of the Foundation, the support to the Garden was solid. But it meant that the Garden was now more focused on the provision of plants for general research and teaching, rather than the growing of plants for identification by apothecaries and medical students in training. Though some pharmacological training continued, in fact many decades of the Garden’s history in the twentieth century mirror the development of agricultural research, particularly the focus on the physiology and diseases of crop plants including cereals such as rye and root crops. Plant and animal physiology, along with traditional plant breeding, were the agricultural sciences of the first half of the twentieth century in the same way as the more controversial sciences of genetic modification tended to dominate in the later decades.

The Committee of Management set about its new charge with characteristic energy, with a staff appointment and a major rebuilding programme. William Hales was appointed as Curator and Head Gardener rolled into one at the recommendation of Sir William Thistelton-Dyer, Director of Kew. The requirement was for ‘an expert in the cultivation of plants, with sufficient scientific knowledge to enable him to satisfy the requirements of the various lectures and classes’. This ‘working curatorship’ was a great success for the Garden and Hales became one of its more distinguished Curators during twenty-eight years of service.

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