Miscellaneous Papers of No Value
This is exactly the sort of note on a bundle of papers designed to upset an archivist. Either the note is right, in which case why are the papers still here 100s of years later, or the note is totally misleading and you wonder why anyone wrote it in the first place, at the same time breathing a sigh of relief that the papers have survived at all! In this case the note fell into the second category as the papers described as of 'no value' were a series of reports on the inspection of Dublin Apothecary Shops by the College during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Under the Charter of 1692 the King and Queen's College of Physicians in Ireland was granted the power to examine all apothecaries and druggists operating with a seven mile radius of Dublin, and to destroy any defective medicine they found. An Act of Parliament of 1735 confirmed the right of the College to annual inspect all the Apothecaries Shops in Dublin, initially for a period of three years only but the practice actually continued until 1756. The practice was reintroduced under Lucas's Act in 1761.[1]
The bundle of papers contained 29 reports from the period 1743 to 1862, as well as several other related documents. Each report contains the name of the shops inspected and a comment on the nature of the shop. In the early reports this is limited to a one word remark such as well, very well or indifferent, but the later reports contains more details on the shops. Another interesting item in the College's Archive relating to Dublin Apothecary Shops is a book containing a register of Apothecaries in Dublin between 1736 and 1756. Given that the Dublin Trade Directories only started in the 1750s, this is one of the earliest lists of Apothecary Shops.
This Register of Apothecaries had become completely lost in the large College collection and the cataloguing project has been responsible for the rediscovery of this, and many other, treasures.
[1] Widdess, J D H, A History of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland 1654-1963 (1963), pp.63-4.
Images:
* Two details from Reports of the Visitors of Apothecaries' Shops 1743-1791, RCPI/11/1/2
* Register of Apothecaries 1736-1756, RCPI/11/1/1