Sunderland Pharmacy School helps Beamish Museum to set up an early 1900s’ Chemist shop
Sunderland Pharmacy School has recently been helping Beamish Museum to set up a new exhibit that demonstrates a typical Edwardian chemist business, with dispensary and aerated water sections.
In the new chemist, named after William Smith, a chemist who worked on Silver Street in Durham, visitors can learn about miraculous 1900s “cure alls” stocked in jars of all shapes and sizes on the shelves behind the counter – cobalt blue bottles for syrups and actinic green glass for poisons.
The Pharmacy School has helped the Museum disposing of unwanted medicines and ingredients, cleaning the valuable glass and ceramic vessels and providing powder and liquid filling materials for display purposes.
Paul Carter, Senior Lecturer at the School and Chair of the Hope Winch Society, said: “In addition, we put on a short course to introduce Beamish staff to various extemporaneous manufacturing processes that may have been used around the turn of the 20th Century. The Chemist is now open and looks fantastic. It’s worth a visit!”
Beamish Museum is an open air museum for the North East, illustrating the way of life of people in North East England during the 1820s, 1900s and 1940s and bringing the region’s history alive. You can find more about W Smith’s Chemist at this link: http://www.beamish.org.uk/chemist/