Leslie Gerald Matthews

Leslie Matthews was born in Tharston, Norfolk in 1897 and died on 24 February 1997 a few months before his 100th birthday. From comparatively humble beginnings his was a record of achievement that few could match. At the age of 14, in 1911, he was indentured for a four-year apprenticeship at Cullen's Pharmacy in Norwich and was one of the few remaining pharmacists who could remember the inauguration of Lloyd George's National Insurance Act in 1913 which activated a great expansion in dispensing, most of which had previously been undertaken by general practitioners. In 1916 Matthews was sent with the army to Flanders and volunteered as a stretcher bearer. He refused promotion and served on the Somme and other battlefields, returning to England with a serious arm injury a month before the armistice. He was awarded the Military Medal for bravery under fire while rescuing wounded comrades in No-Man's land. In 1919 Matthews entered the School of Pharmacy in London, qualified in 1920 and joined the administration department of Burroughs Wellcome. He travelled widely for the firm, setting up subsidiaries in New Zealand, Brazil, Agentina and Pakistan; he was appointed company secretary in 1941 and a director of the Wellcome Foundation. While firewatching in World War II, during which he served as secretary of the Penicillin Committee, the Insulin Manufacturers' Association and the Therapeutic Research Association, he used his quiet moments to read law and was called to the Bar of the Middle Temple in 1945. Matthews retired from Burroughs Wellcome in 1960 and published the standard work, The History of Pharmacy in Britain in 1962, followed by The Royal Apothecaries in 1967. In all, he published some 140 papers in learned journals. When the British Society for the History of Pharmacy was established in 1967, Matthews was its founder-president and in 1992, when the Society introduced the Leslie Matthews medal for outstanding contributions on the subject, he was its first recipient. His remarkable energy, tenacity and lively interest in all matters antiquarian, remained undimmed until the end despite failing eyesight in recent years. He came to every Thursday meeting at Burlington House, a neat figure in a city suit and carefully knotted bow tie sitting near the front; and was a regular participant at pharmaceutical conferences and meetings of the B.S.H.P. The choice of Matthews for the Urdang Medal, an award established by the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy in 1969, is an indication of his international status and he was the first pharmacist to be elected president of the Osler Club, a society devoted to medical history. An accomplished linguist, he was a past chairman of the Franco-British Pharmaceutical Commission and an early fan of Eurostar; also a Cordon Bleu cook. He was an oboist of more than ordinary merit and, in his capacity as secretary of the Promenade Concert Circle, a friend of Sir Henry Wood for many years. Matthews joined the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries of London in 1947 and dined with his fellow liverymen in Apothecaries Hall a few days before his death - his usual amiable, modest self. His splendid collection of prints, drawings and caricatures was bequeathed in his will to the Royal Phamaceutical Society's museum along with four seventeenth-century Italian drug jars from his impressive collection of ceramics, some of which he had dug up himself.