James Biggart
Tobagonian politician and pharmacist
James Alpheus Alexander Biggart (1878 – 11 August 1932) was a Tobagonian pharmacist who represented Tobago in the Legislative Council of Trinidad and Tobago from 1925 until his death in 1932. He was the first Black pharmacist in Tobago and the first person elected to represent Tobago on the Legislative Council.
Early career
Biggart began work as an assistant druggist in 1892. The process involved apprenticing under private doctors and government medical officers who then wrote letters to his education and experience. One of his supervisors, E. Gerard Blanc, described Biggart as "painstaking, apt, and very intelligent pupil who made considerable progress in a short time". By 1899, Biggart owned the only pharmacy in the Windward district of Tobago, and was the only pharmacist in Tobago who had completed training in practical and theoretical chemistry at the government laboratory in Trinidad.
In 1889, Tobago was united with Trinidad under a single administrative unit under the Governor of Trinidad. Tobago's status was further downgraded to that of a ward in 1899, and Trinidadian law was applied to Tobago. Tobagonian law did not require pharmacists to be licensed, but under Trinidadian law they had to pass a licensing examination set by the Medical Board. Biggart attempted to take the licensing examination in Scarborough in 1900, but the examination was cancelled, forcing him to travel to Trinidad if he wanted to take the examination.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q101070830. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1878, 1932, 1925 and 1892.
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This entry incorporates text from “James Biggart” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.