Margaret Elizabeth Buchanan

Margaret Elizabeth Buchanan (26 July 1865 – 1 January 1940) was a British pharmacist and pioneer of women in pharmacy.

Early life and education

Buchanan was born in Clerkenwell, London, to Albert Buchanan, a physician, and Elizabeth Anne Blake. She was educated at North London Collegiate School. She qualified as a pharmacist in 1887 having served her apprenticeship with her father, and subsequently with Isabella Clarke-Keer and her husband Thomas Keer. She enrolled as a student in the Pharmaceutical Society's School of Pharmacy in Bloomsbury Square in 1886. She passed the Minor exam and registered as a Chemist and Druggist later that year. She passed the Major examination in 1887, gaining a silver medal for taking second place in the Pereira competition, the first woman to achieve this.

Career

She started as a hospital dispenser at the Westminster General Infirmary, the first registered Pharmaceutical Society member to hold the post. In 1892, she wrote that "it is becoming recognised by the public and the trade that women can be both business-like and well-trained scientifically, the number of lady-pharmacists will doubtless increase as the field further opens up." When Henry Deane's pharmacy at 16 The Pavement, Clapham Common became available, in October 1914, she took the opportunity to establish a business that could also contribute to the position of women in the profession. Buchanan was one of four directors, all registered women pharmacists, alongside Agnes Borrowman, Sophia Heywood and Margaret MacDiarmid.