The Late John Hemensley Mrpharmsoc

[Charles Flynn]

A tribute to Mr Hemensley who passed away on Monday.

 

The late Mr John Hemensley MRPharm.S

 

Pharmacist colleagues are deeply saddened by the sudden death of our friend and senior colleague Mr John Hemensley MRPharmS. John was a gentleman. He was well respected, professional, and full of integrity and with his quiet unassuming manner an extremely busy person both inside and outside the profession.

 

John took over the family business of Frowde’s from his uncle and father many years ago and has now handed it over to his son, Ian who runs a modern day pharmacy practice. He was of the old school, dispensing over-the-counter remedies and giving timely advice on medicines to his patients as well as dispensing doctors and vets prescriptions to order. He combined old-fashioned courtesy with current developments in the science of pharmacy. He had learned his profession by working under Tommy Oates, at Noble’s Hospital Dispensary and in the family chemist shop on Windsor Road, Douglas and continued to the present with his regular attendance at pharmacy lectures and workshops.

 

Many will recollect his life time interest in pharmaceutical antiquities not only through his talks to local groups but also by the frequent displays in his shop window of pharmacy rounds, coloured carboys, suppository and pill making machines, prescription books going back to the early 1900’s, ointment slabs, pestle and mortars for the making of emulsions etc. When I qualified in the 60’s it was not unusual for pharmacists to extemporaneously dispense and indeed make suppositories on the premises rather than handing them out ready made and labelled as now. Wrapping the highly polished bottle of dispensing chemist prepared Kaolin et Morph, Amon et Ipecac, Mist. Mag. Trisil. with white demy and closing the pack with red sealing wax was the norm. Something of the art of dispensing has been lost over the years and with it the professional satisfaction to the local pharmacist of being totally responsible for the making of the medicine. This of course has been replaced by superior technical patient care with modern medicinal products.

 

John was professional through and through and like many of us used to undertake 24-hour cover for the local community. Police call outs in the early hours were part of normal chemist duty as well as in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s opening the shop for Sunday and weekdays after hours rota duties. John would have been faced with long queues of patients at 6 p.m. half day closing. He would have conscientiously dispensed perhaps two or three hundred prescriptions in the one or two hours on Thursday evening reassuring patients on the way, giving doctors a call to check doses and appropriate medication as well as giving timely advice to a mother with a very unwell child. The life of a pharmacist was and remains full of interest and is a vital and essential part of front line patient care.

 

Outside the shop, John served as a member of pharmaceutical and NHS committees. He was a member of the Manx Chemists Association, a past Chairman of the IOM branch of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and latterly our Public Relations Officer. He also served as a member of several NHS committees namely the Pharmaceutical List Committee, the Prescribing and Therapeutic Forum, the Drug and Alcohol Prescribing Liaison Group working with the police on alcohol and drug problems and was a member of the IOM Medicines Commission giving many hours of voluntary service to the community.

 

With John’s passing the people of Douglas have lost almost the last of an era of Manx pharmacists, of which I am one, who were independent and a normal part of the business and professional community. I am thinking of men such as Harold Maley, John Bowman, John and Charlie Kerruish, Arthur Craine, Ron Gill, John Atkinson, Melvyn Corris, Dan Gelling and Ted Kerruish. Lloyds’s have swallowed up many of their businesses although some remain independent.

 

Beyond pharmacy, John was a leading sportsman with his interest in badminton and serving as a timekeeper during the TT races. He was also very much a devout churchgoer.

 

Pharmacists and the people of the island have lost a unique and very special person. The Manx people have lost one of their foremost sons. Our sympathies go out to his devoted wife, Margaret, to his son, Ian and to all his family and friends.

 

 

Charles Flynn MRPharmS

Committee Member,

for Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain (IOM Branch).

[Deejay Denzel]

I did the electrical work at his pharmacy when it was being re-vamped. The guy was a true gentleman, sad news.