DISPENSING

366pp., narrow folio (16 x 40 cm). 43 lines to the page. In original vellum binding, with covers ruled in blue. On front cover printed label of 'PERKS & LLEWELLYN, | Dispensing & Family Chemist, | HIGH STREET, HITCHIN.' Marbled edges and endpapers. First leaf with 5 cm closed tear. Written out in black ink, in two or three different hands, with the granting of credit recorded in red. Containing a mass of information about local history, product and price. Early entries are stamped with date, later entries have date written out.

366pp., narrow folio (16 x 40 cm). 43 lines to the page. In original vellum binding, with covers ruled in blue. On front cover printed label of 'PERKS & LLEWELLYN, | Dispensing & Family Chemist, | HIGH STREET, HITCHIN.' Marbled edges and endpapers. First leaf with 5 cm closed tear. Written out in black ink, in two or three different hands, with the granting of credit recorded in red. Containing a mass of information about local history, product and price. Early entries are stamped with date, later entries have date written out.

The Liverpool Apothecaries Company was founded in 1836 with a capital of £100,000, its premises comprising a warehouse, chemical and pharmaceutical laboratories, and a retail shop in Seel Street. John Abraham ran the dispensing department from 1838 until his resignation in 1843, going on in 1845 to found, as junior partner, the pharmaceutical chemists Clay & Abraham.

12mo, 2 pp. Aged, and with a small hole worn into the centre, without, however, any loss of text. With one side of the leaf printed in double column in the style of an eighteenth-century newspaper, and headed 'Quaint Newspaper Cuttings A.D. 1738. | Ye Fulhame Presse London. S.W.' The other side is laid out to be folded twice, making four small pages (one having 'Not to be cut.' at the foot). One of the four carries an advertisement for Longstaff, with an engraving of his sign, 'Ye stille'. Another puffs 'Keith Longstaff's Autumn Medicine'.

12mo: 2 pp. Sixteen lines of text. Good, on aged paper, with a strip from the previous mount adhering at the head of the reverse. Docketed in a contemporary hand 'Jacob Bell' and 'M. P. for St. Albans 1851.' He thanks him for taking the trouble to search 'the last document which fortunately is found much to my surprise in a store room in my own house'. He 'cannot account for the accident' and apologises once again.