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The mysterious chemist
Just over a couple of years ago I spent some time compiling an accurate list of the chemists, who had owned shops in Rushden, for the Hearts & Soles website. I had a particular interest since I had been an apprentice at Boots in the 1950’s and some years later was involved in the opening of another pharmacy in the town.
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I thought that my list was complete until in early October I went to the Chichele Society’s Annual Exhibition in Chichele College in Higham Ferrers. Looking at some old newspapers on display I was surprised to see in the advertisements in a 1901 newspaper one for R. G. Gourlay, Dispensing and Family Chemist, 78 High Street, Rushden. In all my previous research I had never seen mention of Mr Gourlay and so I decided to research further into his history.
Robert George Gourlay has proved to be quite an enigma and although I have been able to trace some of his past history I can find no trace of him after his presence in Rushden in 1901. There is no doubt that he did move to Rushden from Lytham, in Lancashire, as his name also appears on the local electoral roll for 1901. He evidently wasn’t in business very long as in the 1903 Kelly's Directory there is an entry for Mrs Florence Tassel, confectioner, at this address which is opposite to the Feathers public house. Old photographs of the High Street never seem to show this section of the street but the shop was subsequently occupied by the Singer Sewing Machine Company between 1910 and 1914 and now, in 2019, is a hair stylist. Since I originally wrote this I have found that in July 1919 a Walter Spavins at this address registered an Enfield motor cycle which, a few months later, he sold to his neighbour at No. 76 a James Nix.
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At sometime he was at
65 High Street in 1899
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Robert was born in 1862 in Barnsley, Yorkshire and in the 1871 census he is shown as a 9 year old living with his family, at Monk Bretton, a village just outside Barnsley and father was an unemployed traveller and mother was also a traveller. His siblings, a brother and two sisters, both younger than Robert were all born in Scotland so the family must have moved there after Robert was born. By 1891 he and his brother Henry, both by now chemists, were living with their widowed mother at Moss Side in Manchester.
This is where the mystery starts; Robert was evidently in Rushden in 1899 and 1900 as he appears in the Rushden Echo review of the Rushden shops’ Christmas displays. He is shown in the 1901 electoral roll as being at 78 High St. Rushden but in the 1901 census, taken at the end of March he is living at Lytham as a visitor at his brother’s house and his occupation is shown as Chemist, temporally (sic) retired, and he is now married having married in 1892. His wife Minnie (Coope) is shown in the 1901 census as living at a different address, with her sister at Holmes Chapel. In the 1911 census Minnie was living with her sister’s family at Chorlton cum Hardy and was shown as a widow. Robert died in Manchester on 3rd December 1909, aged 47.Robert’s brother Henry, who had a pharmacy in Lytham, is listed in the Pharmaceutical Society register of 1909 but not Robert. Why come to Rushden from Lancashire to set up in his all too brief business ownership? We may never be able to answer.
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