Page 13 - Pharmacy History 22 Mar 2004

A pharmacy dynasty – four generations of the Marrison family
by Margaret Barker, as told to Geoff Miller
The patriarch of this family George Hoyle Marrison lived in Norfolk, England in the early 1800s,
and at the time of his son’s marriage,
his occupation was shown as ‘dyer’.
He would have had a knowledge of
the ‘materia medica’ of his trade, and this could have provided the incentive for his son becoming a chemist and druggist.
His son, George Oswald Reynolds Marrison, born in 1813 in Norwich, is listed in the 1855 Wiltshire Directory as a ‘Chemist and Druggist & Postmaster’. Around this time he decided to emigrate with his wife and three children to Australia, and in 1859 he was living in Campbelltown in Tasmania.
From 1860 onwards he carried on his profession in various chemist shops in
Launceston, until his death in 1874 at the relatively young age of 61. He had been elected to membership of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain in 1849, and he remained a member for the rest of his life.
His two sons decided to follow in the family tradition and become pharmacists.
volume 2 ■ no 23 ■ July 2004
Pharmacy History Australia ■ 13