On 14 February 2024, Davina Annie Taylor (née Bunting), aged 90 years, of Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire.
Tribute
Davina studied pharmacy at Heriot-Watt College, Edinburgh, much of it in the Grassmarket Boots branch, where a large proportion of the students were Scandinavians and men returning from National Service with a great deal of dispensing experience.
Her apprenticeship with Boots was from 1953 to 1954.
After being registered with the then Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain as a pharmacist, Boots in Corstorphine, Edinburgh, was the first pharmacy she worked in (as far as can be recollected). She also worked at Shandwick Place, Broxburn, Bathgate, Bo’ness and several other branches in the Edinburgh area.
Davina worked in NHS Leith Hospital, before moving south with her husband Bill and children Valerie (aged 7 years) and John (aged 5 years) to Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire, where she did pharmacist locum work over an extensive area, as far north as Trimdon, County Durham, and as far south as Loftus, North Yorkshire.
She then spent many years at North Riding Infirmary Dispensary, from which she ran the dispensary at the local maternity hospital. She retired due to failing memory at 56 years of age in 1989, also leaving the Society then, greatly to her regret.
Davina always had a soft spot for Boots because of their early support to her and right up until just a few weeks before she gave birth to her daughter Valerie. Her husband Bill survives her.
Gordon Ross