Nellie Rose Clayton (1888-1988)

Pharmacist. Early HSV member.

Nellie Clayton was born on 17 August 1888 at Geelong, the daughter of John Joseph Clayton, a journalist with the Geelong Advertiser, and his wife Ellen Teresa O’Meagher. She attended Clarisville Private School, McKillop Street and was a pupil there when her father died unexpectedly in 1897 when Nellie was 9 years old. Her father left her £500 in his will, enough to secure her education and by 1900 she was a pupil at St Agnes’ Ladies College, Geelong, run by the Sisters of Mercy.

In 1903, aged 15, Nellie passed the quarterly Pharmacy Board exams held at the College of Pharmacy, one of only two females on the list. By 1905 she was apprenticed to chemist T A Dickson in Geelong and studying at the Ballarat School of Mines where she passed theoretical chemistry Grade I, practical chemistry (inorganic) Grade 1 with honour (she gained 100%), Botany Grade I with honour and Botany Grade II. She was the only female on this list.

Nellie qualified as a pharmacist in 1909, the first Geelong girl to do so. She had secured first place in the final pharmacy exams, but had had to mark time when her apprenticeship to Dickson expired until she was old enough to qualify. She became a registered pharmacist in 1910, aged 22.

Nellie, her mother Ellen and sister Myrtle (9 years younger and born the year their father died) remained in Geelong where she worked as a chemist’s assistant until November 1915 when she chalked up another first – she became the first woman to take up the position of assistant dispenser at Melbourne Hospital.

Her family moved to Melbourne with her, taking up residence in Elm Street, Hawthorn. Her sister Myrtle trained as a nurse at Melbourne Hospital in the 1920s, so the hospital was important in the sisters’ lives.

In 1936, perhaps in the aftermath of the Victorian Centenary celebrations, Nellie Clayton joined the Historical Society of Victoria. There is no evidence of an active involvement in the Society’s archives and hers was a short-lived membership: she resigned in 1941. Perhaps her busy professional life and the responsibilities of looking after an elderly mother left her no room for other things.

After their mother Ellen’s death in 1943 aged 83, Nellie and Myrtle Clayton, neither of whom married, remained in their Elm Street home. Myrtle died first – in 1961 aged 64. Nellie died on 7 June 1988 aged 99, 2 months shy of her century. The sisters are buried in the Roman Catholic section of Burwood Cemetery with their mother.

Cheryl Griffin, 3 November 2023

Sources:
RHSV membership records
Victorian electoral rolls
Victorian Birth, Death, Marriage indexes
Victorian Probate and Wills
TROVE newspapers online
Burwood Cemetery records
Pharmaceutical Society of Victoria year books
Pharmacists Register Victoria
Nurses Register Victoria