Medicine Stamp Duty: memoranda from Edgar Linstead

The file takes the form of a 'scrapbook', and comprises various copy memoranda from Edgar Linstead (addressee not usually given) on the wording of BW&Co labels and advertisements in relation to liability for Medicine Stamp Duty, with related typed extracts and original cuttings from pharmaceutical journals.

Includes John Humphrey, "The incidence of Medicine Stamp Duty: how payment of duty is incurred or avoided," The Pharmaceutical Journal (27 February, 1904), pp. 248-50, which begins:

"Medicine Stamp Duty is payable upon every packet, box, bottle, or other inclosure containing a secret remedy or proprietary medicine for human use, when sold or exposed to sale in Great Britain, unless the medicine consists of a simple or entire drug, such as acetanilide or rhubarb. If a medicine which would otherwise be liable to duty is supplied in a bottle, box, or other inclosure, brought by the customer who asks for it, no claim to duty arises in that particular transaction; further, the Board of Inland Revenue does not insist upon the payment of duty when otherwise dutiable pills, powders, etc. are sold simply wrapped in paper, without being sealed up, or gummed, or tied with string, though it is held by the Board that, in strict law, even a screw of paper may constitute a dutiable inclosure. Compounded medicines for human use are regarded as secret remedies or nostrums, and become liable to duty, if they can only be made by particular persons, because the recipes in accordance with which they are prepared are not the common property of all the world."

1900-1908

1 file Material is adhered to ruled bound pages (without covers). Binding weak with some loose pages.

Copyright assigned to the Wellcome Trust