The story of the Trouchet family starts back at the time of the French Revolution.  Two families of the landed gentry in Normandy, the Trouchets and the Devilles became united by marriage in 1789 and with the gathering storm clouds of revolution their union had little time to grow and prosper before the decision was made to flee their holdings in France and escape to Mauritius.  The young Monsieur Trouchet soon acquired a sugar plantation on the island and rose again to prosperity.  He was appointed a magistrate in the city of Curepipe, and his family also gained prominence and wealth.  It was to one of his sons Gustave Louis and his wife Marie, that Louis Joseph Alex Trouchet was born in 1870.

Louis Joseph Alex TROUCHET
 

Louis Joseph Alex (known as Alex) was born on 4 September 1870 to Gustave Louis Trouchet and his wife Marie in Mauritius. He was a well-known chemist in Perth and Western Australian country districts and this is his story provided by Geoff Miller - the historian of The Pharmaceutical Society of W.A.

Famous Perth Pharmacy Switches off the Lights
© Geoff Miller 1991

After nearly ninety years, the Pharmacy that had become a household name right throughout Western Australia, not only for its professional service, but also for the many home remedies bearing its labels, has finally closed its doors.

Alex Trouchet & Co., Pharmaceutical Chemists, was founded by one of the real entrepreneurs of Pharmacy who came to Western Australia around the turn of the century, lured by the call of gold.

A man born before his time, Alex Trouchet brought to Perth a flair for marketing and promotion that saw him the owner of the State’s largest pharmaceutical business, as well as having farming and many other diverse interests.

Like so many great enterprises of the past, changing traffic patterns in a growing city as well as the inroads made by Government changes to the very fabric of the profession have lead to this demise.

The present owner Mrs. Elizabeth Heaney, who began her apprenticeship at Trouchet’s Pharmacy in June 1938, had already moved the business from its well know site at the corner of Barrack and Wellington Streets in Perth, to the adjacent suburb of East Perth, due to rising costs and diminishing margins.  The final blow came with the introduction of the co-payment for pensioners by the Commonwealth Government and as the dispensing volume dropped to an unviable level, the final chapter ended on September 30th 1991.

After spending most of his childhood in Mauritius, Alex’s parents and some of the other members of the family decided to emigrate to Melbourne. He was then 10 years old.  After he finished his schooling and was ready to pursue a career, his father had him apprenticed to a chemist in South Melbourne.

During his apprenticeship he became a keen stamp collector and when he graduated as a pharmacist, he and a friend were able to sell their collections and take a trip overseas to Canada and America.  In the United States, Alex resumed studying again and gained a degree in Chemistry.

The pair returned to Australia in 1898 just as the gold rush in Western Australia was attracting people from all over the country, and so Alex and his friend Phil Hawkes packed up and headed for Kalgoorlie.

They arrived in Hannan Street and quickly saw an opportunity to buy J.W. Cotter’s chemist shop in this new boom town.  It was not long before his “own name” remedies became a household word amongst the gold differs and their families.  The success of these medicines, and particularly his Egyptian Corn Cure made him realise the potential of this market and he adopted the design of a Lighthouse as his trademark.  Original earthenware pots and their lids bearing this brand are much sought after by collectors today, as they were in use until around 1928 when rising costs forced him to use plain ceramic pots with adhesive labels.  A large replica foot which was the centre piece for a display of Trouchet’s Egyptian Corn Cure, was a familiar sight in most of the larger pharmacies of the time.

His enterprise was briefly interrupted in 1899, when during a trip to Adelaide he met Henrietta ELLIOT, and in 1902 she came to Kalgoorlie and the couple were married and lived in Piccadilly Street.  Whilst he was still in Kalgoorlie, he and his friend Philip Hawkes each had a share in a property in Spearwood, where they started growing grapes for export to Singapore.  As his business continued to prosper he moved into larger premises in Hannan Street and in 1910 his brother-in-law, Edward Burton (Bert) Elliot, who had only registered as a Pharmacist the previous year, was installed as the manager of the Kalgoorlie business, and Alex moved down to Perth.  Here he purchased a Pharmacy in Barrack Street, between Murray and Hay Streets, owned by Martin & Co.

In 1912, Alex Trouchet bought Freeman and Freeman’s Pharmacy, which had previously been known as Danker’s Swan Drug Company on the corner of Barrack and Wellington Streets in Perth, and closed the smaller Barrack Street Shop.
 

The pharmacy on the corner of Barrack  & Wellington Sts, Perth circa 1912.

One of Alex's own  handmade bottles

By now he was producing and selling his “Big T” range of products all over the State.  These included cough & cold syrups, hair restorer, tonics, balsams and the first commercial “anti-smoking” cure marketed in Australia.  This was a clear tasteless liquid and the effect of just one teaspoonful, taken in the morning, would last all day.  If a smoker tried to light a cigarette, cigar or pipe, it produced a constant desire to spit.  Jordan’s Cough Elixir was another well known Trouchet nostrum.

Alex Trouchet’s natural charm and courteous manner made him one of the most popular pharmacists in Perth, and he always had a kindly word or a small gift of a sample perfume or soap for the children of the mothers who came from afar by tram and train to have Mr. Trouchet dispense their prescriptions.

As well as maintaining the Kalgoorlie and main Perth shops, Alex expanded his business to pharmacies at William and Newcastle Street North Perth, Oxford Street Mt. Hawthorn, Hay & Irwin Streets Perth, and at Broome in the North West.  He formed them into a Company trading as Alex Trouchet and Co.

One of Alex Trouchet’s apprentices was Mrs. Honoria M. Lyons, the first woman to be registered as a Pharmacist in Western Australia.  She commenced working at the Barrack Street Pharmacy in 1914, after her mother had paid Mr. Trouchet two hundred pound for the four year apprenticeship.  In those days apprentices worked from 8am until noon, then went off to the Technical College for lectures or laboratory work.  They often had to return to the Pharmacy to work until 8pm each day as well as on Saturday and Sunday evenings.
She married a Narrogin Pharmacist and in 1920 opened her own Pharmacy at Wickepin in the wheat belt.  The 1929 Depression forced the closure of this country business and she moved back to Perth to manage one of the Trouchet Pharmacies.  Until the war years, all the shop assistants employed in the pharmacies were male, except for Mrs. Lyons and two girls who were employed in an upstairs room packing country orders.  One of the novelty items sold by Trouchets, and other city pharmacies during this period was ice cream, made on the premises in a large churn from pure cream, which had to be turned by hand until the product set.  A soda fountain was another popular feature, and although the soda water was made elsewhere in a factory, the Pharmacists prepared the flavouring syrups which were added.

Alex Trouchet had formed many diversified business arrangements with associates in Perth and the country.  A compatriot from Mauritius, Dr. Gelle, who was one of the four medical practitioners who had rooms above the main Pharmacy joined with him in the first radio broadcasting station in Geraldton.  This venture didn’t last long and they had to cut their losses and close it.

He formed a syndicate to import French perfumery and other items directly from Paris, but various problems saw this venture abandoned also.  He tried his luck in developing the Nornalup area in the South West of the State as a tourist centre and also for growing asparagus.

His strange penchant for backing wildcat schemes connected with farming and mining strained his finances considerably.  One idea that he imported from France was “The Electroculture Farming Process”.  He was so sold on this concept that he gave a guarantee in front of witnesses of the scheme’s success, and the resultant repayments almost wiped him out.  This method of farming was claimed to produce wonder plants and it consisted of rows of stakes about six feet apart.  On the stakes were antenna-like copper wires with a strip of iron pointing north.  A connecting copper strip was led down the stake, and buried in the ground.  The resultant electric charge was supposed to stimulate the plant growth, but in practice this did not appear to happen.
In addition to his involvement with others in such ventures, he also developed his own farming property at Kojonup in the South West.
In the late 1920’s, his financial adviser persuaded him that farming would eventually be more profitable than pharmacy and so he sold off his pharmacies one by one.  The Kalgoorlie pharmacy was sold to a J.W. Hawkins, and two former apprentices J.T. Allen and J.P. Crisp, both of whom had not completed their registration examinations took over the two remaining Perth shops at Newcastle Street and Wellington Street.  The Mount Hawthorn pharmacy was purchased by another apprentice John (Jack) Raphael.

Then came the disaster of the 1929 depression and Alex was hit so hard that he lost his farm and almost everything else.  He was now 62 years old and in 1932 he and his wife returned to Kalgoorlie to start afresh in another Pharmacy.  But the old fire had gone, and his health was also failing.  his old manager Burt Elliot returned to Kalgoorlie and took over the business and Alex returned to Perth where he died on 22 November 1934.  Henrietta lived to the ripe old age of 96, and she died at Subiaco on 7 December 1972.  His son Philip (Pat), who was born in Kalgoorlie, developed a business career in the rock lobster industry.  He was a champion oarsman and in 1927 won a state sculling title.  In 1979 he was awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre du Merit for services to France and the French community in Western Australia.

In 1938, Mr. Crisp decided to open a new Pharmacy in Barrack Street, between Hay and Murray Streets that would be a “specialist ladies Pharmacy”.  Mrs. Lyons was the Pharmacist and Betty Heaney was the apprentice who ran the back alleys between the two shops when stock was required from one or the other.  When war broke out and many of the unqualified staff were called into the defence forces, this shop was closed and the business was again operated from the main pharmacy at Barrack & Wellington Streets.

Eventually Mr. Crisp married one of the daughters of the owner of the Newcastle Hotel, and he became involved in the hotel business so much that he sold his interest in Trouchet’s Pharmacy and Mrs. Heaney became the sole proprietor.

She continued in the tradition that characterised these old Pharmacies with a real “personality”, until the mid 1980’s when the property was sold to the developers connected with Boans, and as so often happens when the old order changes, commercial reality overrides sentiment and even though the shadow of the once bustling empire of Alex Trouchet rested briefly in East Perth, the substance has finally gone.”

Another article published in “The Little Bottler” - a bottle collectors’ magazine dated December 1981, Alex’s son Philip (also known as Pat)  recalls some more of Alex’s life:

On meeting his wife while working in Kalgoorlie.
“A disturbance in Hannan Street, the main street in Kalgoorlie caught his attention soon after his arrival when a young nurse from South Australia was being pursued by rowdy miners.  At this stage Alex was working for Boyden the chemist before starting his own business, and the young lass took refuge in the shop.  It is not known if Alex fronted the miners or not, however, he must have impressed her as they were married not too long afterwards.”

On his many remedies.
“ Big T remedies became well known and to use Pat’s words - ‘there were as many lines as Heinz’.  These included Cure-em-quick (later sold to Allens), Vimos Tonic, Corn Cure, Dandruff Cure, Eczema Cure, Acne rid, various skin preparations and cosmetics, preventative inhalent, anti-smoking liquid, cough elixir, non-alcoholic beer, and so on.

His son’s assistance in the shop.
Pat would help his father out in the business to make the products and to advertise them (mail up signs on trees etc.)  Vimos tonic was 90% port wine purchased from the Derry-Na-Sura Vineyard at Armadale, plus a few other bits and pieces.  Correct quantity was obtained by topping up if necessary or conversely taking a quick swig to lower the level.  Local Grocers stocked this brew all round the countryside where it became well known.  After one notorious session at a country town the tonic was restricted by the Licensing Court to being sold in chemists and hotels only.

Alex & Henrietta’s children were:
Frances Maria Trouchet  b. 13 January 1903
Philip Alex (Pat) Trouchet  b. 3 April 1906
 

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