Profile of optometrists in Victoria registered in 1937 after five decades of unregulated practice.

BACKGROUND: The enactment of the Opticians Act by the Victorian parliament on 17 December 1935 transformed the standard of optometric practice in Victoria and laid the foundations for future educational advance. Previously any person could practise optometry in Victoria regardless of their qualifications or training. The Act established an Opticians Registration Board the first task of which was to register optometrists deemed competent enough to practise on the basis of their prior experience or their optometric qualifications.

METHODS: This article uses the working papers of the Registration Board at the time to construct a profile of the optometrists in practice in 1936 including the number of optometrists in practice at the time, their qualifications, the extent of their prior experience, their conjoined businesses and their geographic location.

RESULTS: There were 489 optometrists in practice who applied for registration in 1936 of whom 338 were subsequently registered, two-thirds on the basis of prior experience and one-third because they held an optometric qualification recognised under the Act. Eleven of them were women. Sixty-one per cent of them were solely engaged in the practice of optometry and 39 per cent practised in conjunction with another occupation, the most common of which were watchmaker, jeweller and pharmacist. Thirty-eight per cent practised in the central business district of Melbourne, 37 per cent in Melbourne suburbs and 25 per cent in regional Victoria. In 1937 the ratio of registered optometrists to population was 1:5,482.

CONCLUSION: The Opticians Act of 1935 immediately lifted the competence of optometrists in practice in 1936 by refusing to register 31 per cent of those in practice who were judged to lack the necessary competence, and laid the foundations for higher educational standards in the future.