The pharmaceutical and manufacturing chemist John Lloyd Bullock, who had joined the Chemical Society in 1842 and who played a fundamental role in the creation of the Royal College of Chemistry in 1845, did not receive an obituary when he died in 1905. Yet, nine years later on the eve of WW1, the Council of the Chemical Society suddenly commissioned an obituary from two German chemists. Although the curious circumstances of this omission and commission cannot be fully explained, their investigation provides an opportunity for an appraisal of Bullock's role in the history of chemistry and pharmacy.