Filling in the stories of women dentists
When the first UK Dentists Register was published in 1879, it didn't exclude women.
Before 1878, the lack of regulation in British dentistry allowed anyone to wake up one day, announce ‘I’m a dentist!’ and start pulling people’s teeth out. In that year, the Dentists Act provided for a register and prohibited those who weren’t on it from using the title ‘dentist’ or ‘dental practitioner’. Even then, scope remained for unregistered people to carry on as before, but it was an important step in the process of professionalisation.
The absence of legislation or compulsory qualifications meant women could – and did – practise as dentists in the past. The new Register had to take into account that many (male) dentists had trained informally and built up their skill through experience. By allowing these practitioners in, the Dentists Act opened the door for women to join the Register – although this loophole would not last long.
I have recently been researching female dentists prior to and at the time of the Dentists Act. This is an ongoing project and I still have a lot to find out, but I just wanted to share a few of them with you, beginning a hundred years before the Act was put in place.
In the 1770s and 80s, a German woman called Charlotte De St Raymond travelled around England advertising her dental services and claiming that ‘her hand is reputed lighter than that of any man.’1
She offered tooth cleaning to remove ‘all scurf, fur or tartar’, fillings of gold or silver, and extractions of ‘all stumps or fangs of teeth, though ever so difficult to be got out.’ In addition, she sold artificial teeth and her own brand of Dentifrice and Anti-Scorbutic Powder.
For transplanting a natural tooth from one head into another, Mrs De St Raymond charged 6 guineas. This operation involved persuading (by means of money) a ‘poor lad’ to have a healthy tooth extracted so that the dentist could place it into the socket of a lady or gentleman’s recently removed rotten tooth.2
Mrs Sophia Bott (c. 1767–1859), who had been a young girl in Charlotte De St Raymond’s time, began practising dentistry in Birmingham in about 1811. Her advertisements offered artificial teeth and emphasised the need to look after the mouth in childhood to avoid problems later. She also sold tooth powder, tincture and brushes.
At 80 years old, she had to give up her practice due to failing eyesight and appealed to the public to contribute towards buying an annuity for her to live on. The reason for her lack of savings was apparently that she had been so generous to friends and relations during her career.3 When she died at the age of 92, the death announcement in the local papers remarked that she had been a dentist for over forty years, suggesting that she was respected in her community.4
In 1860, the Royal College of Surgeons established a Licence in Dental Surgery and this gave conscientious practitioners a chance to prove their credibility. The first woman to gain the LDS was Lilian Murray (later Lilian Lindsay) in 1895, and I’ll be returning to her in another article. The new qualification was a move towards professionalisation – but it wasn’t compulsory and those who did not take the exams could remain in practice.
As I mentioned at the beginning, the Dentists Act (1878) prohibited unregistered people from using the title ‘dentist’ or ‘dental practitioner’. Eligible for registration were those holding the Licence in Dental Surgery, those with the degree of DDM or DDS from Harvard or Michigan universities in the US, and those who made a declaration of their bona fide practice of dentistry before 22 June 1878.5
This last category was difficult to police. Almost 90% of the dentists on the first register in 1879 were there by self-declaration, leading the British Medical Journal to comment that for some, ‘the temptation to gain a place in the Register by an incorrect declaration has, it is to be feared, proved too strong.’6 There was no way to know who had decades of experience and skill, and who just wanted to add ‘registered dentist’ to their quack advertisements.
Submitting a declaration had a cut-off date of 1 August 1879 and after that, only dentists with formal qualifications – as yet inaccessible to women – would be added. This did, however, briefly create an opportunity for female dentists to become registered.
Of the 5,292 names, approximately 23 are female. I say ‘approximately’ because I found a Frances who turned out to be a Francis and an Eliza who was probably an Eliezer, so there could be other mistakes. I can only mention a few here but I aim to find out as much as I can about all of them.
Most of the women, like Annie Aspinall from Lancashire, began practising alongside their husbands. The Aspinalls ran a chemist’s shop in Darwen and it was customary for such businesses to offer tooth extraction as well as a range of drugs and patent medicines. Alfred Aspinall died at the age of 39 in 1869, and his widow continued the business. The 1881 census lists her occupation as ‘Druggist and dentist’.
She also promoted ‘Mrs Aspinall’s Children’s Friend’, a patent remedy warranted to give instant relief to flatulent babies and soothe them during teething. Mrs Aspinall even claimed that it cured measles, whooping cough and rickets.7
Caroline Elizabeth Hardinge of Hoxton described herself as a ‘practical dentist’ and specialised in making and repairing false teeth while her husband concentrated on the surgical side. In 1877, just before the Dentists Act and her inclusion on the Register, she advertised a training course for ladies to learn ‘the art of making and fitting artificial teeth, from one to a whole set.’8 This would set the students back 50 guineas and I haven’t yet discovered whether she had any takers.
Some of the women dentists never married and were practising independently. Julia A H Blackmore (1804–1884) trained with her father and worked as a ‘Surgical and Mechanical Dentist’ in Taunton from about 1840 to 1880, when old age made it impossible to continue. On her death a few years later, an obituary in the Western Gazette said she was:
…in all probability the last female dentist in the United Kingdom, and whose career may be instanced as another proof of what may be done by self-help and self-reliance.9
Miss Blackmore wasn’t the only one left, but this wording is fascinating in its implication that women dentists had once been more prevalent and that professionalisation – necessary though it was – introduced new barriers. As those registered by self-declaration in 1879 retired or died, they could not be replaced – women were excluded from the dental schools that prepared students for the Licence in Dental Surgery.
But that would change as the new century approached – the qualified ‘lady dentist’ would become a more familiar sight and a controversial topic of discussion among both supporters and detractors.
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