A Monstrous Regiment of Women? Attitudes to the Vanguard of Female Dentists by Rufus Ross

by Rufus Ross

Abstract by Jo Cummins

It’s what every business owner wants: The right bums on the right seats and everyone pointing in the right direction. Ring the bell, and away you go to success. If only it was so easy!

The history of early women dental practitioners makes hair-raising reading.

An extract from the British Journal of Dental Science, 1885: ‘It would appear likely that in England, lady dentists will prove a development only of the far distant future, if at all.’ The writer goes on to say that he doesn’t question women’s ability to acquire the knowledge and skill necessary to be dentists, but wonders whether the physical conditions of the work would be too much for them. After all, some men buckled under the strain of standing at a chair for many hours, continually exercising slight muscular effort while subject to noxious influences. (He does concede that women have a delicate touch, and are more patient and better at sympathising with child patients.)

Nevertheless, when the Scottish Branch of the BDA elected a woman 10 years later, in 1895, it invoked a barrage of angry letters to the editor.

One, calling himself ‘Fissure Bur,’ challenged her election on the grounds of the wrong use of pronouns, because the rules said that a person could be elected to the Register providing that he was of good character. (With some amusement, a female respondent pointed out that Mr Fissure Bur did not appear in the register, so his own case would be invalid on similar grounds.)

The controversy raged on in print. In 1896, The Dental Record debated ‘Should Women Be Dentists?’, in which a male contributor fumes: ‘Those females (generally women of leisure) who one meets occasionally have several diagnostic or pathogenic features.’ He does not hold back in elaborating on these features: A female dentist was likely to be tall, large-boned and muscular, with a prominent massive jaw bone; was likely to wear pince-nez spectacles, badly fitting dresses and closely cropped hair; and was apt to attend lectures on women’s rights.

Furthermore, if a female dentist married at all, her husband would be ‘a little puny individual whose only attempt at originality is to wear different trousers occasionally’. The author found it bizarre to think that any ‘strong athletic man’ would go to a woman to have a tooth pulled. Other commenters raised concerns about female labour diminishing the jobs available for men.

These were corrosive opinions, robustly expressed in a manner that would currently be unthinkable, but they do reveal how far opportunities for women in dentistry have progressed due to the effort and courage of early female colleagues.

The early years of the 20th century saw the gradual acceptance of women dentists in the United Kingdom, particularly in Scotland. In 1906, the Annual General Meeting of the Odonto–Chirurgical Society, held in Edinburgh, agreed to amend its constitution to allow women who were legally qualified as dentists to become members of the Society. During World War I, women took up occupations once reserved for men, giving them the opportunity to prove their abilities.

In 1920, three women were recruited from the London School of Dental Mechanics to take up service in Germany with the Rhine Army. They were well paid and ranked equivalent to a sergeant. However prejudices still existed; there were protests from the BDA that a number of discharged male soldiers could have filled these posts and the Army promised not to employ more women. Yet women were not discouraged and continued to qualify; by 1921, there were 21 women on the Dental Register.