The following two articles by P.S. Brown and Dorothy N. Brown were first published in SDNQ, Vol.30.
Bath Dentists Advertising in 18th Century Bath Newspapers by P.S. Brown (SDNQ, Vol.30, September 1977, pp.278-282)
During a survey of advertisements for medicines in Bath newspapers from 1744 to 1799,[1] incidental information was obtained about dental practitioners in Bath who advertised in these newspapers. The information, which reflects the social importance of dentistry in Bath, was derived from a systematic sampling of approximately one eight of the available newspapers.[2] The following list of the dentists shows the titles under which they described themselves and gives reference to the newspapers containing the advertisements discussed below:
John GOLDSTONE, operator for the Teeth (Bath Journal, 9 April 1744, 13 April 1761; Bath Chronicle, 11 January 1770).
FOY, Operator for the Teeth (Bath Journal, 26 January 1761), Surgeon Dentist (Bath Chronicle, 29 October 1761).
Bartholomew RUSPINI, Operator for the Teeth (Bath Journal, 7 September 1761).
James MILLS, Surgeon Dentist (Bath Chronicle, 4 January, 26 April, 31 May, 14 June 1770).
Mr RUSPINI Junior, Surgeon Dentist to H.R.H. the Prince of Wales (Bath Chronicle, 4 November 1790; Bath Register, 17 March 1792).
TRUNEL, Surgeon and Dentist from Paris (Bath Chronicle, 4 January, 18 January 1770).
HOWELLS, Surgeon Dentist (Bath Chronicle, 17 November 1768).
Abraham LEVIS Junior and Mrs LEVIS, Surgeon Dentist and Ladies Dentist (Bath Journal, 24 January, 21 February 1780).
Elinor LEVIS (widow of Benjamin Levis), Dentist (Bath Journal, 10 July 1780).
H. HART, Surgeon Dentist (Bath Chronicle, 30 December 1790; Bath Register, 8 December 1792).
Joseph SIGMOND, Surgeon Dentist (Bath Register, 7 April 1792, 16 February 1793; Bath Journal, 19 November 1798).
Jean Joseph (Armand) TALMA[3], Dentist (Bath Register, 8 December 1792).
SHEW, Surgeon Dentist (Bath Journal, 24 September, 1 October 1798).
Theodore BREUER, Surgeon Dentist (Bath Journal, 10 September, 2 April 1798).
PRINCE, Dentist (Bath Journal, 15 October 1798).
Many of the advertising dentists appear to have come and gone with the visitors, their movements controlled by the social season. In 1761, for instance, Sign. Ruspini announced in early September that he had just returned to Bath and in October, Mr Foy who had “attended last Season in this City” announced that he was again at an address in Bath. September and October were the two peak months for the arrival of visitors, at least as recorded in the newspapers sampled in 1750. In the last decade of the century, Mr Ruspini Junior, announced his arrival early in November, while Mr Hart and Mr Talma advertised theirs in December. A second wave of visitors arrived in the early months of the year and Joseph Sigmond, while practising in Exeter in 1792, chose to visit Bath professionally for six weeks in April, which was near the peak time for the arrival of these Spring visitors. His visit must have proved rewarding because, in February of the next year, he announced that he had moved his residence to Bath, though he intended to visit Exeter every year during the summer season – when Bath would be quiet and unfashionable. Some of the dentists also visited other resorts. James Mills lived in Bath but in 1770 attended twice a week at Bristol’s Hotwells “during the Summer Season”; and, at the end of the century we gather that Mr Shew usually visited Weymouth during the Autumn.
Perhaps to imply a contrast with the dentists who only made seasonal appearances, others announced that they were residents of Bath. H. Hart claimed to have lived there upward of ten years, while Abraham Levis and Mrs Levis described themselves as “Inhabitants of this polite City these 18 Years”.
The progress of John Goldstone, and perhaps of dentistry generally, is reflected in his advertisements. He arrived from London in 1744 to draw teeth, bleed and cut corns, and lodged with Leacon Lambe, a grocer who was an active vender of proprietary medicines. By 1761, Goldstone sold his own dentifrice and dental tincture, styled himself “operator for the teeth” and announced that he also performed “several other Operations in Physic and Surgery”. By 1770, he sold a range of proprietary medicines as well as his own dental preparations, performed “All Operations belonging to the Teeth” and had taken a Mr Allen as a partner “in the Art of making and fixing Natural Teeth, or Artificial ones”. Later in the century the New Bath Guide (1793) showed a Richard Goldstone and a Charles Goldstone as both apothecaries and dentists, and at the beginning of the next century, Robbins’ Bath Directory (1800) showed a George Goldstone as a surgeon dentist. It is tempting to suggest that these were related to John Goldstone, Richard at least probably being his son. Richard’s address was in Broad Street as had been that of the earlier Goldstone, and Richard Goldstone was shown in the city records as the son of a John Goldstone, whose occupation was unfortunately not stated, when he was apprenticed for eight years to an apothecary named Daniel Morris in 1757.
The Chevalier Bartholomew Ruspini is probably the best known of the dentists appearing in the present sample: Menzies Campbell[4] has described his association with Bath and he was sufficiently well known for one of the reputed sayings of Beau Nash to be that he wished Ruspini “had come to Bath before my gums had been ossified.”[5] By 1770, the Bath practice was in the hands of James Mills who was described first as an assistant to Mr Ruspini of Pall Mall and later as a partner. By 1790, Mr Ruspini Junior was advertising in Bath but there is no indication which of the Chevalier’s sons this was.
Joseph Sigmond had written a small pamphlet on the care of teeth while still in Exeter, and in 1825 he published a longer treatise.[6] In the latter work he tells us that he is 75 years old and had started his practice in Devonshire in 1786. In Bath he seems to have achieved social as well as professional success. A poem in Samuel Jackson Pratt’s Harvest Home (vol.3, 1805) is addressed to Mr Sigmond, on the drawing of one of the author’s teeth. Although the verse is more concerned with the poet’s feelings than the dentist’s skill, a footnote refers to Sigmond as “A celebrated Dentist at Bath”. More surprising is a passage in a letter of Mrs Jackson, dated 1809 and published with the diaries and letters of Sir George Jackson, which reports that Sigmond had even invited the Duke of Gloucester to a grand supper. She says of the dentist that he “has lately married a woman he had kept for fifteen years, and they make more dash and live at more expense than almost anyone in Bath”.[7]
Some distinguished London dentists probably visited Bath for short periods, and one such may have been the Mr Rae who announced that he had come to Bath “to spend some days in the line of his Profession”.[8] Described as a surgeon dentist and a member of the Societies of Surgeons of London and Edinburgh, he could well have been William Rae.[9] Another well known visitor is suggested by an advertisement[10] for the book entitled Dangers of Artificial Teeth made out of Human Teeth, which could be obtained from the author in Soho, but which described him as “M. Dubois de Chemant, No.51 New King Street, Bath; Surgeon Dentist, Inventor of Mineral Paste Teeth.”
It seems likely that the majority of practitioners calling themselves surgeon dentists in Bath towards the end of the century advertised in the newspapers: all those who appeared in the directories did so at some time. The New Bath Guide began to include medical lists in 1776, entries appearing under the headings of physicians, surgeons and apothecaries and chymists. In 1792, two surgeon dentists were included with the surgeons but from 1793 there was each year a seperate section listing dentists, after the surgeons but before the apothecaries. In the final eight years of the century, four people were consistently described as surgeon dentists: three have already been mentioned as they appeared in the newspapers sampled, but the fourth did not. He was a Mr Charlton and, although he did not advertise regularly, he did so when the need arose as can be seen from advertisements found outside the present sample.[11] The same number of surgeon dentists is given for 1799 by Warner in The History of Bath (1801: pp.214-216). He shows twenty-two apothecaries, two barber surgeons, nine chemists and druggists and the four surgeon dentists who are listed between saddlers and sellers of asses’ milk.
The dental section of the New Bath Guide named three other persons who were usually described as both dentists and apothecaries. Two of these were the Goldstones already mentioned and the other was Theodore Breuer who was associated with Messrs. Breuer & Co., chymists and apothecaries of Bath and Grosvenor Square, London. None of these three advertised their dental skills in the newspapers sampled, though Breuer incidentally described himself as a surgeon dentist in an advertisement for the treatment of rupture. The one remaining dentist who did not appear in the newspapers sampled but was listed in the New Bath Directory (1792) was Robert Palmer, described in Robbins’ Bath Directory (1800) as a druggist and dentist. It therefore seems that, in this small sample at least, dentists who were also apothecaries or druggists were less likely to advertise their dentistry than those simply described as surgeon dentists. In addition, no doubt, there were many persons in Bath performing less sophisticated dentistry who appeared in neither the directories nor the newspaper advertisements.
Perfumers in 18th century Bath by P.S. Brown & Dorothy N. Brown (SDNQ, Vol.30, September 1979, pp.444-447)
The large number of perfumers in 18th century Bath must reflect the concentration of fashionable society in the city and they may therefore merit study I this context. Two 18th century directories, which cover both Bristol and Bath, allow a comparison between the two towns and shows that this high incidence of perfumers was characteristic of Bath. William Bailey’s Bristol and Bath Directory (1787) names eleven perfumers in the eleven pages of entries for Bath and only six perfumers in the sixty-two pages for Bristol. The Universal British Directory (1791) shows a similar situation with seventeen perfumers in Bath against ten in Bristol. In a systematic sample of Bath newspapers, of 1744 to 1799[12], we have found references to thirty-six persons or partnerships calling themselves perfumers or advertising a wide range of perfumery. To these we have added six others listed in the directories but not found in the newspapers.
Fourteen of the perfumers were also described as hairdressers and eight as toymen or dealers in fancy goods. Other similarly appropriate occupations were associated with the perfumers, three being described as snuff dealers, two as jewellers, two as Italian warehousemen, and one each as a confectioner, linen draper and glove dealer. The newspaper advertisements also made reference to some of the many other traders who sold perfumes, though not on a sufficient scale to be included in our sample as perfumers. Several were milliners who sold items such as lavender and Hungary waters, the latter being based on rosemary. In Bristol two of the perfumers listed in the 1787 directory ran circulating libraries, but in Bath these libraries were mainly associated with the sale of medicines.[13]
It seems, therefore, that most perfumers probably sold a variety of other goods in addition to their perfumes, powders and pomades. Occasionally extensive lists appeared when, for example, a perfumer opened a new shop or went out of business.[14] Most of the items mentioned were ones already suggested by the associated occupations noted above, but proprietary medicines and dental preparations were also commonly sold, sixteen of the perfumers in the sample being associated with one or both of these. They were concerned with dental products because these were intended to perform a largely cosmetic function and, when a stamp duty was imposed on tooth powders and tinctures in 1786, the Act (26 Geo. III c. 49) associated them with perfumes and cosmetics rather than with medicines. Equally, the selling of medicines as a side-line is not surprising as this was done by a wide range of traders and was vigorously advertised.
The location of the perfumers’ shops shows the focus of social Bath at the mid-century, and illustrates its northerly shift as the new building progressed. The three perfumers found int eh newspaper sample up to 1761 were all close to the Pump Room, in the Grove, Wade’s Passage and the Abbey Church Yard. They had the foreign-sounding names of Coppa, Duperre and Grandi, but these were coupled with first names of Lewis, George and James. In 1770 most perfumers were still centred around the Abbey but one had moved northwards to Bond Street and Alex Jolly, whose original shop was “adjoining the Pump Room”, announced that he had opened a second shop in Queen Street, near Queen Square, “in order to relieve the Trouble of sending from the Circus and the Upper Part of the Town to his Shop in the Church Yard.”[15] The enterprising Jolly appears to have over-reached himself as he was bankrupt later in the year,[16] but the northward movement continued through the next two decades so that the sample of perfumers from 1787 to 1793 shows, in addition to a cluster of seven still around the Abbey, one perfumer in Bridge Street, one in Bond Street, two in Green Street, three in Milsom Street, one in King Street, three in George Street and, near the New Assembly Rooms, one each in Alfred Street, Saville Row and Bennett Street.
The distribution of the perfumers’ shops appears to outline the area selected for fashionable entertainment and polite shopping and may be used for comparison with the distribution of other trades. For example, the advertising dentists discussed previously[17] presumably needed to advertise because they had not yet established themselves in the medical hierarchy but depended on attracting the attention f fashionable clients. They might therefore have wished to site themselves in or near the fashionable areas. If their distribution is mapped alongside that of perfumers it is seen that seven of their addresses were thinly scattered in streets also containing perfumers, but that ten were sited just outside the perfumers’ range. The dentists are found to follow a distribution much more like that of the twenty-three apothecaries listed in the directories of 1787 and 1791.
Shops were often described as near places of social importance: Purdie’s perfume shop in 1770 was “Next Door to Mr Gyde’s Rooms”, while Thomas Cadman described his shop as “facing the Pump Rooms”. Sometimes shops signs were mentioned in advertisements, the Civet Cat being sued by Allingham & Jones in Bennett Street in 1780 and probably by James Reynolds in Kingston Buildings, as one of his advertisements was headed by a large illustration of the animal.[18] A variation indicating the importance of the snuff trade was the Civet Cat and Rasp used by George Duperre for his shop in Wade’s Passage.[19] Other examples were Coppa’s shop at the sign of the Jessamine Tree, that of a perfumer called Carpenter at the Golden Sheaf in George Street in 1780, and the Golden Fleece of Warren & Rosser, also in George Street, from 1792.
The last mentioned firm was associated with Richard Warren, an important London perfumer. The sale of his perfumery in Bath seems at first to have been through approved agents,[20] but by 1780 Warren had his own shop in Alfred Street in Bath, as well as two in London and one in Tunbridge Wells.[21] The firm later became Warren & Rosser and moved their Bath shop to George Street. Warren’s Milk of Roses was commonly advertised as were Warren’s Royal Chicken Gloves which were presumably worn at night to improve the skin of the hands. Article for this purpose are mentioned in Anstey’s New Bath Guide (1766) as the gloves that “Venus caught young Cupid picking, From the tender breast of chicken”. In the 1780 advertisement quoted above, Warren announced that he had “completed his Vegetable System of Perfumery”. He claimed not to sue musk or civet, but another significant aspect of the description of his products as “vegetable” was probably in contradistinction to “mineral”. Contemporary letter writers tell us that fashionable women were poisoning themselves with the mineral white lead used in cosmetics[22] and it was accepted by physicians that “those ladies who are in the habit of enamelling their faces, necks, and bosoms, with this white paint, generally fall early victims to their own indiscretions”.[23] Our current awareness of the dangers of lead in the environment suggests that the blame attached to these 18th century cosmetics was thoroughly deserved. No doubt the perfumers of Bath contributed in good measure to the danger.
Footnotes
[1] P.S. Brown, ‘The vendors of medicines advertised in 18th century Bath newspapers’, Medical History, 1975, 19: 353-369.
[2] The sample consisted of issues of the Bath Journal for the years March 1744/February 1745, 1750, 1761, 1780 and 1798; Bath Chronicle for the years December 1760/1761, 1770, 1790 and 1799; Bath Advertiser for the year 1757; Bath Register and Bath Herald both for the year March 1792/February 1793; occasional issues of Farley’s Bath Journal, Bath Gazette and Salmon’s Mercury. The sample is described fully in the paper cited in note 1 above.
[3] As identified by R.A. Cohen. ‘The Talma family’, British Dental Journal, 1969, 126: 319-326.
[4] J. Menzies Campbell, ‘Chevalier Bartholomew Ruspini, 1728-1813’, Dental Magazine and Oral Topics, 1953, 70: 402-422.
[5] Francis Fleming, The life and extraordinary adventures, the perils and critical escapes of Timothy Ginnadrake (London: Dodsley, n.d.), vol.3, p.64.
[6] J. Sigmond, A short essay on the teeth (Exeter: T. Brice, 1790); Sigmond, A practical and domestic treatise on the diseases and irregularities of the teeth and gums (Bath: Wood & Cunningham, 1825).
[7]Lady Jackson (ed.), Sir George Jackson, The Bath archives – diaries and letters (London: Richard Bentley & Son, 1873), pp.32-33.
[8] Bath Journal, 8 May 1780.
[9] Lilian Lindsay, ‘The London dentists of the eighteenth century’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 1927, 20: 355-366.
[10] Bath Journal, 19 March 1798.
[11] Bath Chronicle, 26 December 1782; Bath Journal, 6 March 1797).
[12] The sample of newspapers in described above in Footnote 2.
[13] Medical History, 1975, 19: 352-369.
[14] For example, Bath Chronicle, 18 October and 20 December 1770; Bath Journal, 14 May 1798.
[15] Bath Chronicle, 1 March 1770.
[16] Bath Chronicle, 13 December 1770.
[17] P.S. Brown, ‘Bath Dentists Advertising in 18th-Century Bath Newspapers’, SDNQ Vol.30, pp..278-282.
[18] Bath Herald, 10 May 1792.
[19] Bath Chronicle, 25 December 1760.
[20] For example, see Bath Chronicle, 17 November 1768.
[21] Bath Journal, 4 December 1780.
[22] W.S. Lewis & R.S. Brown (eds.), Horace Walpole’s correspondence with George Montague (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1941), Vol.2, p.237; J.H. Jesse, George Selwyn and his contemporaries (London, 1882), Vol.2, pp.89-90.
[23] A. Fothergill, Cautions to the heads of families in three essays (Bath: R. Cruttwell, 1740), pp.54-57.
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