Now this won't hurt a bit -
the Internet for family history

This article first appeared in the November, 1997 issue of Family Tree Magazine

The Internet is the shiniest of the new tools which many family historians possess in their research toolkits. The Internet doesn't replace other tools or techniques such as books, archives, or the politely-written postal request for information. Rather, it works in conjunction with these tools to increase the extent of the family historian's reach into the past. By using the Internet in this way, I began a series of discoveries about my 3rd great-grandfather's dental practice in mid-19th century Norfolk which have been invaluable to my understanding of his career.


[Engraving of a 19th Century dentist at work.]

By Mark Howells


To begin with

James Dunsford, was a dentist or dental surgeon in Norwich, Norfolk in the mid-1800s. So revealed the 1851, '61, and '71 censuses for Norwich and his children's birth registrations from the 1840s. All these traditional sources agreed. I duly recorded his occupation in my genealogy software program and there it would have ended. Although always fascinated by history, I suspected that dentistry in this period might be positively gothic in its horror stories. As I live on the west coast of the United States, my access to resources for dental history in the United Kingdom appeared somewhat limited. Therefore, I did not pursue this line of research for some time.

Finding the experts

Then one day, I chanced upon a brief magazine article describing the development of a reliable dental drill. Undeterred by the memory of the singular sound of that instrument, I read the entire article which also gave the name of the author plus the city and U.S. state where he lived. This seemed to be a person who might know something about dental history and how to go about researching James Dunsford's practice.

My first step in using the Internet as an aid to my research was to look up the author's postal address by entering his name in Switchboard (http://www.switchboard.com/), a popular search engine for finding people and their addresses. There was only one entry which matched the author's name and city, so I wrote him a polite letter. Including a self-addressed stamped envelope, I explained that I wished to learn more about the dental practice of my 3rd great-grandfather.

Back came his kind reply. Yes, he was the author of the dental drill article. No, he did not know much about the history of British dentistry. However, he did know the name & address of THE expert in the history of dentistry in the United Kingdom.

With this UK expert's name and address in hand, I included International Reply Coupons in my letters and began a series of correspondence regarding researching James Dunsford's dental practice. After trading several letters with him, he provided me with what little information he was able to find in his own library about James Dunsford. He determined that Dunsford worked with a partner named J Suggett and that they had a practice in Norwich from at least 1850 to 1854. The name of Dunsford's partner was new information which was to be of great value later.

Finding the book

This dental historian had recommended the best layman's book on the history of British dentistry available - The Roots of Dentistry. I again resorted to the Internet and quickly located and ordered the book from the online Amazon.com bookstore (http://www.amazon.com/). Once the book arrived, I devoured it and made additional notes into my genealogy software about the state of dental practice in the mid-1800s. What I learned was fairly close to my imagination of the torture a trip to the dentist entailed not so long ago. Anesthesia was known of but not commonly utilized yet and cavities were drilled by hand drills and filled with a variety of questionable substances. Dentists of the period did not require any formal schooling or certification. Anyone with a chair and a pair of pliers could take up the practice. I now had a good idea what the profession was like at the time, but I still did not know much about the particulars of James Dunsford's practice.

My society

The Norfolk Family History Society (http://www.uea.ac.uk/~s300/genuki/NFK/organisations/nfhs/), offers limited free research services using its own library's resources for members who request the service by post. I thought that James Dunsford must have advertised both in the local newspapers and in the local city directories. Therefore, I wrote a postal request to the Society asking if they could look in these sources for me. Because I had the practice name of Suggett & Dunsford, I was able to request a search on the names of the both partners, not just my ancestor and Suggett & Dunsford were found listed as dentists in Norwich directories.

As the library did not have back issues of the local newspapers, the Society's reply included the postal address of the Norwich archives of the Eastern Counties Newspaper Company with the suggestion that I write requesting a search for advertisements for Suggett & Dunsford.

Finding the newspaper

At this point, I had paid the postage for ten letters back and forth across the Atlantic and I began to think of how to avoid further overseas postage costs and speed up the research. I reasoned that like other newspapers, a current publisher might have a World Wide Web site on the Internet. I used the HotBot search engine (http://www.HotBot.com/) to search for references to the company and quickly found the Eastern Counties Newspaper Group home page (http://www.ecn.co.uk/index.htm). There was an extensive Web site including the webmaster's e-mail address.

I sent a search request e-mail which the webmaster forwarded to the newspaper archives. In addition, from the surnames listed in my signature file appended to the bottom of my e-mails, the webmaster recognized a surname of mutual interest and we had useful e-mail correspondence about the prevalence of that surname in Norfolk. I eventually corresponded with the webmaster's mother who was also a genealogist, but we were not able to determine if we shared common ancestors.

After a little less than a week, a comprehensive e-mail reply came back from the newspaper archives. The understanding archivist had begun actively searching the back issues of the Norwich Mercury newspapers from the 1850s and provided me with complete quotes from six advertisements placed by Suggett & Dunsford in the 1850s and 1860s. This was absolutely wonderful work on the part of the archivist and I sent a long thank you e-mail back to her at once. In less than seven days, I had the texts of the advertisements of my 3rd great-grandfather! This speed of obtaining information is where the Internet excels as a research tool.

The advertisements in the Norwich Mercury were announcements of when Suggett & Dunsford would be attending patients in towns throughout the county. Now this was a surprise. Apparently, James Dunsford and his partner not only had surgeries in Norwich but also traveled to other towns in the county to ply their trade. Suggett or Dunsford would set up their dental chairs in a hotel in these towns and attend patients on the spot. On a set day of each month, they would be in a hotel in Great Yarmouth or Swaffham or Fakenham. So my 3rd great-grandfather was a circuit-riding dentist - have pliers, will travel! I could not have hoped for more interesting information on the nature of his dental practice.

The British Library

The information from the newspaper archivist was excellent but I wanted actual copies of the advertisements which the archivist was unable to provide. However, she did suggest that the National Newspaper Library of the British Library could provide photocopies from newspapers held there. The National Newspaper Library has a Web site (http://www.bl.uk/collections/newspaper/) on which a page described in detail how to order copies of newspaper pages. It also had an e-mail address (newspaper@bl.uk) to which I sent an e-mail asking if the library held the issues of the Norwich Mercury for four dates on which the advertisements appeared.

I soon received by post an order form and quote of £13.61 for the four relevant pages. I mailed off the completed order form with a cheque and eventually received broadsheet-size copies of the front pages. I could not have been more satisfied with the results of this research. These copies were from the years 1859, 1861, 1865, and 1866, one of which appears below.

[Suggett & Dunsford Advertisment - October 9, 1861.]
Suggett & Dunsford Advertisement from the Norwich Mercury - October 9, 1861

Conclusion

The experience related above demonstrates how the Internet used in combination with other traditional research tools such as books, knowledgeable experts, archives, and libraries, extended my reach as a family historian. It helped me order the books, locate those experts, and contact the archives and libraries. With the aid of the Internet, I was able obtain copies of 130-year old newspaper advertisements from overseas with great speed and efficiency. As with anything else related to dentistry, faster is definitely better!


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Now this won't hurt a bit - the Internet for family history
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Updated February 23, 2000
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