Discover your ancestors in these dentists’ registers. Uncover an address and further details about your relative’s career including the date they qualified.
Discover your ancestors in these dentists’ registers. Uncover an address and further details about your relative’s career including the date they qualified.
Each record is available in a PDF format. Use the previous and next buttons at the top of the page to browse through the publication. The PDF search experience can be different from searching transcribed records. Use our search tips below to get the most out of this collection.
The detail in each record will vary. In the records you may find a combination of the following information:
Name
Address
Date of registration
Description and date of qualification
To the left of the PDF, you will find the Transcription Box, which includes:
Title – the title of the publication
Country
Image number
Image count
Image number and image count – this will tell you where you are in the publication and help you to explore the publication further.
A registration system for dentists was established in 1878 with the first Dentist’s Act, subsequently, a register recording the names, addresses, and qualifications of those registered was published. This was an important step in the regulating of dentists – a discipline that had its roots in the Barber-Surgeons of the Middle Ages.
Any person after the 1 August 1879 who was not registered under this Act would not be entitled to take or use the title of “dentist” either alone or in combination with any other word or words such as “dental practitioner”.
If a person after this date was found to be using such a name or title and not registered, they would be liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding twenty pounds.
Searching through a PDF (Portable document format) is different from searching through fully transcribed record sets. Here are some tips to keep in mind while you search for your ancestors:
Direct Search
The search feature uses direct search. It will search for the exact word or phrase you type in the search field. There are no name variants available through this format.
All search results will bring you to the page on which your search word has been found and not to an individual transcript. You can then read through the page to find your result.
Name searches
A name search will return results which have the search terms on the same page within the document. This means that searching for John Smith will return pages where the names 'John' and 'Smith' occur. For this reason your search may return the name William Smith or John Brown. By inserting quotations around the full name the search function will locate the terms together; for example, “John Smith.”
To search for your ancestor by their name, write it as it would appear on the document. For example, if your relative was known as ‘Will’ it is likely that the name used for official records was ‘William.’
If you are unable to find your relative on your first search you can try different name variations. A number of register books only use abbreviations for first names.
For example, if your search is unsuccessful for William Smith, try W Smith or Wm Smith.
Perusing the PDF
If you wish to read through the whole document you are searching, then order the results by page number. You can start from the beginning of the document and read through to the end using the next button above the image.
Page numbers often correlate with the individual images of the documents rather than the page numbers used within the publication. Therefore page 1 starts with the cover page.