March 14, 2026 • 29 mins
This 2022 episode covers Lucy Hobbs, later Lucy Hobbs Taylor, who pursued a career in dentistry before that was recognized as an acceptable vocation for a woman.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday. Lucy Hobbs Taylor was born on March fourteenth,
eighteen thirty three, or one hundred and ninety three years
ago today, on the day we are publishing this classic.
She was the first woman in the US to receive
a degree in dentistry. This originally came out June twenty ninth,
twenty twenty two. Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in
(00:26):
History Class, a production of iHeartRadio, Hello and Welcome to
the podcast. I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
So in reading an old Ish mid twentieth century biographical
article for today's subject, it opened with the line quote,
(00:49):
the history of most of the major professions reveals that
they have been dominated by man, And when woman sought
to invade those sacred precincts of masculine activity, great consternation arose.
Which is a funny line, funny and aggravating. Right. That
(01:11):
was definitely, at least to some degree true for Lucy Hobbs. Later,
Lucy Hobbs Taylor and her desire to have a career
in dentistry before that was recognized as an acceptable vocation
for a woman. She's interesting and that she was really
just tenacious as hell. She got told no a lot,
and that did not deter her from her plan, and
(01:33):
she just kind of found her way around any obstacles
to make her own way to get to where she
wanted in life. But to be clear upfront, I want
to she often is lauded as the first woman dentist.
That's not accurate. We're going to talk about that towards
the end of the episode. She's someone if you listen
to our two parter on the history of dentistry, she
(01:55):
came up briefly and she was so interesting that I
wanted to do an episode about. I will also tell
you in a comforting way that there is no real
talk of any dental scariness here. We talk about fillings
a little in one advancement in how they were performed
in her kind of being a champion for that, but
it's pretty mild, so don't worry if you're squeamage. Lucy
(02:17):
was born Lucy Beaman Hobbes on March fourteenth, eighteen thirty three.
Her place of birth is a little uncertain. We know
she was born in New York State. Most biographies say
that it was in Franklin, County that's in the state's
northeast corner. If you look at her biography on the
Kansas Historical Society's website, you'll see Constable, New York list
(02:40):
it is her place of birth that's in Franklin County.
But there was another place mentioned in a paper about
Lucy that was written in nineteen fifty one. That document
says she was born in Ellenburg. That's in Clinton County,
New York, immediately to the east of Franklin County. So
we can say upstate New York pretty confidently, probably Franklin County,
(03:01):
but there's some inconsistency, and we don't know a whole
lot about Lucy's childhood. She also had a lot of siblings,
nine according to one source, and there is some indication
that her mother died when she was still quite young,
but we don't really have a lot of details about it.
Her story really picks up in eighteen forty nine, when
Lucy graduated from the Franklin Academy in Malone, New York,
(03:24):
with the intent to become a school teacher, and she
did do that for a decade. She started when she
was just eighteen, and later told a reporter quote, I
had pupils older than myself who knew about as much
as I did. But that did not shake my faith
in myself, for I knew that little informed as I was,
we had no better teacher in our district since I
could remember. She was described as laughing when she said this,
(03:49):
like I'm as good as any of the others I've had.
But she traveled to where teaching jobs were, and as
a consequence, she ended up in Brooklyn, Michigan, and she
met someone there who changed her life's trajectory. Although I
have never found this person's name in any of the
things that I read, but the house where she rented
(04:09):
a room in Michigan was apparently owned by a doctor,
and he and Lucy are said to have talked a
lot about his profession because she was deeply interested in it.
She's often quoted as saying that she wished quote to
enter a profession where she could earn her bread, not
alone by the sweat of her brow, but by the
use of her brains also, and her physician friend encouraged
(04:31):
her to take that intellectual curiosity and use it to
pursue a career in medicine. So Lucy decided to go
to Cincinnati, Ohio to enroll in medical school. This was
in eighteen fifty nine. She was twenty six at the time,
and her plan was to enroll at Eclectic Medical Institute
of Cincinnati, or EMI, So for a little bit of
(04:52):
background on that school. Eclectic medicine was a form of
medicine that was popular in the late nineteenth and twentieth
centuries in the United States, and the focus on this
type of medicine was based largely on botanicals in herbal medicine.
EMI had been founded in eighteen forty two, and for
a while, starting in eighteen fifty, it graduated some of
(05:12):
the first women with physician credentials in the US. But
even though Lucy Hobbs knew she wanted an education at Eclectic,
it turned out the school didn't want her. Eclectic had
stopped taking women's students in eighteen fifty seven, she was
refused enrollment. When she spoke to the college president about
the situation, he suggested that maybe she could pursue a
(05:35):
career in dentistry instead, and Lucy thought about it and
ultimately decided that she would take the college president's advice.
So her next step was to apply to work with
dentists in the Cincinnati area. She needed some degree of
learning in the field before she could apply to a
formal training programer a dental college, so she began to
(05:56):
search for a mentor, and she was told repeatedly that
the dental field was for men, and some dentists flat
out told her that it would damage their practice if
people found out a woman was being taught on the premises.
An article written later in her life reported that quote.
She began a tour of dentist offices in Cincinnati for
a place to study. On every hand, she was rebuffed,
(06:19):
though one man offered to let her clean his office
and look on while he worked, which proposition was indignantly refused.
She finally got an assist from the dean of the
Ohio College of Dental Surgery, that was doctor Jonathan Taft,
as a temporary arrangement while she kept looking for a
formal mentor to take her on. Taft told her she
(06:41):
could learn in his office for three months, so finally
she found somebody who was willing to work with her.
Doctor Samuel Wardle had been one of doctor Jonathan Taft's students.
He had graduated in eighteen fifty nine, and he offered
her an apprenticeship in his office. This was a break
for Hobbs, but it also meant that her her days
were spent working and learning but not getting paid for it.
(07:03):
So in the evenings she would take in sewing to
try to keep herself afloat. Yeah. I have so many
questions that I never found satisfactory answers to about doctor
Wardle because he was fresh out of dental school, and
I'm like, was it that he was super progressive or
was it that he really needed an assistant for no
money because he was just starting as practice And how
(07:24):
much did doctor Taft kind of help push that thing together.
But at this point in time, there were not a
lot of dental programs in the United States. The first
had opened in Baltimore in eighteen forty, the second, the
Ohio College of Dental Surgery, had opened in eighteen forty five,
and the third, Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery, had opened
in eighteen fifty six. But that was it three options. Lucy,
(07:49):
because of proximity, applied to the Ohio College of Dental
Surgery in March of eighteen sixty one. But even though
she had gotten that help, earlier from the Dean. This
application went exactly as well as her application to Eclectic.
Lucy's next move, on the advice of doctor Wortle, was
to just open up her own practice. At the time,
(08:10):
it was beneficial to have a degree, but it wasn't
required to practice. She opened an office in Cincinnati on
March fourteenth, eighteen sixty one, which was her twenty eighth birthday.
That year, of course, was monumental in the United States.
The Civil War officially began less than a month after
Lucy Hobbs opened her practice, So Lucy closed up her
(08:31):
Ohio office almost immediately, and then she moved to Iowa
to start over there. Presumably she thought it was safer
there farther away from the epicenter of conflict. And although
Lucy didn't really know anyone in Iowa when she moved there,
she must have been providing something that people really desperately
needed in opening a dental office in Bellevue, Iowa that's
(08:53):
located in Jackson County on the Illinois border. Because she
ended her first year there in the black, having put
away one hundred dollars more than it had cost to
run the office and pay for her necessities. This modest
success of her first year running her own dental practice
gave Lucy Hobbs the confidence to move somewhere that had
more lucrative potential. This time it was McGregor, Iowa, about
(09:17):
eighty two miles north of Bellevue, and her instincts were correct.
She finished her second year in her new profession with
a profit of three thousand dollars on the books. That
was no small sum. In eighteen sixty three, Hobbs kept
building up her business. She established a very good reputation
as a dentist. For the next three years she stayed
in McGregor, and according to a newspaper account written several
(09:41):
years after Lucy had arrived in McGregor, Iowa, she had
had to work to prove herself to the new community,
and especially the men of the town. There were definitely
some who just did not believe that she, as a woman,
would know what she was doing, and so one man
decided that he was going to test her by making
an appointment in This back fired. According to a write
(10:02):
up about it from the Vermont paper, The Burlington Democrat,
which came out in eighteen seventy two, quote a young
man once entered her office in McGregor and asked her
to examine his teeth, Knowing at the time they were
perfectly sound. She saw the trick at once, but nevertheless
commenced to work at his teeth. She bored a hole
in a sound tooth and filled it with gold, charging
(10:24):
him the usual price. He had to pay well for
the experiment. I don't love this story. I don't either,
but I also think it's funny. Yeah, I love it
and I don't love it. Right, I'm like, that's malpractice. Yeah,
but I understand where you're coming from. Similar. Yeah. So
coming up, we'll talk about a surprising development in Lucy
(10:47):
Hobb's career. First, though, we will pause for a quick
sponsor break. In July eighteen sixty five, Lucy was invited
to attend a meeting of the Iowa State Dental Society
in Dubuque, Iowa. The president of the society, doctor Luhmann
(11:10):
Church Ingersoll, had extended that invitation himself, and while attending,
Lucy was asked to join the organization. This was a
pretty big deal, and Ingersoll had prepared a resolution for
the occasion, which he gave as a speech. It not
only noted that Lucy was welcomed by all of the members,
but also entreated the larger dental profession to recognize that
(11:32):
women are perfectly suited to work in dentistry. This read quote,
whereas the Iowa State Dental Society has, without precedent, elected
to membership a lady practitioner of dentistry, and whereas it
is due to her to know that the unanimous vote
by which she was elected was not simply a formal vote,
And whereas it is due to the profession at large
(11:55):
that we make a formal declaration concerning the position we
have assumed in our action. Therefore resolved that we most
cordially welcome Miss Lucy B. Hobbes of McGregor to our
number and to our professional pursuits, trials, aims, and successes.
Resolved that the profession of dentistry, involving as it does
(12:16):
the vital interest of humanity in the relief of human
suffering and the perpetuation of the comforts and enjoyments of
life in civilized and refined society, has nothing in its
pursuits foreign to the instincts of women, and, on the
other hand, presents in almost every applicant for operations, a
subject requiring a kind and benevolent consideration of the most
(12:37):
refined and womanly nature. Lucy then made a brief speech
of her own, thanking the Dental Society and remarking on
how truly meaningful it was after having heard quite the
opposite sentiment for so long regarding women in dentistry. The
Society also nominated her to be a representative to attend
the American Dental Association meeting that year. There's another benefit
(13:01):
to having gone to this meeting for Hobbes. Doctor Jonathan Taft,
the dean of the Ohio College of Dental Surgery, was
also at the meeting, and other members of society put
some pressure on him to do whatever he could to
finally admit Lucy Hobbs to the Dental school, and that worked.
Taft got Lucy admitted to the school. Of course, at
(13:23):
this point she had been in practice for half a decade,
so the school did not make her take the entire
load of classes that would normally be required of their
dental students. Lucy Hobbs was admitted as a senior. She
got credit for all of that work she had been doing.
She attended one session and then received a degree of
Doctor of Dental Surgery on February twenty first, eighteen sixty six.
(13:45):
She was, as it is often said, the first woman
in the world to receive a dental degree. That same year,
doctor Hobbs wrote a paper about one of the advancements
in the field of dental medicine, which she read before
the Iowa State Dental Society before it was published in
a dental journal, and in particular it championed the use
(14:05):
of mallets. It read quote, the mallet system has become
the prevailing system among the best operators. It needs but
a few facts to show every thinking mind that this
is the best system yet known to the profession. For
all ordinary fillings as very few, but can be better
and more easily condensed than by hand pressure. No proof
(14:26):
is necessary to show that anyone can do better work
when he can give all his attention to placing the
gold in the cavity, stand easy and natural, and have
an assistant do the condensing. So for clarity, mallets have
historically been used to knock out people's teeth, but this
was a very different situation. The mallets that Hobbes was
(14:47):
writing about were small. They were used to shape and
condense filling material for a more thorough restoration of the tooth.
And this worked a lot better than a dentist just
only being able to use them their hands to push
gold or amalgam into the filling holes, and they weren't
using them to tap, but just to shape. Doctor Hobbs
(15:08):
described the benefit of mallet use for career longevity as well,
writing quote, in the old way, the operator was all
worn out with a few fillings. The position was such
that in most cases the strength could not be applied
in the right direction, but at a great disadvantage to
the operator, so that after a very few years of practice,
an operator was worn out ere he had arrived at
(15:30):
any degree of perfection. Anyone that has tried both systems
will admit that more gold can be condensed in a cavity,
and of course make a better filling, as it is
more solid than in any other way. Being driven to
place by the mallet, it forms one solid mass. She
also notes that it's better for the patient to have
a narrow tool in their mouth than a dentist's whole hand,
(15:54):
writing quote, With the mallet, I have known the patient
to sleep when the operation was long. This show that
it was not very unpleasant. After officially receiving her degree,
doctor Hobbs moved her practice once more, this time to
Chicago to an office in ninety three Washington Street, and
while living there, she met a man named James Myrtle Taylor,
(16:16):
who had fought for the Union in the Civil War
and at that point was working as a train car
painter for the Northwestern Railway. The two married on April
twenty fourth, eighteen sixty seven. Several months later, on November first,
eighteen sixty seven, Lucy Hobbs Taylor sold her practice to
another doctor that was doctor Edmund Noys, and she and
(16:36):
her husband moved to Lawrence, Kansas to open a practice there.
This practice was housed at ninety eight Massachusetts Street in Lawrence,
and there were two dentists because Lucy taught James the
dentistry trade, and as a pair they did really well.
Their practice was very popular and well respected, and they
stayed busy. They had built the office on land that
(16:57):
they purchased, and the building they put there also in
included their residence. After several years in that location, the
Tailors decided to build a new home, this time on
Ohio Street, and this time, it was not a combination
home in business. Instead, they moved the dental office to
a new and separate location at the corner of eighth
in Massachusetts. Lucy's time in Kansas was marked by heavy
(17:19):
participation in community activities. Lucy joined the Fraternal Order in
Service organization Rebecca Lodge, known more formally as the Women's
Associate Lodges of the Independent Order of the Oddfellows. She
joined that in June of eighteen seventy one. In eighteen
seventy six, the EIGHTA Chapter of the Eastern Star Lodge
was founded, and Lucy was a charter member. She really
(17:42):
loved Kansas and once said of it quote, I am
a New Yorker by birth, but I love my adopted country,
the West. To it belongs the credit of making it
possible for women to be recognized in the dental profession
on equal terms with men. We will talk a bit
about Lucy's life after she had become a well known
figure in dentistry, but first we will hear from the
(18:03):
sponsors that keep stuff you missed in history class going.
There was a certain degree of celebrity that came with
being the first woman in the US with a dental degree.
When Lucy traveled, her mere presence sometimes made the papers.
(18:27):
For example, when she went to see family in Ellenburgh,
New York in eighteen seventy two. You'll remember that's one
of the places she might have been born. But that
visit got a write up. That is the account that
we quoted from earlier that recounted the man in McGregor, Iowa,
who had decided to test her. And that article opens
with missus Lucy Hobbes Taylor DDS and her husband have
(18:48):
been visiting relatives in town for several weeks, and then
it continues with a brief biography of Lucy's accomplishments. James M.
Taylor died in eighteen eighty six. It's usually raport that
at that point Lucy retired, but that doesn't seem to
be entirely accurate. She did step away from the practice
for a bit, but then reopened the offices and kept
(19:09):
the practice open for quite a while, although with significantly
reduced hours that she kept there. Part of this seems
to be just a matter of her patients, who called
her doctor Lucy. They would not let her retire. An
eighteen ninety five to Peek of Paper reported quote for
years she had the largest dental practice in the city
of Lawrence, And regardless of the fact that she has
(19:31):
retired from active business, there are many who will let
no one do their work but her. I know a
number of people, more doctors than dentists really, who like
retire but still maintain hmmm like some level of patient engagement.
When another dentist from Lawrence, doctor C. E. Esterley, died
(19:53):
suddenly in nineteen oh one, doctor Taylor and five other
dentists in the area placed a note in the Lawrence
Daily Journal to honor him. They included a description of
him as fostering friendships among the various dentists of the area,
writing quote, the cordiality of his relations to each of
us has taught us much of what one practitioner should
(20:14):
be to another, and we feel that our intercourse with
him and his friendship toward us has been a moral
as well as a professional blessing. When she wasn't kindly
continuing to see patients who felt that no other dentist
would do, Lucy spent most of her time working with
civic groups and her fraternal organizations. As an example of
some of the charitable work that she did in her
(20:36):
later years. In eighteen ninety three, a new home for
orphans was being built in nearby Ottawa, Kansas. The board
of trustees managing the project reached out to the various
Rebecca Lodges of the state to help the project along
in whatever ways they could. A lot sent donations. Doctor
Lucy Hobbs Taylor encouraged her local lodge to help, which
(20:58):
it did. But in addition to that, Lucy also selected
one of the rooms in this orphan home and provided
all the furnishings from it from her own money. This
was in line with a lot of her charity work
both before and after her husband's death, which was often
done for the benefit of mothers and children's causes. In
eighteen ninety five, the Chicago Tribune ran an article about
(21:19):
women dentists, which opened with quote, ten years ago, a
woman dentist was a rarity, even a novelty in Chicago. Today,
the city claims at least fifteen fair devotees of the
profession who are making their way in the most approved
American girl fashion. And this article is mostly about the
women that are practicing in the city at the time,
(21:40):
including one named missus Hattie E. Lawrence, who the paper
called a quote pioneer woman dentist, whatever that means. The
article gets quotes from a handful of women in the
field and shares some of the things that they were
dealing with on a day to day basis, including people
always asking if they were strong enough to pull teeth.
But then it traces all of that back to Lucy
(22:02):
Hobbs as the forerunner and mentions the quote bitter opposition
and foolish objection that she had to endure in her
early dental career. She finally officially closed her office in
the early nineteen hundreds. According to a real estate transfer
announcement in Lawrence's Jeffersonian Gazette, she sold the house on
(22:23):
Ohio Street to a woman named Kate M. Spaulding for
oney five hundred and ten dollars. She'd already moved into
a new home at eight oh nine Vermont Street a
few years before that. Yeah, that was both her home
and her office because she was still occasionally letting people
come over to have work. In the late summer or
(22:45):
early autumn of nineteen ten, doctor Taylor had a stroke
and this left her with some degree of paralysis. I
read about it in papers, they did not describe it
any more detailed than that. A little more than a
month later, she died of a cerebral hemorrhage am on
October third, nineteen ten, in her home in Lawrence, Kansas.
(23:05):
The local paper referred to her as quote one of
the best known residents of this city. In the death announcement.
An Arkansas paper reported her death by saying, quote, Lawrence,
Kansas has lost its most widely known and most prominent
professional woman in missus Lucy Hobbs Taylor. She was buried
in Oak Hill Cemetery on Thirteenth Street, alongside her husband.
(23:28):
Before her death, she almost certainly understood her significance as
the first woman to earn a degree in dentistry. Allegedly,
in nineteen oh seven, she gave her diploma to a
friend that was doctor Edward Bumgartner. At least that's one
version of the story. The Jeffersonian Gazette reported it as
the Bumgardner received the diploma when Lucy died. The announcement
(23:51):
reads quote valued as a keepsake, the diploma of the
late doctor Lucy Hobbs Taylor, whose death took place a
week ago, issued to her from the Ohio College of
Dental Surgery in February eighteen sixty six as the first
woman dentist in America. Has been given to doctor Edward Bumgartner,
who has a hobby as a collector. He values the
(24:12):
parchment very highly. Yeah, it's unclear since they don't mention
when it was given to him. They kind of make
it sound like it was when he died. But then
I'm like, well, then who gave it to him? Like
who was the executor? That was like, you can have this.
We know they were friends. They had both co signed
that placement that they had had put in the paper
about their colleague that had died. They knew each other
(24:34):
before that. Bumgardner was a fellow dentist who had moved
to Lawrence, Kansas in eighteen ninety three after he received
his dental degree. And though you would think that technically
they were competitors, at that point, Lucy had largely stepped
back from dentistry, and so she and Bumgardner became friends
and she was something of a mentor to him. And
(24:54):
in any case, he kept Lucy's diploma for some period
of time and then he gave it to the Kansas
State Historical Society, where it remains in the organization's archives.
In an obituary in the Lawrence Daily Journal, the following
was written about Lucy Hobbs Taylor. Quote. Doctor Lucy Taylor
was one of the most striking figures in Lawrence. She
(25:16):
occupied a position of honor and ability for years. She
occupied a place high in the ranks of her profession.
Doctor Taylor was a great charitable worker and did much
good in a quiet, unobtrusive manner. By nineteen hundred, less
than forty years after Lucy Hobbs opened her first practice,
and while she was still alive, there were almost one
(25:37):
thousand women dentists in the United States. Today, there is
an award named for Lucy Hobbs Taylor, which is given
by the American Association of Women Dentists. It is their
highest honor and is given in recognition of outstanding women
in dentistry. So we've talked a bunch about doctor Lucy
Hobbs Taylor, who really was an impressive woman, but it's
(25:58):
also important to talk about the way she's almost always
framed in write ups about her. She was absolutely the
first woman in the US to receive a dental degree
and the US was the first country with formal dental schools,
so it's fair to say that she was the first
woman in the world with a dental degree. She wasn't
(26:18):
the first woman to practice dentistry, not even in the US.
Some of this leaving out of other practitioners may come
down a little bit to semantics. If you only consider
someone with a dental degree a dentist, then yes, she
would technically be the first woman, but we know lots
of people were working as dentists with that job title,
(26:39):
including Lucy Hobbs, without the degree. While researching, Holly found
a newspaper syndicated article from eighteen seventy two was in
the Frostburg Mining Journal of Maryland. It opens with quote
alluding to lady dentists. The Cincinnati commercial does not want
the honor of being the first lady graduate with a
(26:59):
dental college to be carried off by a Russian countess,
but claims that honor for a Cincinnati lady, missus Lucy B. Hobbs,
who graduated in eighteen sixty five. So Russia is not
ahead of America after all, and enterprising women. So this
is just a tiny little blurb in a paper and
It probably wasn't intended to be especially serious, but it
(27:21):
does kind of show how easy it is for facts
to get a bit distorted when it comes to national pride.
I actually tried to hunt down the Russian woman who
was apparently being put forth as the first woman dentist
the avenues. I went down all kind of dead ended.
There are some possible candidates, but it was never very
clear to me. This reminds me of when everyone on
Twitter is responding to something and you can't find what
(27:44):
it is that people are responding to. It's very much
that I'm like, well, there is this woman who might
have been practicing in the early eighteen hundreds and maybe
was certified, but didn't go to a dental school, Like
there's it's a lot of guesswork. Yeah, yeah. And the
real kicker there is that there were definitely women practicing
(28:04):
some sort of dentistry way before any of these folks,
before Lucy b. Hobbes, before this Russian countess whoever. That
might have been the first woman to practice dentistry in
the US that we know of was Emmeline Roberts Jones,
who would have been a contemporary of Lucy's, but she
started working with her husband. Several years before Miss Hobbs
(28:26):
went from teaching to dentistry, a woman named Madeline Francoise
Calais was practicing dentistry in France back in the seventeen forties,
and centuries before any of them, there were women treating
people for dental issues all over the world. Much of
it is likely undocumented, some of it is probably documented
and just has not made its way to availability for
(28:47):
English speakers. But we know that there were people like
prior podcast subject Hildegarde of being in writing about oral
health all the way back to the eleventh century, and
a woman named hoto Keahey worked with an entire set
of dental tools and made dentures in Japan in the
fourteenth century. And women were in various medical roles in
(29:09):
ancient Greece and Rome. So though we definitely honor Lucy
Hobbs Taylor as a trailblazer, it's important just remember that
she was making her strides in the context of many
others having gone before her. Just want to be very
clear that we're not erasing any of the other history
of women in dentistry, because there's plenty. Thanks so much
(29:36):
for joining us on this Saturday. If you'd like to
send us a note, our email addresses History Podcast at
iHeartRadio dot com, and you can subscribe to the show
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Happy Saturday. Lucy Hobbs Taylor was born on March fourteenth,
eighteen thirty three, or one hundred and ninety three years
ago today, on the day we are publishing this classic.
She was the first woman in the US to receive
a degree in dentistry. This originally came out June twenty ninth,
twenty twenty two. Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in
(00:26):
History Class, a production of iHeartRadio, Hello and Welcome to
the podcast. I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
So in reading an old Ish mid twentieth century biographical
article for today's subject, it opened with the line quote,
(00:49):
the history of most of the major professions reveals that
they have been dominated by man, And when woman sought
to invade those sacred precincts of masculine activity, great consternation arose.
Which is a funny line, funny and aggravating. Right. That
(01:11):
was definitely, at least to some degree true for Lucy Hobbs. Later,
Lucy Hobbs Taylor and her desire to have a career
in dentistry before that was recognized as an acceptable vocation
for a woman. She's interesting and that she was really
just tenacious as hell. She got told no a lot,
and that did not deter her from her plan, and
(01:33):
she just kind of found her way around any obstacles
to make her own way to get to where she
wanted in life. But to be clear upfront, I want
to she often is lauded as the first woman dentist.
That's not accurate. We're going to talk about that towards
the end of the episode. She's someone if you listen
to our two parter on the history of dentistry, she
(01:55):
came up briefly and she was so interesting that I
wanted to do an episode about. I will also tell
you in a comforting way that there is no real
talk of any dental scariness here. We talk about fillings
a little in one advancement in how they were performed
in her kind of being a champion for that, but
it's pretty mild, so don't worry if you're squeamage. Lucy
(02:17):
was born Lucy Beaman Hobbes on March fourteenth, eighteen thirty three.
Her place of birth is a little uncertain. We know
she was born in New York State. Most biographies say
that it was in Franklin, County that's in the state's
northeast corner. If you look at her biography on the
Kansas Historical Society's website, you'll see Constable, New York list
(02:40):
it is her place of birth that's in Franklin County.
But there was another place mentioned in a paper about
Lucy that was written in nineteen fifty one. That document
says she was born in Ellenburg. That's in Clinton County,
New York, immediately to the east of Franklin County. So
we can say upstate New York pretty confidently, probably Franklin County,
(03:01):
but there's some inconsistency, and we don't know a whole
lot about Lucy's childhood. She also had a lot of siblings,
nine according to one source, and there is some indication
that her mother died when she was still quite young,
but we don't really have a lot of details about it.
Her story really picks up in eighteen forty nine, when
Lucy graduated from the Franklin Academy in Malone, New York,
(03:24):
with the intent to become a school teacher, and she
did do that for a decade. She started when she
was just eighteen, and later told a reporter quote, I
had pupils older than myself who knew about as much
as I did. But that did not shake my faith
in myself, for I knew that little informed as I was,
we had no better teacher in our district since I
could remember. She was described as laughing when she said this,
(03:49):
like I'm as good as any of the others I've had.
But she traveled to where teaching jobs were, and as
a consequence, she ended up in Brooklyn, Michigan, and she
met someone there who changed her life's trajectory. Although I
have never found this person's name in any of the
things that I read, but the house where she rented
(04:09):
a room in Michigan was apparently owned by a doctor,
and he and Lucy are said to have talked a
lot about his profession because she was deeply interested in it.
She's often quoted as saying that she wished quote to
enter a profession where she could earn her bread, not
alone by the sweat of her brow, but by the
use of her brains also, and her physician friend encouraged
(04:31):
her to take that intellectual curiosity and use it to
pursue a career in medicine. So Lucy decided to go
to Cincinnati, Ohio to enroll in medical school. This was
in eighteen fifty nine. She was twenty six at the time,
and her plan was to enroll at Eclectic Medical Institute
of Cincinnati, or EMI, So for a little bit of
(04:52):
background on that school. Eclectic medicine was a form of
medicine that was popular in the late nineteenth and twentieth
centuries in the United States, and the focus on this
type of medicine was based largely on botanicals in herbal medicine.
EMI had been founded in eighteen forty two, and for
a while, starting in eighteen fifty, it graduated some of
(05:12):
the first women with physician credentials in the US. But
even though Lucy Hobbs knew she wanted an education at Eclectic,
it turned out the school didn't want her. Eclectic had
stopped taking women's students in eighteen fifty seven, she was
refused enrollment. When she spoke to the college president about
the situation, he suggested that maybe she could pursue a
(05:35):
career in dentistry instead, and Lucy thought about it and
ultimately decided that she would take the college president's advice.
So her next step was to apply to work with
dentists in the Cincinnati area. She needed some degree of
learning in the field before she could apply to a
formal training programer a dental college, so she began to
(05:56):
search for a mentor, and she was told repeatedly that
the dental field was for men, and some dentists flat
out told her that it would damage their practice if
people found out a woman was being taught on the premises.
An article written later in her life reported that quote.
She began a tour of dentist offices in Cincinnati for
a place to study. On every hand, she was rebuffed,
(06:19):
though one man offered to let her clean his office
and look on while he worked, which proposition was indignantly refused.
She finally got an assist from the dean of the
Ohio College of Dental Surgery, that was doctor Jonathan Taft,
as a temporary arrangement while she kept looking for a
formal mentor to take her on. Taft told her she
(06:41):
could learn in his office for three months, so finally
she found somebody who was willing to work with her.
Doctor Samuel Wardle had been one of doctor Jonathan Taft's students.
He had graduated in eighteen fifty nine, and he offered
her an apprenticeship in his office. This was a break
for Hobbs, but it also meant that her her days
were spent working and learning but not getting paid for it.
(07:03):
So in the evenings she would take in sewing to
try to keep herself afloat. Yeah. I have so many
questions that I never found satisfactory answers to about doctor
Wardle because he was fresh out of dental school, and
I'm like, was it that he was super progressive or
was it that he really needed an assistant for no
money because he was just starting as practice And how
(07:24):
much did doctor Taft kind of help push that thing together.
But at this point in time, there were not a
lot of dental programs in the United States. The first
had opened in Baltimore in eighteen forty, the second, the
Ohio College of Dental Surgery, had opened in eighteen forty five,
and the third, Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery, had opened
in eighteen fifty six. But that was it three options. Lucy,
(07:49):
because of proximity, applied to the Ohio College of Dental
Surgery in March of eighteen sixty one. But even though
she had gotten that help, earlier from the Dean. This
application went exactly as well as her application to Eclectic.
Lucy's next move, on the advice of doctor Wortle, was
to just open up her own practice. At the time,
(08:10):
it was beneficial to have a degree, but it wasn't
required to practice. She opened an office in Cincinnati on
March fourteenth, eighteen sixty one, which was her twenty eighth birthday.
That year, of course, was monumental in the United States.
The Civil War officially began less than a month after
Lucy Hobbs opened her practice, So Lucy closed up her
(08:31):
Ohio office almost immediately, and then she moved to Iowa
to start over there. Presumably she thought it was safer
there farther away from the epicenter of conflict. And although
Lucy didn't really know anyone in Iowa when she moved there,
she must have been providing something that people really desperately
needed in opening a dental office in Bellevue, Iowa that's
(08:53):
located in Jackson County on the Illinois border. Because she
ended her first year there in the black, having put
away one hundred dollars more than it had cost to
run the office and pay for her necessities. This modest
success of her first year running her own dental practice
gave Lucy Hobbs the confidence to move somewhere that had
more lucrative potential. This time it was McGregor, Iowa, about
(09:17):
eighty two miles north of Bellevue, and her instincts were correct.
She finished her second year in her new profession with
a profit of three thousand dollars on the books. That
was no small sum. In eighteen sixty three, Hobbs kept
building up her business. She established a very good reputation
as a dentist. For the next three years she stayed
in McGregor, and according to a newspaper account written several
(09:41):
years after Lucy had arrived in McGregor, Iowa, she had
had to work to prove herself to the new community,
and especially the men of the town. There were definitely
some who just did not believe that she, as a woman,
would know what she was doing, and so one man
decided that he was going to test her by making
an appointment in This back fired. According to a write
(10:02):
up about it from the Vermont paper, The Burlington Democrat,
which came out in eighteen seventy two, quote a young
man once entered her office in McGregor and asked her
to examine his teeth, Knowing at the time they were
perfectly sound. She saw the trick at once, but nevertheless
commenced to work at his teeth. She bored a hole
in a sound tooth and filled it with gold, charging
(10:24):
him the usual price. He had to pay well for
the experiment. I don't love this story. I don't either,
but I also think it's funny. Yeah, I love it
and I don't love it. Right, I'm like, that's malpractice. Yeah,
but I understand where you're coming from. Similar. Yeah. So
coming up, we'll talk about a surprising development in Lucy
(10:47):
Hobb's career. First, though, we will pause for a quick
sponsor break. In July eighteen sixty five, Lucy was invited
to attend a meeting of the Iowa State Dental Society
in Dubuque, Iowa. The president of the society, doctor Luhmann
(11:10):
Church Ingersoll, had extended that invitation himself, and while attending,
Lucy was asked to join the organization. This was a
pretty big deal, and Ingersoll had prepared a resolution for
the occasion, which he gave as a speech. It not
only noted that Lucy was welcomed by all of the members,
but also entreated the larger dental profession to recognize that
(11:32):
women are perfectly suited to work in dentistry. This read quote,
whereas the Iowa State Dental Society has, without precedent, elected
to membership a lady practitioner of dentistry, and whereas it
is due to her to know that the unanimous vote
by which she was elected was not simply a formal vote,
And whereas it is due to the profession at large
(11:55):
that we make a formal declaration concerning the position we
have assumed in our action. Therefore resolved that we most
cordially welcome Miss Lucy B. Hobbes of McGregor to our
number and to our professional pursuits, trials, aims, and successes.
Resolved that the profession of dentistry, involving as it does
(12:16):
the vital interest of humanity in the relief of human
suffering and the perpetuation of the comforts and enjoyments of
life in civilized and refined society, has nothing in its
pursuits foreign to the instincts of women, and, on the
other hand, presents in almost every applicant for operations, a
subject requiring a kind and benevolent consideration of the most
(12:37):
refined and womanly nature. Lucy then made a brief speech
of her own, thanking the Dental Society and remarking on
how truly meaningful it was after having heard quite the
opposite sentiment for so long regarding women in dentistry. The
Society also nominated her to be a representative to attend
the American Dental Association meeting that year. There's another benefit
(13:01):
to having gone to this meeting for Hobbes. Doctor Jonathan Taft,
the dean of the Ohio College of Dental Surgery, was
also at the meeting, and other members of society put
some pressure on him to do whatever he could to
finally admit Lucy Hobbs to the Dental school, and that worked.
Taft got Lucy admitted to the school. Of course, at
(13:23):
this point she had been in practice for half a decade,
so the school did not make her take the entire
load of classes that would normally be required of their
dental students. Lucy Hobbs was admitted as a senior. She
got credit for all of that work she had been doing.
She attended one session and then received a degree of
Doctor of Dental Surgery on February twenty first, eighteen sixty six.
(13:45):
She was, as it is often said, the first woman
in the world to receive a dental degree. That same year,
doctor Hobbs wrote a paper about one of the advancements
in the field of dental medicine, which she read before
the Iowa State Dental Society before it was published in
a dental journal, and in particular it championed the use
(14:05):
of mallets. It read quote, the mallet system has become
the prevailing system among the best operators. It needs but
a few facts to show every thinking mind that this
is the best system yet known to the profession. For
all ordinary fillings as very few, but can be better
and more easily condensed than by hand pressure. No proof
(14:26):
is necessary to show that anyone can do better work
when he can give all his attention to placing the
gold in the cavity, stand easy and natural, and have
an assistant do the condensing. So for clarity, mallets have
historically been used to knock out people's teeth, but this
was a very different situation. The mallets that Hobbes was
(14:47):
writing about were small. They were used to shape and
condense filling material for a more thorough restoration of the tooth.
And this worked a lot better than a dentist just
only being able to use them their hands to push
gold or amalgam into the filling holes, and they weren't
using them to tap, but just to shape. Doctor Hobbs
(15:08):
described the benefit of mallet use for career longevity as well,
writing quote, in the old way, the operator was all
worn out with a few fillings. The position was such
that in most cases the strength could not be applied
in the right direction, but at a great disadvantage to
the operator, so that after a very few years of practice,
an operator was worn out ere he had arrived at
(15:30):
any degree of perfection. Anyone that has tried both systems
will admit that more gold can be condensed in a cavity,
and of course make a better filling, as it is
more solid than in any other way. Being driven to
place by the mallet, it forms one solid mass. She
also notes that it's better for the patient to have
a narrow tool in their mouth than a dentist's whole hand,
(15:54):
writing quote, With the mallet, I have known the patient
to sleep when the operation was long. This show that
it was not very unpleasant. After officially receiving her degree,
doctor Hobbs moved her practice once more, this time to
Chicago to an office in ninety three Washington Street, and
while living there, she met a man named James Myrtle Taylor,
(16:16):
who had fought for the Union in the Civil War
and at that point was working as a train car
painter for the Northwestern Railway. The two married on April
twenty fourth, eighteen sixty seven. Several months later, on November first,
eighteen sixty seven, Lucy Hobbs Taylor sold her practice to
another doctor that was doctor Edmund Noys, and she and
(16:36):
her husband moved to Lawrence, Kansas to open a practice there.
This practice was housed at ninety eight Massachusetts Street in Lawrence,
and there were two dentists because Lucy taught James the
dentistry trade, and as a pair they did really well.
Their practice was very popular and well respected, and they
stayed busy. They had built the office on land that
(16:57):
they purchased, and the building they put there also in
included their residence. After several years in that location, the
Tailors decided to build a new home, this time on
Ohio Street, and this time, it was not a combination
home in business. Instead, they moved the dental office to
a new and separate location at the corner of eighth
in Massachusetts. Lucy's time in Kansas was marked by heavy
(17:19):
participation in community activities. Lucy joined the Fraternal Order in
Service organization Rebecca Lodge, known more formally as the Women's
Associate Lodges of the Independent Order of the Oddfellows. She
joined that in June of eighteen seventy one. In eighteen
seventy six, the EIGHTA Chapter of the Eastern Star Lodge
was founded, and Lucy was a charter member. She really
(17:42):
loved Kansas and once said of it quote, I am
a New Yorker by birth, but I love my adopted country,
the West. To it belongs the credit of making it
possible for women to be recognized in the dental profession
on equal terms with men. We will talk a bit
about Lucy's life after she had become a well known
figure in dentistry, but first we will hear from the
(18:03):
sponsors that keep stuff you missed in history class going.
There was a certain degree of celebrity that came with
being the first woman in the US with a dental degree.
When Lucy traveled, her mere presence sometimes made the papers.
(18:27):
For example, when she went to see family in Ellenburgh,
New York in eighteen seventy two. You'll remember that's one
of the places she might have been born. But that
visit got a write up. That is the account that
we quoted from earlier that recounted the man in McGregor, Iowa,
who had decided to test her. And that article opens
with missus Lucy Hobbes Taylor DDS and her husband have
(18:48):
been visiting relatives in town for several weeks, and then
it continues with a brief biography of Lucy's accomplishments. James M.
Taylor died in eighteen eighty six. It's usually raport that
at that point Lucy retired, but that doesn't seem to
be entirely accurate. She did step away from the practice
for a bit, but then reopened the offices and kept
(19:09):
the practice open for quite a while, although with significantly
reduced hours that she kept there. Part of this seems
to be just a matter of her patients, who called
her doctor Lucy. They would not let her retire. An
eighteen ninety five to Peek of Paper reported quote for
years she had the largest dental practice in the city
of Lawrence, And regardless of the fact that she has
(19:31):
retired from active business, there are many who will let
no one do their work but her. I know a
number of people, more doctors than dentists really, who like
retire but still maintain hmmm like some level of patient engagement.
When another dentist from Lawrence, doctor C. E. Esterley, died
(19:53):
suddenly in nineteen oh one, doctor Taylor and five other
dentists in the area placed a note in the Lawrence
Daily Journal to honor him. They included a description of
him as fostering friendships among the various dentists of the area,
writing quote, the cordiality of his relations to each of
us has taught us much of what one practitioner should
(20:14):
be to another, and we feel that our intercourse with
him and his friendship toward us has been a moral
as well as a professional blessing. When she wasn't kindly
continuing to see patients who felt that no other dentist
would do, Lucy spent most of her time working with
civic groups and her fraternal organizations. As an example of
some of the charitable work that she did in her
(20:36):
later years. In eighteen ninety three, a new home for
orphans was being built in nearby Ottawa, Kansas. The board
of trustees managing the project reached out to the various
Rebecca Lodges of the state to help the project along
in whatever ways they could. A lot sent donations. Doctor
Lucy Hobbs Taylor encouraged her local lodge to help, which
(20:58):
it did. But in addition to that, Lucy also selected
one of the rooms in this orphan home and provided
all the furnishings from it from her own money. This
was in line with a lot of her charity work
both before and after her husband's death, which was often
done for the benefit of mothers and children's causes. In
eighteen ninety five, the Chicago Tribune ran an article about
(21:19):
women dentists, which opened with quote, ten years ago, a
woman dentist was a rarity, even a novelty in Chicago. Today,
the city claims at least fifteen fair devotees of the
profession who are making their way in the most approved
American girl fashion. And this article is mostly about the
women that are practicing in the city at the time,
(21:40):
including one named missus Hattie E. Lawrence, who the paper
called a quote pioneer woman dentist, whatever that means. The
article gets quotes from a handful of women in the
field and shares some of the things that they were
dealing with on a day to day basis, including people
always asking if they were strong enough to pull teeth.
But then it traces all of that back to Lucy
(22:02):
Hobbs as the forerunner and mentions the quote bitter opposition
and foolish objection that she had to endure in her
early dental career. She finally officially closed her office in
the early nineteen hundreds. According to a real estate transfer
announcement in Lawrence's Jeffersonian Gazette, she sold the house on
(22:23):
Ohio Street to a woman named Kate M. Spaulding for
oney five hundred and ten dollars. She'd already moved into
a new home at eight oh nine Vermont Street a
few years before that. Yeah, that was both her home
and her office because she was still occasionally letting people
come over to have work. In the late summer or
(22:45):
early autumn of nineteen ten, doctor Taylor had a stroke
and this left her with some degree of paralysis. I
read about it in papers, they did not describe it
any more detailed than that. A little more than a
month later, she died of a cerebral hemorrhage am on
October third, nineteen ten, in her home in Lawrence, Kansas.
(23:05):
The local paper referred to her as quote one of
the best known residents of this city. In the death announcement.
An Arkansas paper reported her death by saying, quote, Lawrence,
Kansas has lost its most widely known and most prominent
professional woman in missus Lucy Hobbs Taylor. She was buried
in Oak Hill Cemetery on Thirteenth Street, alongside her husband.
(23:28):
Before her death, she almost certainly understood her significance as
the first woman to earn a degree in dentistry. Allegedly,
in nineteen oh seven, she gave her diploma to a
friend that was doctor Edward Bumgartner. At least that's one
version of the story. The Jeffersonian Gazette reported it as
the Bumgardner received the diploma when Lucy died. The announcement
(23:51):
reads quote valued as a keepsake, the diploma of the
late doctor Lucy Hobbs Taylor, whose death took place a
week ago, issued to her from the Ohio College of
Dental Surgery in February eighteen sixty six as the first
woman dentist in America. Has been given to doctor Edward Bumgartner,
who has a hobby as a collector. He values the
(24:12):
parchment very highly. Yeah, it's unclear since they don't mention
when it was given to him. They kind of make
it sound like it was when he died. But then
I'm like, well, then who gave it to him? Like
who was the executor? That was like, you can have this.
We know they were friends. They had both co signed
that placement that they had had put in the paper
about their colleague that had died. They knew each other
(24:34):
before that. Bumgardner was a fellow dentist who had moved
to Lawrence, Kansas in eighteen ninety three after he received
his dental degree. And though you would think that technically
they were competitors, at that point, Lucy had largely stepped
back from dentistry, and so she and Bumgardner became friends
and she was something of a mentor to him. And
(24:54):
in any case, he kept Lucy's diploma for some period
of time and then he gave it to the Kansas
State Historical Society, where it remains in the organization's archives.
In an obituary in the Lawrence Daily Journal, the following
was written about Lucy Hobbs Taylor. Quote. Doctor Lucy Taylor
was one of the most striking figures in Lawrence. She
(25:16):
occupied a position of honor and ability for years. She
occupied a place high in the ranks of her profession.
Doctor Taylor was a great charitable worker and did much
good in a quiet, unobtrusive manner. By nineteen hundred, less
than forty years after Lucy Hobbs opened her first practice,
and while she was still alive, there were almost one
(25:37):
thousand women dentists in the United States. Today, there is
an award named for Lucy Hobbs Taylor, which is given
by the American Association of Women Dentists. It is their
highest honor and is given in recognition of outstanding women
in dentistry. So we've talked a bunch about doctor Lucy
Hobbs Taylor, who really was an impressive woman, but it's
(25:58):
also important to talk about the way she's almost always
framed in write ups about her. She was absolutely the
first woman in the US to receive a dental degree
and the US was the first country with formal dental schools,
so it's fair to say that she was the first
woman in the world with a dental degree. She wasn't
(26:18):
the first woman to practice dentistry, not even in the US.
Some of this leaving out of other practitioners may come
down a little bit to semantics. If you only consider
someone with a dental degree a dentist, then yes, she
would technically be the first woman, but we know lots
of people were working as dentists with that job title,
(26:39):
including Lucy Hobbs, without the degree. While researching, Holly found
a newspaper syndicated article from eighteen seventy two was in
the Frostburg Mining Journal of Maryland. It opens with quote
alluding to lady dentists. The Cincinnati commercial does not want
the honor of being the first lady graduate with a
(26:59):
dental college to be carried off by a Russian countess,
but claims that honor for a Cincinnati lady, missus Lucy B. Hobbs,
who graduated in eighteen sixty five. So Russia is not
ahead of America after all, and enterprising women. So this
is just a tiny little blurb in a paper and
It probably wasn't intended to be especially serious, but it
(27:21):
does kind of show how easy it is for facts
to get a bit distorted when it comes to national pride.
I actually tried to hunt down the Russian woman who
was apparently being put forth as the first woman dentist
the avenues. I went down all kind of dead ended.
There are some possible candidates, but it was never very
clear to me. This reminds me of when everyone on
Twitter is responding to something and you can't find what
(27:44):
it is that people are responding to. It's very much
that I'm like, well, there is this woman who might
have been practicing in the early eighteen hundreds and maybe
was certified, but didn't go to a dental school, Like
there's it's a lot of guesswork. Yeah, yeah. And the
real kicker there is that there were definitely women practicing
(28:04):
some sort of dentistry way before any of these folks,
before Lucy b. Hobbes, before this Russian countess whoever. That
might have been the first woman to practice dentistry in
the US that we know of was Emmeline Roberts Jones,
who would have been a contemporary of Lucy's, but she
started working with her husband. Several years before Miss Hobbs
(28:26):
went from teaching to dentistry, a woman named Madeline Francoise
Calais was practicing dentistry in France back in the seventeen forties,
and centuries before any of them, there were women treating
people for dental issues all over the world. Much of
it is likely undocumented, some of it is probably documented
and just has not made its way to availability for
(28:47):
English speakers. But we know that there were people like
prior podcast subject Hildegarde of being in writing about oral
health all the way back to the eleventh century, and
a woman named hoto Keahey worked with an entire set
of dental tools and made dentures in Japan in the
fourteenth century. And women were in various medical roles in
(29:09):
ancient Greece and Rome. So though we definitely honor Lucy
Hobbs Taylor as a trailblazer, it's important just remember that
she was making her strides in the context of many
others having gone before her. Just want to be very
clear that we're not erasing any of the other history
of women in dentistry, because there's plenty. Thanks so much
(29:36):
for joining us on this Saturday. If you'd like to
send us a note, our email addresses History Podcast at
iHeartRadio dot com, and you can subscribe to the show
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
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