Today the difficulty in finding a dentist or getting an appointment with one is similar to two hundred years ago in Honiton. There were no dentists. You would have to pull a tooth yourself (or ask a blacksmith) or treat your toothache with whisky, hot salt or cloves to ease the pain. If you could afford it, you could make an appointment to consult Mr Levendar, a surgeon dentist in Exeter.

In 1842 Lewin Mosely, a dentist practising from Oxford Street, London would offer free consultations for patients when he visited the Dolphin Hotel Honiton on Mondays during August. He offered a range of services and promised that natural and artificial teeth of every description from a single tooth to a complete set of false teeth could be fixed without wires or ligatures of any kind, scaling, stopping, children's teeth and every operation pertaining to dental surgery. Thomas Howard whose patients included Queen Victoria and the Archbishop of Canterbury had invented succedaneum paste. You could use it to fill a cavity. It hardened like enamel and cost two shillings and sixpence.

The earliest reference I have found for a dentist in Honiton was in 1851 but it was nothing to do with teeth. Catherine Arscott sought to affiliate an illegitimate male child on John Blackmore, dentist of Honiton. Catherine had told her story with ‘considerable difficulty and appeared in an agony of grief.’ Blackmore was ordered to pay one shilling and nine pence a week. He didn’t stay in Honiton long because he moved to Bath and continued practising there.

By the 1860s dentists were being trained and licences granted. Two decades later, Mr Maggs a dentist from Yeovil visited patients in Honiton by appointment only. John Threader Holway lived and practised in New Street for over twenty years until he suddenly died of a heart attack while reading to his wife in 1908. The next dentist was John Henry Field who also practised in New Street. He refused to sell his old dental plates to a gold and silver buyer. Field punched him on the chin. The judge told him to behave himself in future and the court case was dismissed.

When the National Health Service was introduced on 5th July 1948 dental care became free. The demand for dental treatment was overwhelming and the workload and costs was staggering. Over four million fillings were done in the first nine months. By 1951 over sixty five million adults had a full set of dentures fitted. All the people I know say that the reason they chose to have their teeth extracted and dentures fitted was because it was much cheaper than paying for ongoing treatment.