ADA TOVELL – FIRST WOMAN DENTIST
Michelle Calder has contacted us seeking information about her grand-mother’s maternal grand-mother, Ada Tovell (nee Fenton), who she said was the first woman in Australia to practise as a dentist.  Ada Fenton had been a student at Ormiston College, East Melbourne.  We had no record of Ada Fenton or her family but she seemed like someone we should learn more about.  Just using on-line resources there was much to be discovered.

Ada’s father, James, was a Dublin solicitor born in county Sligo, Ireland.  His own father had been chief examiner of the High Court of Chancery in Ireland.  James and his wife, Kate, and their four older children arrived in Melbourne on the Great Britain in May 1861.  They settled in Maryborough where James continued to practise law until his death in 1871, aged only fifty.  Ada was born on 17 March 1864 and so was just a small child at the time.   in 1874 one of her older sisters, Louise, died.  By this time the family was living at 3 Wellington Terrace, Wellington Parade.  This terrace of five houses has now been demolished but was on the corner of Hoddle Street.  Her youngest sister, Bessie, died in 1879 when the family was living at 7 Canterbury Terrace, Powlett Street (now No. 94). Mrs Fenton remained at this address for nearly twenty years. 

Ada would have matriculated around 1882-83.  Afterwards, to quote from her obituary, she ‘entered upon the study of dentistry, and in 1891 was articled to her husband, the late Dr. Ernest W. Tovell’  One wonders what caused her to use her talents in this way.  Was she deliberately striking a blow for women?  Was she one of the growing number of suffragettes?  Her signature does not appear on the Monster Petition of 1891, so perhaps not.  Maybe Dr. Tovell himself was the attraction.  Certainly it would have been very difficult otherwise for a woman to find a willing mentor in a world entirely dominated by men.  In the words of the Dental Museum’s website, ‘The prevailing view at the time was that women were too emotional, lacked intellectual stamina and were physically incapable of the continuous effort required for entry to a profession or business’.

Ernest Walter Tovell was the son of Dr. Charles Joshua Tovell, a medical practitioner of Brighton.  He and his brother, William Raymond (Ray) Tovell, studied dentistry at the  Philadelphia Dental College, U.S.A., each graduating as Doctor of Dental Surgery (D.D.S.) in 1884.  They were said to be the first. Victorian students to graduate in dentistry.  They returned immediately to Melbourne and set up a joint practice at 1 Treasury Place, Spring Street (later No. 51), opposite the Treasury Gardens, advertising as American Dentists.

Ernest and Ada married in December 1890 at her mother's home 17 Spring Street since about 1884, just a few doors down from the dental surgery.  By then the two brothers had established separate practices with Ray moving around the corner to 102 Collins Street.  In 1892 Ernest also moved to Collins Street, to No. 89.  Learning by apprenticeship was the only way of qualifying as a dentist in Melbourne at this time but after Ada had already been articled to her husband for some years the Australian College of Dentistry was founded in 1897 and she undertook its study program, graduating M.A.C.D. in 1900, the first woman to do so.  She at once set up her own practice at 161 Collins Street.  The Cyclopaedia of Victoria in 1903 described her as having ‘one of the largest connections in the city.  Her surgery is fitted up with all the latest electrical appliances, and her clients include a number of the leading residents in the North-Eastern District and Ballarat’.  As well as having her surgery in the city she made regular Saturday visits to many country centres.  In 1903 she created another piece of history by being the first woman to obtain a Licentiate of Dental Surgery (L.D.S.) from the Dental Board of Victoria.

Meanwhile things were beginning to go pear-shaped for Ernest.  In 1899 he was sued for ‘misfitting teeth’.  The complainant stated that he had ‘promised to make her a plate for the upper jaw, containing 13 teeth, a perfect fit, for £2/10/-  … The teeth would not fit her at all, and were perfectly useless.  He refused to alter them unless he got more money’.  The plaintiff was asked to demonstrate the defective item and ‘showed that it was practically useless’.  The bench awarded the amount claimed plus £2/2/- costs.  Then in 1903 Ada sued for divorce on the grounds that the ‘respondent was an habitual drunkard; that he left her habitually without means of support, and cruelty during three years and upwards’.  The following month Ray advertised that ‘I will in future carry on the practice of my brother, Dr. Ernest Tovell, American Dentist, at my rooms.’  From then on Ernest faded from the public record.

Ada and Ernest had had three children together and in 1903 single motherhood and divorce were both seen as social calamities.  She must have had very good reason to take the course she did.  To add to her wretchedness her mother died in 1904.  Kate too had undergone many difficulties.  She had taken on the lease of a boarding house in Mary Street, St. Kilda, but the depression had hit the business hard and in 1892 she was declared insolvent.  Next Ada’s younger daughter, aged seven, died in 1905. From this point advertisements for her dental services appear much less often and it does seem perhaps that this was one blow too many.  She continued to practise however, and to make occasional professional visits to country towns well into her fifties.  She died on 19 August 1932.