from Cairo and Constantinople : " Professes to clean the teeth and plug them up, extracts, and fixes new ones."
In the same advertisement her husband professes to paint the interior of houses this in 1822.
Before 1850 Dr. Hugh Miller, an eminent dentist, had established himself in Rampart Row. He left £10,000 to the Bombay Medical Mission.
The first attempt 'at the relief of the poor was in 1831, the groundwork of the District Benevolent Society.
The first house lighted with gas was that of Ardaseer Cursetjee, son of Cursetjee Rustomjee, Mazagon, in 1833
. Poets broke into rapture when the first ice-ship arrived from Boston in 1836, and the coolies who carried it on shore said it scalded their backs.
The first artificial ice came about 1877.
The first exhibition of electric light was before Lord and Lady Falkland, in the Town Hall, in 1847.
When the gas-lamps
were first lighted on the streets several natives felt the pillars to discover if they were warm, and crowds collected to take their turn to climb up the lamp-posts to discover how the light was made
. The first weaving company started about 1854,
The first telegram was sent to England early in 1865
. Smoking,
. In regard to smoking, a remark made to me in 1850 by one who had been in Egypt in 1801, and in Bombay in 1817, crops up. "In my young days," said he, "young men did not wear shooting-coats or smoke cigars.
" My earliest notice of cigar smoking in India is of Madras in 1829. '
* Some are to be seen lolling in their buggies and enjoying their evening drive on the beach, pufifing away with the greatest nonchalance possible, while others on horseback or palanquin
are to be seen amusing them- selves in a similar way." From the acerbity of a Bombay paper in the following paragraph it would seem that smoking in public had not made much progress down to 1856,
the date of this Bombay blast against tobacco. " Several young men light their cheroots
as soon as the dark of evening is sufficient to prevent a full recognition of their persons and veil their im- pertinence. The police ought to extinguish this nuisance at the bandstand."
In Calcutta, smoking at the bandstand was not. allowed.
In Bombay I cannot remember European cigarettes much before 1870.
The native here dies are, no doubt, of unknown antiquity
and may be the origin of our cigarettes. One of the greatest factors of social enjoyment is exercise of the body,
and this includes boating, riding, walking, and every- thing of an athletic nature
. The man who walks or rides, or makes daily use of his muscles, is, cctteris paribus, a better companion than he who neglects his physical
Bombay Courier, 8 June 1822
| Resource Type | : | Newspaper |
| Year/Date of Publication | : | 1822-06-08 |
| Publisher | : | Bombay Courier |
| Place of Publication | : | Bombay |
| Language | : | English |
| Pages/Folios | : | 12 |
| Identifier | : | NP_BCOU_18220608 |
| Digitization Sponsor | : | Government of Maharashtra |
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chat with chat gpt on first dentist bombay
I found contemporary historical sources that quote the text of Clara Rainitz’s newspaper advertisement — though no exact image/scan of the original newspaper page appears to be online in indexed archives right now.
Here’s the best verified reconstruction based on historical references:
📰 Quoted Advertisement Text (from early Bombay history sources)
According to Glimpses of Old Bombay and Western India (and referenced in academic analyses of early colonial medicine):
“The first dentist in Bombay was a lady — Clara Rainitz, from Cairo and Constantinople:
‘Professes to clean the teeth and plug them up, extracts, and fixes new ones.’
In the same advertisement her husband professes to paint the interiors of houses!”
Another scholarly source notes essentially the same wording but cites the year 1822 as when the ad appeared:
In her advertisement in 1822, she “professes to clean the teeth and plug them up, extracts and fixes new ones”; the ad also mentions her husband as a house interior painter.
📌 Both these references come from Glimpses of Old Bombay and Western India, a historical compilation that reproduces early 19th-century advertising content.
📍 Why a scan isn’t showing up online
Most early Bombay newspapers (~1820–1822) like Bombay Courier or Bombay Gazette are not fully digitized in public search indexes.
Scans that do exist are often in library archives, microfilm collections, or private repositories, and not easily searchable by OCR (text).
Historical books sometimes include such ads as quotations or reproductions, without showing the original images online.
So at present, no indexed online source provides a visual scan of that original ad — but the quoted text is widely cited.
🖼️ What you can use on your blog
Since the original scanned image isn’t publicly accessible via open search right now, you can quote the ad text with a proper citation like this:
“The first dentist in Bombay was a lady — Clara Rainitz, from Cairo and Constantinople: ‘Professes to clean the teeth and plug them up, extracts, and fixes new ones.’ In the same advertisement her husband professes to paint the interiors of houses.”
— Glimpses of Old Bombay and Western India (historical compilation).
This gives your readers an accurate primary-source reproduction of the wording.
📌 Optional: How to locate the original newspaper page
If you want the actual scan or photo of the 1820s ad, you could try contacting one of these archives:
Asiatic Society of Mumbai Library (Horniman Circle)
– Has bound volumes of early Bombay newspapers.Maharashtra State Archives, Fort, Mumbai
– Maintains colonial newspaper collections.British Library — India Office Records (London)
– Holds microfilms/digital files of early Bombay press.
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