Claudius Ash

The Ash of Cannock website is especially good on one of Sarjeant’s sons, Claudius Ash (1792–1854), who followed in his father’s trade as a goldsmith and in the 1820s pioneered the manufacture of high-quality artificial teeth and dental appliances, founding the company that still bears his name.

Claudius Ash’s factory, Kentish Town, London

The company was once one of the world’s largest manufacturers of dental equipment, regarded as the Rolls-Royce of the trade. Members of my family variously worked in the business or were practising dentists.

Broad Street HQ

The Broad Street, London, premises of Claudius Ash & Sons. Broad Street (now Broadwick Street), Soho, was infamous in 1854 for an outbreak of cholera that Dr John Snow traced to the local water pump. Claudius died on 3 November of that year, although there is no evidence that he was a victim of the epidemic (scarlet fever is more likely). A landmark in epidemiology, Snow’s discovery led to major improvements in London’s sewage system.

[Facsimile of catalogue]

Ash’s Amadou

I recently acquired this cardboard box which once contained amadou sold by Claudius Ash. Amadou – also known by such names as touchwood, punk and hoof fungus – is a spongy, combustible substance, prepared from a fungus that grows on trees. It was formerly used by dentists to stop bleeding, and so was sometimes called ‘surgeon’s agaric’. Its Latin name is Fomes fomentarius, which loosely translates as ‘tinder fungus’: boiled in urine or soaked in saltpetre (potassium nitrate) and dried, amadou was used to start fires. The 5,300-year-old Neolithic ‘Iceman’ nicknamed Ötzi, found in the Alps in 1991, had with him a pouch containing a fire-starting kit consisting of amadou and flints.

Ash’s Refined Dental Soap

Another recent acquisition is a catalogue of Claudius Ash dental equipment, including a range of tools used in the manufacture of false teeth, in which I found this advert for Ash’s Refined Dental Soap. The claim that it ‘makes the skin soft and improves the most delicate complexion’ sits uncomfortably with the word ‘dental’ in its name – which perhaps accounts for the family’s failure to achieve the fame of soap makers such as Pears.

The wreck of the Condor

Both my grandfather and my great-grandfather Herbert William Ash served in the Boer War. My grandfather came home safely and married my grandmother in 1911, but family legend held that Herbert stayed in South Africa – and, as there is some evidence that he was estranged from his wife and six children in England, perhaps even started a new Ash lineage there. Only recently, however, while glancing at a volume of Deaths at Sea at the Family Record Centre, did I discover a secret that had remained hidden from my family for more than 100 years: Herbert, a civilian dentist serving with the British Army, boarded the Royal Navy sloop HMS Condor. The first leg of her journey took her from South Africa to Canada, to disembark Canadian troops. She then set sail from Esquimalt Harbour, Vancouver Island, on 2 December 1901 with 103 men on board – and was never heard of again. It is assumed she foundered in a severe storm, but no word of her loss, or the fact that Herbert William Ash was among the victims, ever reached my family.

Scouting for Boys

My grandfather Horace Osborne Ash (1878–1959) served in the South African Constabulary during the Boer War. The uniform he is wearing in this photograph is interesting for two reasons: it was this style of campaign hat that Robert Baden-Powell, who commanded the SAC, wore in South Africa that inspired the original Boy Scout uniform when he founded the movement more than a century ago; secondly, my grandmother, Florence Edith Ash, née Southwell (1885–1975), was proud of her slender figure and claimed to be able to wear the hat band as a belt!

HOA, RFC

Horace Osborne Ash in his First World War Royal Flying Corps uniform. I’d love to imagine him as a Sopwith Camel fighter ace, but suspect he was actually ground crew. I was only 12 when he died, but I wish I’d asked him what he did in the Great War – it just shows that in genealogy, as in biography, you should always start by interviewing the oldies before it’s too late...