My father, Don Sarll, who has died aged 93, helped to run the successful dental practice of Sarll, Hingston and Conibear in Salford, Manchester, for more than two decades.
In his role as a dentist he was also a vocal campaigner for the fluoridation of water, which he believed would reduce tooth decay. He made television and radio appearances to advocate its adoption across Britain, as opposed to its current limited coverage in parts of the north east and the Midlands in England.
In addition, the British Dental Journal published many of his research papers on topics as varied as dental care for elderly people and the diet of British schoolchildren. He wrote widely about the problem of sugar in processed foods and, practising what he preached, cut the substance from his own diet more or less entirely.
Don was born in Cambridge to William Sarll, a tailor, and his wife, Kathleen (nee Saggers). His father developed tuberculosis while fighting in the first world war and died in 1938 when Don was 11, after which Don was sent to the Royal Russell boarding school in Croydon, where he narrowly missed death when a bomb fell on the school grounds during the second world war.
At 18 he was conscripted into the army and in 1947 he was sent out to be part of the British force in Palestine, as a captain. When he was demobbed, on the return ship back to Britain his commanding officer asked Don what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. When he confessed he had no idea, the officer suggested dentistry.
As a result, Don went to Manchester University dental school, where he qualified in 1954. His first post was in the practice of Alec Gall in Manchester, and he took over there when Alec retired. Eventually he set up the Sarll and Hingston practice in 1968 and it became Sarll, Hingston and Conibear in 1969.
Deciding he might one day like to be an area health officer in the NHS, he discovered that only school dentists were eligible for the role, and so with characteristic zeal he lobbied Harold Wilson’s minister of health, Kenneth Robinson, to open up the field to others. As a result the rules were changed, and in the early 1980s, having recently acquired an MA in systems management from the Open University, he secured a job as an area health officer on his own patch, Salford, and left his dental practice. He retired in 1992.
A member of the Labour party for most of his adult life, he was a loyal Guardian reader who contributed on occasion to the paper’s letters page. In Manchester he was a magistrate, a committed supporter of St Ann’s hospice, and an active member of his local parent-teacher association.
He is survived by his wife, Isobelle (nee Ramsden), a teacher whom he married in 1952, their three children, Robert, Sarah and me, and seven grandchildren.
