How common was it in the past for young people to have dentures?

Factual Questions
1

I need to start with a trigger warning: this topic deals with a rather nasty subject, so if tooth extraction and false teeth are triggering for you, you should probably avoid it.

Over time, I learned that before preventive dentistry and good oral hygiene became common, it wasn’t rare for relatively young people to have dentures. In fact, I have learned that in the first half of the 20th century, there was a period when some people would voluntarily get their teeth extracted at a young age in order to avoid dental problems and repairs, and be fitted with dentures instead. I am aware that this wasn’t probably a mere frivolity - the reason was basically that people didn’t have the same preventative oral hygiene practices and today, and processed sugar was proliferating, meaning that suddenly there were a lot of people with bad teeth and toothaches. So, some people, in fact, perhaps many people in some places, would resort to having all their teeth extracted and replaced by dentures, to pre-emptively take care of any future need for dental work. Sources I’ve found online suggest that this was quite a common practice in the UK in the 30s and 40s, and that it waned after the establishement of the National Health Service in 1948, which at first also often provided dentures, but eventually shifted the focus to repairing teeth and/or improving people’s oral hygiene. During the heyday of this practice, it seemed to be particularly common for young women to get their own teeth extracted and replaced by dentures (reportedly as a 21st birthday present, as a way of spending their first paycheck, or as a marriage present); they would have considered it as doing a favor to their future husband, who would not have to pay for any dental care for her later! This practice was by no means restricted to the UK; in fact I found a lively thread discussing it on reddit, where numerous examples of people doing this are given, including from further afield. There were certainly younger people who had their teeth replaced with dentures in North America, and - and this is the most disturbing fact I’ve found - apparently at one time, there were cases in Scandinavia and the Netherlands where teenagers had their teeth extracted and replaced by dentures, typically as a confirmation present. For a bit of context, in Denmark a Lutheran confirmation used to be legally obligatory (once freedom of religion was established there, only if you were Lutheran), and it involved not only the religious act but also certain secular aspects of preparation for life in adult society, such as (at one time) attesting to have either had smallpox or to having been vaccinated against it, and being permitted to get a job on adult terms. Apparently at one point, some people thought that getting dentures and avoiding future dental problems was an appropriate part of that preparation.

This is obviously an unsettling fact to fathom, and I would be interested in knowing things such as these:

Obviously it’s probably impossible to get an exact percentage, but how common was this really? Did a majority of younger people eventually get dentures at one point? A large minority?

Were people in generally accepting and nonchalant about having their natural teeth extracted, and cool with henceforth having a set of removable teeth? Or were there also those who balked at the idea of having a false part of their body?

Did most of those who had had their teeth extracted already have serious dental problems and suffering, or were there many people with relatively healthy teeth who got dentures pre-emptively?

How painful was the extraction back then - were they put under general anesthesia and would they experience a lot of pain afterward - and how long did they have to go around toothless before they were given their first set of dentures?

Was the average man really cool with having a young wife with dentures due to this notion of not having to pay for any future dental treatment? Surely there were men who were repulsed by this idea? Wouldn’t his wife have to take the teeth out overnight? So he would be lying in bed with a toothless woman beside him, and probably those awful curlers they wore in their hair back then to boot? (Disclaimer: this comment is not meant to mock or insult any woman who found herself in the situation I describe there, mainly to describe how I imagine a man having to sleep beside her would have felt).

If I were a young man in the UK somewhere around 1930-1950 and established this as a dealbreaker (I.E. that I would refuse to date any young woman who had dentures instead of her own teeth, and that any future marriage would be conditional on her not getting dentures as a wedding present), would my pickings be slim?

I may give examples of replacing teeth by dentures in other specific contexts, but will save that for a later post.

2

My mother and her siblings received little if any dental care while growing up. Both my mother and her older sister had dentures by the time they were 20. A cousin (son of my mom’s older sister) joined the Air Force at 17 and had dentures by the time he was 19. The lack of dental care my mother received as a child carried over to me and my siblings. The only time we ever saw a dentist was when we had a toothache and the remedy was to pull the offending tooth. We all have implants or bridges now.

3

I’d like to ask for a cite to show that young people having their natural teeth removed for dentures was “common” at some point in the past, I don’t believe it ever was. Some young people may have required dentures due to accidents and a lack of technology to replace them with implants, but I can’t buy the fact that people had their teeth removed because dentures were perceived to be better.

Dentures are a lot worst that implants and bridges to deal with.

4

My maternal grandmother had all her teeth extracted as a young adult so that she would not require dental care, or so I was told. She had my mother when she was 17; I don’t know what “young adult” meant specifically but maybe this provides context. Seems to me updating dentures from time to time would count as dental care, but that question didn’t occur to me back when I could have asked. She was born in 1912. My other relatives did not do this AFAIK.

5

I know of at least 5 people in their 60’s who has all their teeth pulled when they were under 25. I remember a couple of carny kids who has there teeth pulled when they were under 20. They were dirt poor and only ate leftover carnival food.

6

A proxy for how measuring how common it was would be to look at photos from the inter-war period. Those very hollow cheekbones, so fashionable now, were likely from resorption of the upper and lower jaw bones after the molars were removed en masse.

It certainly occurred in Australia. I’ve met three people who would have been born about 1900-1920 who told me they got complete removals done in their early adulthood [from vague memory two had top tooth row removed, not sure about the other]. Not sure if they were coming of age presents, although one did volunteer that that was often when it was done as the parental gift [i.e. at 21].

Can’t say it was common, but can’t have been too rare.

As to whether Gummy Sue was a catch - put it in the context of all men and many women smoking, toothed people having caries with no public dental hygiene campaigns and a general aversion to dentists, and even shitter food than now.

7

Same here - my maternal grandmother had all of her teeth removed at 16 and was given dentures as a sort of prophylactic dental strategy. This was apparently normal at that time and she had it done so as to be a better prospect for finding a husband.

Some people preferred to have all their teeth out from the start. Most readers will have had relatives, especially women, who had all their teeth removed voluntarily and took to using dentures instead. By the 1930s and 1940s this was popular among all social classes.

Girls often had their teeth removed as an 18th birthday present, or as a wedding gift.

8

To extend:
My ex’s uncles, the three sons of that family who’d have been born in the 1930s, turned up at a dentist one day, (and out in the regions dentists weren’t in every town and every town was a fair way away), and each had every remaining tooth pulled. This was in the early 1950s so they would have been in their early-mid 20s.
A diet of damper and sugar, lack of fluorine, poor oral hygiene and even worse access to dentistry made it a decision of inevitability, they would argue practicality.

9

Somewhere I read many years ago that fellatio performed by someone toothless was somehow a better experience for the recipient than fellatio performed by someone with teeth.

If so, the man may have viewed her toothlessness as a feature, not a bug.

10

I think there’s a distinction to be made between “it’s not uncommon for relatively young people to have dentures” and having teeth extracted and getting dentures in order to prevent future medical problems.

I had dentures relatively young - I think I got my first partial in my thirties and although I don’t remember when I got full dentures, it was probably around age 40.

It was absolutely not to prevent future problems - it was because of current problems. Not with my teeth- with my gums. I did everything I could to avoid dentures but at some point the pain and expense left me no choice. Do I believe a lot of people in the past got dentures at a young age? - absolutely. But I think that happened when there were already problems - not that lots of people got healthy teeth pulled so a husband wouldn’t have to pay if it was needed later. ( Of course, some did - no matter what it is, some people have done it)

11

Did you read the link above? It definitely was the case (at least here in the UK) that people, especially women, had their teeth pulled and replaced with dentures as a preventive measure, and that this was a popular practice and was regarded as a desirable trait.

12

Another cite:

These young women aimed to have all their teeth extracted at a young age and dentures fitted. They believed that this would cure all their future dental problems and improve their chances in the marriage stakes

13

For more information, I just discovered the term for this practice is ‘full dental clearance’

14

I did - and there’s no indication whatsoever about where the author (writing in 2017) got the the information that it was popular among all social classes in the 30s and 40s. I find it particularly difficult to imagine that it was popular among “all social classes” - how would the poor have ever paid for unnecessary extractions and dentures? And the very next paragraph says

If you had untidy or ugly teeth in the first place, it was a viable option until modern orthodontistry came along.

If it was an option until orthodontistry came along, that doesn’t sound to me like there were no problems - it sounds to me like there were problems, although perhaps not decay.

As far as that Scottish dental magazine - it’s 100 pages long. Give me a hint where it says not only that some young women aimed to get dentures but that it was common in the absence of any problems.

" Full dental clearance " seems to refer to

the procedure of removing and replacing all of a person’s teeth, perhaps as a result of periodontal disease or abscessed teeth . This can make a big improvement to a person’s oral health and general health.

and does not imply that there are not any current problems.

15

Your difficulty in imagining this historical fact is noted, but it was something people saved for, or received as a gift - including as a wedding gift - they made provision for it specifically because the alternative - a lifetime of expected dental issues and treatment, was regarded with fear.

My own maternal grandmother had the procedure done in her late teens, as did all of her peers. They were the poor families of coal miners living in the north of England. The cost of full clearance was a small multiple of the cost of having a cavity filled (cite)- full clearance was a means of saving money on future dentist bills.

16

And yes, of course if you just search for the current definition of ‘full dental clearance’, you’ll get it presented in the context of ongoing or existing issues, because that is the only context in which it is considered now

17

I finally found the paragraph in the Scottish dental magazine

At this time, Dundee was a city of
working women in the textile mills. Some
of the spinster girls practised a culture that
ran counter to the above aim of a healthy
mouth, regular dental inspections and the
conservation of teeth. These young women
aimed to have all their teeth extracted
at a young age and dentures fitted. They
believed that this would cure all their
future dental problems and improve their
chances in the marriage stakes .The same
women believed the myth that every
pregnancy would cost a couple of teeth
because the in utero child would withdraw
calcium from her teeth.

Some of the girls - it doesn’t say it was most of the population or that it was common or that “it was popular among all social classes” as the 2017 article says. I’m sure there were some people who had it done - whether it was common is a different issue entirely. I do find it hard to imagine that it was common - I could be convinced, but one article that simply asserts it was popular and another article that refers to some of the girls in a particular city aren’t going to do it.

18

Not sure where to find any statistics on it, if they even exist, but consider: this is something that people considered a benefit and gave as a gift; it seems to me a lot of your reservation is coming from personal horror of the idea. It wasn’t a horrible idea to those people back then.

In my grandmother’s village, it was completely the norm in the early 20th century, and it seems unlikely to me that the village was exceptional in this regard.

19

I had my doubts as well, but then I thought of my own personal experiences with dental hygiene. Having a rotted tooth is hell even today and not having access to dental care or pain meds would be unbearable to the point after one or two experiences you may very well consider just having them yanked.

I have had a lot of dental work and I am blessed to be born in a time and place where decent dental care is available AND I can afford it. I can understand how people of just about any class would consider a total removal a viable option.

20

Yeah, or even without personal experience on the part of the patient - if you are in a world where teeth are nothing but pain and trouble to the extent that they present a risk of killing you (not kidding - septicaemia and osteomyelitis other serious outcomes from untreated dental abscesses can easily be fatal), you might wish for your own children to take a shortcut to the safe endgame (dentures)