History question: why were dentists so rich in the pre war era?

[Angelica789]

This is a very random question but recently I’ve come across 3 stories from this era featuring very wealthy dentists.

1. Local history feature on childhood spent at the large country home of a dentist with a practice in nearby city. Child’s mother was live in housekeeper fretting over the fine china and the family lived in servants quarters.

1. Dentist and his wife who took in a Jewish refugee as war broke out. Again lived in a large country house and the article mentioned they held the village fete on their lawn.

1. Stirling Moss’s father was a dentist and he learned to drive on the family estate.

Now I know dentists earn a good salary these days but it’s seems back then they were practically local dignatories living it up like lord and lady of the manor. Why did they have so much money?

I assume the examples you mention were wealthy (from family money) aside from their work. Education beyond a very basic level was not widely available and only the wealthy had access to it. A person would be unlikely to qualify as a dentist (or in most other professions) unless they came from a family of means.

Thus wealthy people became dentists, rather than dentists becoming wealthy people.

I had considered that but that would hold for all professions of the era and while doctors had prestige I haven’t read examples of them living in this elevated way.

I’m from India where doctors and dentists are still very rich, because there’s no NHS or insurance-based medicine.

Society is not that dissimilar to Georgian or Victorian times in the UK: as a PP has said, medicine and dentistry is a popular choice of profession for already wealthy families if there’s no land.

My guess is that dentists earn more because there are fewer of them.

I daresay its combination of existing money paying for training and richer dentists charging wealthier clients more for their services, much like today really. Some people are prepared to pay privately if they can afford it.

I'd guess that in the pre-war era, almost by definition the clients of dentists would tend to be well off - poor people would just have bad teeth or get them pulled more.
Perhaps there were some dentists exclusively serving wealthy people in the same way that some doctors ('Harley Street') did?

Moss's father had family money.

Maybe they were just able to charge an awful lot for their services which meant that, for the time period, they were in the very highest group of earners.

I wondered what revenue streams they had. Presumably dental treatment was far more basic then. Did they also prescribe and sell drugs?

My great grandfather owned a butchers shop in a small town during this time period and the family were well off. Detached new build house, car and one of the children at a private girls school. I get the impression there a few good ways of making money that didn’t just involve selling meat.

@Flyonawalk

I assume the examples you mention were wealthy (from family money) aside from their work. Education beyond a very basic level was not widely available and only the wealthy had access to it. A person would be unlikely to qualify as a dentist (or in most other professions) unless they came from a family of means.

Thus wealthy people became dentists, rather than dentists becoming wealthy people.

Education until 17/18 was certainly not only available to the very wealthy in the period up to and immediately after the Second World War. My father was from a very non-monied background and sent to grammar school. He would have gone to university in 1948 if he hadn’t caught polio.

I think the same could be said for a number of professions up until living memory. For example, the local solicitor with children in private schools, whereas these days high street solicitors are usually earning very average wages. My colleague's father was a GP, and put 4 children through boarding school (he is in his 90s).

I think it’s true that wages have decreased in real terms for the established professions. I wonder if that’s because access to them has become more meritocratic due to more formalised and competitive academic entrance requirements. Eg immigrant families have tended to push their children this way as it’s a safe bet for economic success as long you’re clever enough. The real money now is in things like investment banking where it’s still important to have connections and the right background.

It was quite a common 21st birthday present to have your teeth pulled and be fitted with false teeth as it was assumed , quite rightly for the most part , that your teeth would rot painfully so best get them out and get a set of gnashers in to.save money .