Conversation:

Hi

I was following up a suggestion about "Waterloo Teeth" in response to a comment in a book written about our district in South Australia, about 100km SE of Adelaide, on Lake Alexandrina, in the 1870s. This was 20 years after white settlement of this area and the Aboriginal people, who were settled and well organised, were still numerous.

"As a rule the blacks had a splendid set of white teeth. I remember hearing of a medical man being in the district, who took such a fancy to a set of teeth that one of the young lubras possessed that he offered her £20 for them, and I believe it was accepted and the teeth extracted."
Alfred Taylor, "A Tough Battle", published 1911.

It is interesting that this practice was still used so late in the century. Says something about the "colonies"