December 13, 2024
1911 Dental Theft -- Thief strikes gold in Westerly dental parlors
We think of crime in dental practices as being a 21st Century phenomenon, but theft has taken place ever since there were dental practices. Here is an example from before World War One.
After the turn of the 20th century, when an accident or lack of dental care caused one to possess a broken or rotted tooth, a patient would consult a dentist for a pin tooth. A pin tooth was a dental prosthesis consisting of an artificial crown attached to a thin platinum pin. The pin was inserted through the stump of the patient’s natural tooth, pushed down into the root canal, and anchored there with a piece of foil or linen. Platinum was used in the manufacture of the pins because of its strength and durability. Because platinum was also valuable — worth about $20 per ounce in 1911 — several local dentists found themselves the victims of theft.
On May 28, 1911, 67-year-old Dr. Albert Hamilton Spencer contacted police to report that his dental parlor, located in the Briggs Building on Main Street in Westerly, had been entered either early that morning or the previous night. At 11 that morning, Dr. Spicer had arrived at his business for the day. His son Albert Jr., who worked in partnership with him, was sitting at the desk in their laboratory writing a letter. The elder Albert passed through the small extracting room into the area where a case of artificial teeth was kept. In front of the case, he saw two artificial teeth on the floor. When he opened the case to investigate, he discovered that every single artificial pin tooth they’d stocked inside was gone. He then entered the laboratory, where two more cases of pin teeth had also been emptied, along with several sets of false teeth containing platinum pins, which were kept in a cabinet. The only teeth that remained were those not containing platinum pins. The financial loss totalled about $950.
By the next morning, police discovered the robbery was not an isolated event and that the robber obviously knew about lock-picking, dentistry and the layout of Westerly’s dental parlors. Dr. Freemont Nye, a 48-year-old dentist who ran a dental parlor in the Hinckley-Mitchell building on High Street, called to report that someone had entered his office overnight. He explained that he always kept his dental bag packed for his weekly visits to see patients in Hope Valley, and although he always kept the bag closed, he never clasped it. When he came into work that morning, the bag was clasped and emptied of several dental items, including a bottle of gold and a single platinum pin crown. As Nye kept his valuable teeth in a safe, his loss only amounted to about $50.
That same morning, 35-year-old dentist Dr. John Hobart Chapman called the police to report that someone had entered his parlor in the Memorial Building on High Street and stolen dental supplies. Because he also kept most of his valuables confined, his monetary loss was also minimal.
Police noticed scratches on the lock catches of the dental parlor doors and concluded the perpetrator had pried open the catches by inserting a thin object between the doors and the casings and working it back and forth until the doors opened.
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Content retrieved from: https://www.thewesterlysun.com/opinion/guest_columns/country-road-chronicles-thief-strikes-gold-in-westerly-dental-parlors/article_a532a9d2-b816-11ef-924e-c7823157c736.html
Albert Spicer & Son had been known for having the most extensive stock of platinum pin teeth in the state of Rhode Island. If anyone should have employed a dental parlor safe, it was the Spicers.