In 'Road to Wigan Pier', George Orwell found that many working class people saw their teeth as an inconvenience to get rid of as soon as possible.

> Several dentists have told me that in industrial districts a person over thirty with any of his or her own teeth is coming to be an abnormality. In Wigan various people gave me their opinion that it is best to get shut of your teeth as early in life as possible. 'Teeth is just a misery,' one woman said to me. In one house where I stayed there were, apart from myself, five people, the oldest being forty-three and the youngest a boy of fifteen. Of these the boy was the only one who possessed a single tooth of his own, and his teeth were obviously not going to last long.

http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/5.html

Yes, the rate of dentures in England was astonishingly high: many, if not most, people would get out most or all of their teeth at some point in their life. There's no question of that, the national dental surveys show that. The question is one of bridal customs.