The remains they found have at least lain undisturbed for almost 200 years. Not so many of his companions-most of the bodies of ordinary soldiers were looted soon after the battle for their teeth. Here is a quote from a website about the looters and their lucrative market -


The casualties were high but for one group of people that was reason to celebrate. They were the dentists who were about to benefit from the great tooth bonanza. In the early part of the 19th century, patients with plenty of money but very few teeth were prepared to pay enormous sums for a good set of dentures. The best were made with real human teeth at the front. Most of the time demand for second-hand incisors far outstripped supply, but wars helped make up the shortfall. The windfall from Waterloo provided enough to ship supplies all round Europe and even across the Atlantic.

Waterloo was a well-timed battle. By the end of the fighting, night was closing in and the battlefield scavengers could go about their work unseen. In the gloom, shadowy figures flitted from corpse to corpse, gathering up the soldiers' weapons and winkling out any valuables tucked inside their torn and bloodied uniforms. Then came the final act of desecration: with expertise many a dental surgeon might envy, they deftly pulled and pocketed any intact front teeth. Taking teeth from the dead to replace those lost by the living was nothing new. But this time the scale of it was different. The flood of teeth onto the market was so huge that dentures made from second-hand teeth acquired a new name: Waterloo teeth. Far from putting clients off, this was a positive selling point. Better to have teeth from a relatively fit and healthy young man killed by cannonball or sabre than incisors plucked from the jaws of a disease-riddled corpse decaying in the grave or from a hanged man left dangling too long on the gibbet.

After the bodies were buried in mass graves but many were dug up - I am not sure by whom. Their bones were used to make glue I think. I don't know who did this, can anyone shed some light on it?

Roger

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