Bill's bloody encounter with "Butcher" Blain

A picture we carried recently which was taken at a Shrewsbury pub around the 1950s featuring dentist Samuel Blain of Wyle Cop has touched a nerve with some readers.

The pub has been identified as the Lion and Pheasant at the foot of Wyle Cop and shows either a dominoes or darts team.

The photo had come from Samuel's grandson David Blain, who hails from Shropshire but lives now in Leicestershire.

Ross Vickers of Wellington has dropped us a line with memories which are not for those of a sensitive disposition (don't say we haven't warned you).

"My wife Dorothy was at Constitution Hill School in Wellington with David Blain, but she knew Samuel Blain because her father Bill Perry of the cycle shop in Park Street, Wellington, was one of his patients," said Ross.

"She recalls one day Mr Blain came to take her father's teeth out. They put an armchair on the back yard and Mr Blain proceeded to give Bill injections to take all his teeth out.

"While he was waiting Bill went and repaired a tractor tyre. Mr Blain sat Bill back in the chair and started extracting his teeth, throwing them on the yard. They looked like chips with tomato sauce thrown all about.

"We picked them up after he had finished and put them in the bin. Mr Blain said to my mother-in-law: 'Missus, tell him not to keep spitting the blood out, but to swallow it and give him a good dose of Epsom Salts, that will push it the other way.'

"Mr Blain returned two weeks later to take an impression for his false teeth. Bill was in bed with the flu. This did not put him off. He went straight up the stairs and stuck the material in Bill's mouth. He then went off to get his new teeth made.

"We think Bill paid him with a couple of tyres for his car. He was known as an exceptional dentist by all the family."

Another reader had got in touch with some memories of the dentist she recalled from her childhood being known as "Butcher" Blain.

Grandson David Blain said: "The Lion and Pheasant is right across the road from the 'old man's' surgery so the location seems spot on. Indeed my father used to park his van in their yard.

"As for 'Butcher' Blain, that is a new one. In fairness he started out as false teeth maker in The Dana and I suppose graduated to more general dentistry. I believe that until some time in the 1920s formal qualifications were not required. When they were, existing dentists were able to register and become legit.

"I can remember in the early 1950s the queues of people waiting to see him. It was the early days of NHS and many had never before seen a dentist. At that time he employed five men and an apprentice in the workshop making dentures."

Readers had come up with names for some others on the group picture, but the only one to ring bells with David was Mr Luscott.

"His sweet shop I well remember - lots of jars and him weighing out stuff into little bags. Happy days."