In Parts I and II I investigated the color and quality of Queen Elizabeth I’s teeth and her favorite sweets. Now I’m going to tackle a couple of oft-repeated assertions:
- Queen Elizabeth I brushed her teeth with something called Tudor Toothpaste, which was made of sugar.
- Because the Queen’s teeth were black, people painted their teeth black to be fashionable. Sometimes these people are the rich, sometimes the poor.
Tudor Toothpaste
Take a look online and you’ll see countless websites with statements like this:
“Elizabeth was actually a fan of so-called Tudor toothpaste, a paste made of sugar which was used to polish teeth. Her sugar-heavy diet and sugar toothbrushing habits meant that by her fifties most of her teeth were rotten, had fallen out or turned black.” Ancient Origins, 2023
“Tudor toothpaste, a sugar-based paste, was used by high-class society to polish their teeth, although this sugary diet often led to tooth decay, which Queen Elizabeth I herself experienced.” Comfort Dentistry, 2024
Could this have something to do with the BBC show Horrible Histories? The July 5, 2011 episode featured a “commercial” where “Queen Elizabeth” advertised something called, you guessed it, Tudor Sugar-Paste Toothpaste. You can see it here and judge how historically accurate it is.
It’s satire! But people took it literally and the meme was off and running.
Elizabethans did attempt to clean their teeth, but they didn’t brush them. Instead, they made complicated recipes like this one for rosemary tooth powder and rubbed them on their teeth with a linen cloth. Note that the recipe promises to kill any worms in the teeth. This is because at that time tooth decay was thought to be caused by tooth worms. Bacteria wouldn’t be discovered by Anton van Leeuwenhoek until 1676.
The Tudor Trend That’s Sweeping the Realm!
Similarly to the rumors about Tudor Toothpaste, the internet abounds with matter-of-fact statements like this:
“Queen Elizabeth liked sugary sweets so much that her teeth turned black. This was turned into a fashion, so all ladies blackened their teeth and whitened their faces, following the example of their Queen.” Just Food Blog, 2008
“Tudor England, the teeth of the rich often went black from sugar – it was fashion among the lower classes to blacken their teeth to ‘show’ THEY were rich” The Vintage News, 2014
“During the reign of Elizabeth I it actually became fashionable to paint one’s teeth black. This came about due to Queen Elizabeth’s I fondness of sweets, which ultimately caused her teeth to decay and turn black. If you wanted to look fashionable and prosperous in the 16th Century, painting your teeth black showed that you were able to afford enough sweets to destroy your teeth.” Gentle Dental Care, 2014
“Because only the rich could afford sugar (and the tooth decay it engendered), black teeth became seen as fashionable, and people would artificially blacken their teeth with soot to fit in, a fad that eventually faded after the reign of Elizabeth I.” Historyfacts.com, 2023
Is this true? Well, it’s hard to prove a negative. I don’t have any information that refutes this. But I also don’t have any evidence that it happened. I have burrowed deep into this rabbit hole looking for quotes, sources, citations etc. and I can’t find a thing. I’ve combed through blogs and usenet posts and the Internet Archive and not a single contemporaneous source of this information seems to exist. The earliest mention I have found so far is this:
“The answer, the times of Elizabeth I, was the price of sugar. Only the very rich could afford to fill their mouths with sugar candies, thereby rotting their teeth and discoloring them. It followed that, if you were too poor to rot your teeth in this way, you had to pretend to have done so. And so it bizarrely came about that blackening your teeth gave you a high-status look that enhanced your beauty in social terms. After all, the Queen herself had black teeth from eating a surfeit of sugared violets and confits.” The Naked Woman: A Study of the Female Body by Desmond Morris*, 2004
The problem with this statement is (besides the fact that now I have to update my scribblings on the candied violets issue) is that it makes no sense. There was actually some amount of social mobility in Elizabeth’s England. (Shakespeare’s family, for example, had humble origins but his father was granted the status of “Gentleman” and the family was eventually granted a coat of arms.) But the idea that artificially blackened teeth could fool anyone into thinking you had the dough to lay out for sugar when the rest of you was screaming “I’m poor” is pretty faulty. It’s tough to achieve a “high-status” look while your clothes, hair and general cleanliness are giving you away. No one from the upper classes was going to be fooled by your dirty teeth for very long.
Morris doesn’t provide any footnotes or citations for these assertions. Keep in mind that he is a zoologist, not a historian. Without knowing where his information came from it’s hard to say how true it really is. I will update this piece should I find anything earlier. (After writing this I heard an episode of the Not Just the Tudors podcast about Tudor banqueting. I decided to contact the Tudor food expert interviewed and asked her about the candied violets. She was as bewildered as I am over the origin of this idea and promised to keep me posted if she finds anything more substantial in her research.)
Since I don’t know where this idea came from I have to speculate, and I keep coming back to Paul Hentzner, the lawyer and tutor who kept a diary as he and his wealthy student traveled through England. He observed of Queen Elizabeth:
“her lips narrow, and her teeth black; (a defect the English seem subject to, from their too great use of sugar)”
This statement, taken at face value,implies that many of the English people Hentzner met had rotten teeth. He doesn’t specially rich or poor, just “the English.”
You may remember from Part I that the Latin word Hentzner origianally used here meant “sooty” rather than black. Could someone have read this quote and extrapolated that people were coloring their teeth with soot, as in the above quote from history facts? They would be wrong, but I can almost see how a careless reading could maybe, sorta lead one there.
Regardless, I haven’t seen anyone credit Hentzner as a source. This “fact” just persists, uncited, yet much repeated. It’s a meme in the original sense of the word. If it were true, you would expect an author like Alison Weir or John Guy to mention it, let alone an Elizabethan writer observing it first hand. Instead, I found information that shows English Gentlewomen were actually whitening their teeth.
Sir Hugh Plat, an inventor, writer, gardener and lawyer who was knighted by King James I in 1602 was the author of a book titled Delightes for ladies: to adorn their persons, tables, closets, and distillatories with beauties, banquets, perfumes and waters. This book was published in 1600 and was reissued several times. Plat was a chatty, funny writer who addressed the care of teeth several times in the book. Notably, he advises:
“To keepe the teeth both white and sound. TAke a quart of hony, as much Vinegar, and halfe so much white wine, boyle them together and wash your teeth therwith now and then.”
and
“And heere, by those miserable experiences that I haue seene in some of my neerest friendes, I am inforced to admonish all Gentled women to be carefull howe they suffer their teeth to bee cleansed and made white with anie Aqua fortis, which is the Barbars vsuall water: for vnlesse the same be both well delayed, and carefullie appli∣ed, shee may happen within a fewe dressings to be forced to borrow a ranke of teeth to eate her dinner, vnlesse her gums do helpe her the better.”
Very sassy! But what is Aqua fortis and why does it make teeth fall out? Well, it looks like Sir Hugh’s gentlewomen friends were having their barbers (who acted as dentists) coat their teeth with Nitric acid! This highly corrosive chemical was used by alchemists to dissolve silver, so naturally, women used it to whiten their teeth.
So some Elizabethan folks were concerned with having whiter teeth! Since Plat does not offer any instructions for turning teeth black I am even more confident that this rumor is unfounded. But I will persevere in my quest to track it down!
*Desmond Morris passed away in April of 2026, a few months after I wrote this post. Now we may never know.
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