A Dental Marvel in Tacoma
A ten-day-old infant is the talk of the town for being born with three teeth, leaving its parents and the public fascinated.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Elsie Amelia Richert is the name of the 10-day-old baby of Mr. and Mrs. Ludwig Richert, which now has three teeth. When it was born it weighed seven pounds and had one tooth, with two more advancing through the gum. Now it has three well-advanced incisors in the front part of the lower jaw, with the 'dog' teeth or canines swelling under the gum. Mrs. Richert says the presence of teeth at birth indicates great wisdom and she is therefore happy. She and her husband, who is a carpenter and a sort of handy tinker, live in a small house in the Smith Fife addition. He is a Russian-Polander of German extraction. Last summer he married Matilda Rossman, who came here from Detroit, Mich., to wed Ludwig. The babe has Ludwig's blue eyes, and Mrs. Richert caresses it, and says there is no babe in the world like Elsie Amelia. Both mother and child are doing very nicely, and the callers upon the young miss with teeth are numbered by the score.
“Mrs. Richert says the presence of teeth at birth indicates great wisdom and she is therefore happy.”
While modern medicine treats natal teeth as a routine clinical matter, in 1892 this was local news that generated significant community curiosity and fascination.
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