Dental Technicians

The dental technicians developed complicated splints and devices.

The dental laboratory staff worked under the leadership of Archie Lane, the chief technician. They included at least one patient – Malcolm (Micky) Shirlaw, who before the war had been a Scottish miner and sometime professional footballer. He ended life as a dental technician in Tunbridge Wells, Kent.

The splints made at Sidcup included two cap devices used to correctly align the teeth and jaw (mandibular) segments following bone grafts for bone loss or complex fractures. Two survive in the Lane family’s possession, along with a small screw jack. Put between the teeth of the upper and lower jaw, it would gradually be wound apart. This stretched scarred and contracted temporomandibular joint capsules, thereby improving mouth opening. Called “trismus”, this was a common outcome of damage to the joint which permits mouth opening.

The devices made by the dental technicians also comprised the “Tin Faces”. These were cast and camouflaged to cover major facial defects at the time unreconstructable using the novel plastic surgery techniques being developed at Sidcup.