You couldn't judge her on her teeth...
Okay, I am not going to judge a historical romance on its linguistic choices, because honestly, I sometimes think Heyer was totally over-egging the pudding and determined to show off her research and by god, she had spent all that time poring over Pierce Egan and she was not going to waste it -
- so I will cut a certain amount of slack over linguistic anachronism and just general faintly tin-earedness -
But no, I don't think in the early C19th having good teeth was a class marker, rather than having the genetic good luck to have really sound dental enamel.
Will concede that the concept of oral hygiene was not unknown at the time, and indeed in periods preceding. Trying to recall which museum it was had a display of personal implements for the care of the teeth (not that I think they would be approved by your C21st dental hygienist) and there were mouthwashes.
But even so. Maybe the young lady who was deemed to be of good breeding, even though engaged in a lowly occupation, on account of her excellent teeth, was of a family which on ethical grounds was eschewing sugar?
Sugar, the 'white drug' of the day - once read something (Journal of Saw It Somewhere Studies?) claiming that without the calories from sugar no Industrial Revolution, but I think that is another of those problematic monocausal claims. But do recall, another different take, in Vonda McIntyre's Dreamsnake, in which refined sugar is treated by Snake as a drug that she only administers in extreme circumstances.
Anyway it would have been the affluent who were more likely to be able to afford the developments in dentistry, to acquire false teeth etc, all inclining to suggest that a fine natural set of pearly gnashers was not necessarily any mark of Quality.
ETA Not to mention, the stereotype generally of 'English teeth' across all class divides.
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