50. Vermont: Wives And False Teeth
Professional dental care was incredibly expensive and physically painful in the nineteenth century, leading to a massive loss of teeth among working-class adults. A severely outdated law dictates that in order to wear or purchase false teeth, women must first obtain legally written permission from their husbands. The law was designed purely around marital financial control, ensuring that wives could not plunge the family into massive, unmanageable medical debt by purchasing luxury cosmetic dental pieces without the primary male wage earner explicitly approving the heavy financial expense beforehand.