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Leg-Breakers, Street Dentists & Enforcers by Mark Hatmaker

[RAW 245 The Black Box Project #35: The “Switch” Attack: circa. 1820-1933 features much Street Dentist work.]

Let’s say you run a small-scale loansharking enterprise. Nothing big. You’ve got a territory of 3-4 city blocks.

Having such a small territory, welshers, [those who don’t pay back] can really eat into your profit margin. Money ain’t free and those who come to you agree to your off-the-books terms. If they welsh, you the loaner, have no recourse to legal action. No garnishing of wages, no extended court wrangling, all you have recourse to is…

 A] Chalk it up on the loss column or…

 B] “Enforce” the debt, that is, collect and/or encourage a non-welshed payment plan.

The common knowledge is that welshers will be visited by enforcers [those who collect and/or inspire adherence to terms.] These enforcers became known as leg-breakers, and we all can imagine where that rep came from. It plays out in numerous gangstery scenes in celluloid “history” as in the following…

Enforcer: Tony, says you been duckin’ him?

Welsher: No, I was…I was just away for a while that’s all, I mean I got the money, it’s just that…

Enforcer: It’s too late for that, now we gotta break your legs.

Welsher: Aiiieeeeee!!!!

[Fade Out on a close shot of a wet fire-escape.]

Turns out though, this scenario is wrong both historically and economically.

Let’s recall that in this scenario you are a loan shark with a small territory. You have need of all debts to pay—larger territories have more debt-risk to spread around, but small potatoes outfits like yours needs a high compliance rate. Those who don’t pay should be encouraged.

The myth of breaking the legs as an example to future potential welshers makes sense, but only on the surface.

Such crippled advertisements [“billboards”] are ruinous to your business in two respects.

1.     The Welsher you wished to encourage to pay, now most definitely CAN NOT pay or will be unable to pay until the leg mends and the welsher can literally get back on their feet. In other words, your strongarm leg-breaking tactics ensure that your profit stays lost for some time. Poor and unwise business on your part.

2.     “Well, Mark, my example of his snapped femur will let others know what will happen to them if they get out of line.” Sure, but that may encourage possible customers on the poor-risk margin to fear doing business with you at all, also eating into future gains. Whereas a more reasonable “negotiation” may not scare away customers at the margin.

You being a smart loan shark with a good head for numbers fire your thuggish no-finesse leg-breakers and instead poach talent from local boxing clubs. In other words, you are looking for a few “street dentists.”

“Street Dentists” were/are enforcers who were skilled with their hands. They could pop out teeth with well-timed, precision placed punches that also saved their own hands.

Missing teeth is a far wiser business model for you, Mr. or Ms. Loan-Shark, as the welsher can still “earn” and thusly pay you back keeping your territory running and the missing teeth act as a walking, talking still earning billboard of encouraging reinforcement.

Street-Dentists were also skilled at working the body with debilitating pinpoint blows that incapacitated immediately and put the welsher down for a couple of days, but getting back to earning was a matter of 2-3 days of blood in the urine and slow movement, but the money could still be rolling.

Local boys, club fighters, and in more than a few instances, well known fighters moonlighted as enforcers [street dentists] to pad the pocket and or make good to a “benefactor.”


This is a fascinating territory where we have skilled ring men who know the in’s and out’s of throwing hands in the sportive context and what they brought to the black market game of throwing hands in an underground environment is useful and pragmatically revealing.

These proficient ring pros altered their street applications in everything from stance, to fist striking surface, paring of footwork, re-thought elbow levels, even down to small knee mechanics in jabs to refine the game and alter it from mighty effective combat sport to mighty effective street warfare.

They recognized that boxing inside the ring was [and is] a particularly useful sport. What these experienced, albeit malicious, minds did in the laboratory of mob-sanctioned violence is mighty instructive to the non-mobbed-up cadre that is us, the individual interested in self-defense, street-protection, and/or at least a modicum of curiosity about historical tactics.

A good third of our recent book Boxing Like the Champs, Round Two was going to delve into this side of things, but space considerations and a few ethical quibbles led otherwise. Instead we include Street-Dentistry and more such mayhem in The Black Box Project that began with the release of RAW 214. I heartily urge you to see here for a complete description of The Black Box Project and a syllabus for RAW 214.]


[For techniques, tactics, and strategies of Rough and Tumble Combat, Old-School Boxing, Mean-Ass Wrestling, Street-Ready Frontier Scrapping & Indigenous Ability culled from the historical record see the RAW Subscription Service, or stay on the corral fence with the other dandified dudes and city-slickers. http://www.extremeselfprotection.com


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