For years Charles Buchan’s Football Monthly (as it was called) had a prize for anyone who could beat Dean’s record. I might be misremembering, but I think it was £5000. In any case, it was big money at the time. The maximum wage had only recently been lifted.
Charles Buchan was completely safe, though. No-one was getting near Dean’s record then, and Erling’s not getting near it now. You’ve only got to look at the oldest clips (on, say, the Pathé newsreels that were shown in cinemas) to see that defences behaved in an entirely different way. The general mindset was that you expected to ship a goal or two, and then it was up to your forwards to outscore the opposition. Defences became much more rigorous and organised after the war, and especially in the sixties.