http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mmadhatter.html
“The origin of the phrase, it’s believed, is that hatters really did go mad.”
It’s believed? It’s believed? Hasn’t the staff around here heard of sources? Research? I already knew that that was “believed.” “Believed,” I can do myself.
Many spurious word and phrase origins are “believed” but disappear upon close scrutiny. My guess is that this is one of those cases.
Etymology is rarely an exact science. Tracking the origin of a phrase or word does not have the precision that arises in other topics.
Sure, sometimes we can track a word or phrase, like “15 minutes of fame” to a specific bon mot by some famous person. Sometimes we know precisely where and when a certain usage arose – especially if it is derived from a written text. Other times, trying to track down the origin of a phrase (like “whole nine yards”) leads to much speculation. And when the phrase arose in common speech and wasn’t written down until it was already in common use, it is extremely difficult to ascertain the origin.
Thus, we cannot say with certainty where the phrase “mad as a hatter” originates. All we can say is what is most commonly believed, and what some of the alternate explanations are. If you’re not happy with this, argy, then you’d best stick to only reading questions about the quantifiable sciences. (I was going to say, you can shove it in your – ahem – hat.)
I should also point out that Cecil does not give Straight Dope Staff any budget for research. We tend to use secondary sources. If you would like to contribute, say, $300,000 or $400,000, I would be glad to spend the next year or two in England trying to track down a more specific origin from original source material. At present, however, all I can do is note what others (who have done the primary research) have concluded.
I have exposed myself as a jerk of a massive order. Please accept my apologies for my shrillness. I’m now committed to finding a subject of actual importance so I can be outraged where it matters. Until then I’ll be polite.
No sweat, Argy, just take a bite out of your teacup and move over one seat, the dormouse is asleep again.
Dex I enjoyed your column about “Mad Hatters” and related topics. I know that we have had board discussions along those lines within the last 6 months or so, but you summarized the available information nicely and cleanly.
My question to you(any anyone else who cares to respond) is this-- if the term Mad as a Hatter was in print by 1837, and there is no evidence that the felt hat industry was using mercury compounds at this point in England , why would one conclude that the phrase actually referred to mercury-poisoned Hatters?
I am sure that people in the hat making business were poisonsed by mercury compounds. And I have no trouble accepting that Hatters appeared “mad” to outsiders who might not know of their condition.
A last note: anyone who can, please give the source of Danbury shakes , referring to Connecticut hatters problems. Please give cite in print by date. Thanks.
Danbury, Connecticut was a major hat manufacturibng center right to almost the end of the 20th century. The best known company was Stetson and up 'til around 1992 or so you could go to their factory outlet store and buy the 10 gallon hat of yer choice hot off the press:
Here’s a few on the Danbury Shakes:
http://www.epa.gov/grtlakes/seahome/mercury/src/effects.htm
http://www.villagehatshop.com/main_facts.html
http://www.cheminfonet.org/mercury1.htm
http://chemistry.about.com/science/chemistry/library/weekly/aa032999a.htm
Or just do a Google Search on “Danbury Shakes”
Here also are Michael Quinion’s column at World Wide Words:
and the lovely and talented Evan Morris’ version:
http://www.word-detective.com/030299.html#madhatter
JBENZ Thanks for your reply.
None of the links you supplied answered either of my questions.
Again, Mad as a Hatter was in print by 1837(or 1836) and the use of mercury compounds in felt hat production in England was not. So how could this be the source of the phrase?
And, secondly, none of your links provided any clue as to where Danbury shakes first appeared in print. No year, no source. But thanks for trying.
Forgive me if I’m being dense, Samclem, but what makes you think mercury was NOT being used in the hat-making business at the time? Your question seems to take it for granted that the period of mercury use and the origin of the phrase do not match up. But, unless I read right past it, I haven’t seen that spelled out.
Okay. Mercury was used to make felt hats out of beaver fur. Beaver hats had been around for centuries.
Here’s a picture of a 17th century Dutchman wearing a beaver hat.
http://www.npj.com/homepage/teritowe/tlc1.html
This was why the early explorers were so happy to find that North America was teeming with beaver. “We’re all gonna be rich!”
Beaver felt needed mercury to make it “felt” properly, but when it was done, it was superb. Waterproof, glossy, and soft, but most important, it held its shape in the rain. Other kinds of felt won’t do that, especially if it’s a wide-brimmed hat. Other felt hats from different kinds of felt, like wool and rabbit, were made in a different way, without using mercury.
So they would have stopped using mercury when beaver hats went out of fashion. So I went looking for when beaver hats went out of fashion.
http://www.connerprairie.org/clothing.html
http://parkscanada.pch.gc.ca/parks/alberta/Rocky_mountain_house/english/beaver_e.htm
So, it looks to me like they still would have been using mercury to make beaver hats in 1837.
…and this just in–
http://www.americancynic.com/06281999.html
I’m not an expert on the history of hats, but here’s a website devoted to selling authentic reproductions of period hats to historical re-enactors.
http://www.historyinthemaking.org/catalog/menhat.htm
They offer hats from time periods covering the 1720s through the early 20th century. All the top hats they offer, for time periods up to and including the 1920s, are finished in a “beaver felt finish”. I’m assuming that they don’t sell silk top hats because men’s silk top hats haven’t changed that much since 1850, so if you want a silk top hat to go with your late 19th century re-enactment, you just go buy one from a formal wear store–you don’t need to order a special reproduction from these people.
So, assuming that these people know what they’re doing, I’m interpreting this to mean that a beaver felt finish hat must be “authentic” for the time period 1850 to 1920, that there must have been “old fogies” all through the 19th century, and up through the 1920s, who weren’t happy with a top hat constructed of silk glued to cardboard, who insisted on “the real thing”. So conceivably, mind-boggling though it may be, it’s possible that until the 1920s, there may have been hatters somewhere who were still using mercury. “Hey, it’s a living…”
The trade in beaver fur never entirely went away, so there would have been pelts available to be made into hats. It just wasn’t as big an industry as it had been. And actually the trade in beaver fur is still with us today.
http://www.ohiostatetrapper.org/auction/1999/auction000219.htm
But I dunno, maybe I’m way off base here. Any hatmakers out there?
Clark K. and DDG I’m sorry to have written my rant without giving links. I think I was tired.
I think you should read this site. It gives about the best summary of info available about the topic.
The part that I choose to focus on concerns Thackeray and his novel Pendennis. While I haven’t read the novel, it seems to have a section describing the hat industry in England prior to 1850. There is no mention of mercury poisoning in the novel. In the link I cite, the author says…“Thackrah’s failure to include mercury poisoning in his description of hazards in the British hat industry in the early part of the 19th century.”
If you read the article from the link I supplied, you will see that there is no printed evidence that mercury compounds were used prior to the 1840-50’s in England.
DDG Your site from the hat industry hat industry doesn’t offer any proof that mercury compounds were used on beaver prior to the 1840’s/50’s in England. They jump from saying that beaver felt hats were started in the 14th century to just saying that mercury nitrate was used in the carotting process. So just when was a mercury compound first used in the “carotting process”? There is no printed evidence to indicate that it was as early as 1839. Unless I missed something.
If mercury compounds were used by the Hugenots before and after they fled to England, then why would not some indication that Hugenot hatters suffered ill effects enter the literature? After all, they came to England in 1685. One would assume that there would have been a few mercury-poisoned hatters in the next 150 years.
I know that my reply is rather hard to follow, but there is no printed evidence that mercury compounds were used prior to the 1840’s-50’s. I think they probably were, but show me the evidence.
The Goldwater link is just one man’s opinion. And that’s the opinion of a man with an axe to grind: he says the phrase is supposed to be “mad as an adder”. His point is that since Thackeray didn’t mention mad hatters in his autobiographical novel Pendennis, published in 1850, that therefore there was no such thing as a “mad hatter”, and that Lewis Carroll must have misheard “mad as an adder”. That’s the whole point of his article.
I have to be suspicious of anybody who uses a work of literature for reference but consistently misspells the author’s name throughout. We get “Thackrah” and “Thackerah”, but it’s “Thackeray”. William Makepeace.
This statement of his:
–does not necessarily follow. Just because a novelist doesn’t mention it in a novel of the time doesn’t mean it wasn’t being used. I bet Judith Krantz doesn’t mention heroin in Princess Daisy, but that doesn’t mean people weren’t shooting up with it.
I can think of a bunch of reasons right off the top of my head why Thackeray wouldn’t have mentioned mad hatters, mercury nitrate, and mercury poisoning. First, Pendennis is described as being an autobiographical novel of a young man’s experiences at Cambridge. I doubt whether a young man at university would even notice the mental condition of hatters and the chemicals they used to make hats. Second, Thackeray came from an upper middle class family. Generally speaking, the upper classes did not concern themselves with the mental or physical condition of the working classes. He may simply not have noticed any peculiar behavior of any hatters he met, or if he did, may have simply chalked it up to them being “lower class”. Third, he may have noticed the hatters acting funny, but it didn’t fit into his novel, so he left it out. Fourth, same thing for the chemicals they used to make hats. He may have known that they were using mercury nitrate, but he didn’t think his readers would be interested, or he didn’t think it belonged in his novel, which after all was about him, not hatters or the hat industry.
From the Goldwater link. Unlike Goldwater, I have no reason to doubt the truth of Ms. Hamilton’s research
http://occ-env-med.mc.duke.edu/oem/hatters.htm
Re “mad hatter” Huguenots. Mercury nitrate isn’t that toxic, if you use small amounts with adequate ventilation. It’s the fumes. Mercury and its compounds had been around for hundreds of years. Maybe the Huguenots just had a better tradition of handling it than anybody else. Or maybe they did get sick and it was just that nobody happened to write it down. (see below on the working classes being beneath the notice of the upper classes who wrote books).
Mercury nitrate is a combination of mercury and nitric acid. So it’s not totally incorrect to refer to it as an “acid”.
Maybe Lee referring to a slightly different process. Or maybe Lee was just wrong.
Re mercury being used before 1837 to make beaver hats. Mercury has been known from ancient times, and its compounds were well-known to medieval science (even if they didn’t call it “science” but “alchemy” instead.) 
History of mercury.
http://www.ucc.ie/ucc/depts/chem/dolchem/html/elem/elem080.html
http://www.hermograph.com/science/mercury3.htm
http://tekran.com/backgnd.html#gen
http://www.nidlink.com/~jfromm/alchemy/alchemy_subt.htm
http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~jeffreym/glossary.html
History of beaver hats.
http://www.whiteoak.org/learning/furhat.htm
I can’t find any website that says specifically, “This is when hatmakers first began using mercury to treat beaver fur.” But since we know that mercury nitrate makes the carrotting process work better on beaver, and we know that people in the 14th century had access to mercury nitrate, and we know that people in the 14th century started using beaver felt to make hats, isn’t it logical to assume that they were using mercury nitrate back then, to make beaver hats?
I think the reason that the term “mad as a hatter” doesn’t appear in print until 1837 isn’t because that’s when hatters first started going mad. I think it’s because that period in time, the early Victorian era, was when the industrialized West first started to develop a social conscience, and an interest in the problems of the working classes, including hatters. Up till that time, people, including novelists and playwrights, were mainly interested in the antics of the upper classes, but starting with Charles Dickens, in the 1830s, there began to be more attention paid to the problems of the working classes. The early Victorians started workingmen’s clubs, for clean after-hours entertainment, they opened “night schools”, for the working man to get an education, and they sponsored lecture series just for the edification of the working classes.
So, up till 1837, nobody had ever paid any attention to the peculiar behavior of hatters, and nobody had ever bothered to write about it.
…and maybe the Huguenots were working with a more dilute solution. The chemical itself would have been fairly expensive (chemicals usually are), so maybe they figured out what the most dilute solution was that would still work, and used that
“Thus, because of their frugality, the simple and good Huguenots escaped the ravages of mercury poisoning…”
Makes a nice story, don’t it? 
All the other things that Lewis Carroll put into his books were familiar things to little girls. March hares, cats and caterpillars, decks of cards, a dormouse in a teapot, kings and queens, gardens and flowers. Even the “caucus race” might have been something that a “little pitcher with big ears” might have overheard Dear Papa talking about. And she was old enough to understand word plays and puns like the one on the “mouse’s tail/tale”. So why would he include an odd, inexplicable, totally new kind of character like a Mad Hatter if it wasn’t something she was already familiar with? How would he explain it to her? The joke would be non-existent if you didn’t already know “hatters are mad”.
DDG said
Did we read the same article? Talk about grinding axes:::
Point-by-point
l. Leonard J. Goldwater, M.D., Professor Emeritus of Occupational Medicine, Columbia University. He wrote a book on Mercury, one chapter, of which, was summarized and typed by hand and excerpted in the article to which I linked. Where’s the axe?
2. The spelling of Thackeray. Since the article was hand-typed by someone from Dr. Goldwater’s book, I’ll let you make up your own mind about a spelling mistake.
3. Dr. Goldwater brings up the adder reference in a reference to what Gardner presumed. To state that that’s the whole point of his article is simply not true.
4. Thackeray’s novel evidently had a section in which he discussed, in detail, the British hat industry, including some of the hazards. Thackeray was 39 when he published the novel. He had spent the previous 20 years as a writer/journalist, and many of his writings were about historical things. I guess we both ought to read the book to get a feeling as to whether it is merely an autobiography of a young man at college.
5. Diederot’s Encyclopedia. I agree with you. The reference to acid could indeed be a mercury solution. I would think that you are probably right.
I appreciate you agreeing with me that there is no printed reference to mercury compounds being used in the hat industry prior to 1850 or so. And I think that the Huguenot’s secretage may have, indeed, been a mercury compound. Perhaps the fact that they were so secretive and kept it in the family for so many years, and that they may have know how to use the compounds so as to avoid poisoning, may have meant that it didn’t come into print/or as a problem until the mid-1800’s.
But having agreed with you on the last points, I would propose that the term mad as a hatter probably had nothing to do with mercury poisoning of hatters. The evidence is on the side of it being a phrase similar to mad as a …(take your choice)
What evidence? As DDG pointed out, Carroll mentioned the Hatter in virtually the same breath as a march hare, commenting that both were mad. I think we all accept that a march hare was something that was generally understood at the time to be mad, and that the expression “mad as a march hare” was in common usage. It would seem unlikely that the march hare’s companion would be something not generally understood to be mad.
We also know that it became rather well-known that hatters were affected by mercury poisoning, as evidenced in the phrase “danbury hakes”. It doesn’t seem likely to me that two different phrases would arise about mental health problems of hatters through entirely separate and unrelated etymologies.
So, basically, we are left with the facts that in the 1830’s the phrase “mad as a hatter appeared in print” and that at some time later it was widely known that mercury poisoning was affecting hatters. What isn’t known is whether mercury nitrate was actually used by hatters prior to the 1840’s. While there is some reason to speculate that it wasn’t, there is no real proof either way.
It does seem as if Thackeray would mention madness in his work if it were widely known, but the fact that he doesn’t can hardly be considered proof of anything. In my opinion, the weight of the evidence would be on the side of the mercury poinoning explanation.
The question that started all this was: << Mad as a Hatter was in print by 1837(or 1836) and the use of mercury compounds in felt hat production in England was not. So how could this be the source of the phrase? >>
Y’all have certainly outdone me on the mercury poisoning. I did some preliminary looking, and couldn’t find any quick clear answer to exactly WHEN they stopped using mercury in hat-making.
But I think the answer to the question does not lie in hat-making so much as in etymology. It is usually impossible to track the origin of a popular or slang expression like “mad as a hatter” or “it’s the oldest rule in the book” (also used amusingly by Carroll.)
The process is different today. Today, everything gets into print very quickly because we have the technology that allows that. (Thus, one of the problems with the WWII origin of “whole nine yards” is the absence of printed reference before the 1960s.) But back in the 18th and 19th Centuries, there could be an enormous lag between the time a phrase arises and the time it appears in print. Someone says the phrase; others hear it and repeat it; others hear them and repeat it. It grows in popular usage, perhaps for many decades – but it is slang, and so no one bothers to write it down.
We know that “mad as a hatter” was a reasonably common expression by the mid-1800s, right up there with “wise as an owl” and “sly as a fox” and “slow as molasses.” Thus, Carroll could introduce the character of a Mad Hatter in much the same way (for amusement) that Milne would later introduce the character of the Wise Owl. And this was valid even if hatters no longer went mad, or if Athena was no longer worshipped as a goddess.
That was why I stopped in my research, without trying to find out exactly when mercury had stopped being used. It would be interesting, but not relevant to the origin of the phrase.
(Eh, CK, Sam’s question isn’t about when they stopped using mercury, but when they started. He says it wasn’t until the 1850s. I say it was way back in the 14th century.)
The words “Currently out of print, this was re-typed from one of the copies left at Duke” sound to me like it was in print at one time, and that this was re-typed from one of the print copies left at Duke. If they had retyped it from handwritten notes, it should say, “This was re-typed from handwritten notes.”
However, I will admit that the spelling error is a minor quibble.
I went back and copied and pasted the article into WordPad (the Bjorn treatment ), to endeavor to make more sense out of it. Yes, you’re right–the “thrust of the article” isn’t to put forward the “adder” theory. However, blessed if I can figure out what the thrust of the article is. A history of labor legislation covering people who work with mercury, I think, but why in the world does he rope in Thackeray?
The first part of article discusses various studies done in the past of mercurial poisoning in the hatmaking industry. Then he says:
So, okay, he’s got two studies he doesn’t agree with. Then he talks about two more studies, one from New York and one from Italy. But he barely touches on all four of these studies.
Then he brings up Alice Hamilton and her one-paragraph history of secretage. She says, “People were using mercury for beaver felt back in the 17th century.” He says, “No, they weren’t, because Diderot said in 1753 they were using acid, not mercury, and because Lee said that the process was brought over to England from Frankfort in 1870, and because Thackeray doesn’t mention mercury poisoning in Pendennis.”
Then he says:
This seems to be his premise, now. He’s no longer talking about studies of mercurialism–he’s talking about the history of using mercury in the hatmaking trade.
He goes on:
So, okay, he’s now talking about the history of carrotting in Britain.
Then he brings up the Mad Hatter. He says that Gardner says the phrase…
So he’s brought up Thackeray again; he seems intent on proving that Thackeray’s failure to mention mercury use proves that it only began in the late 1850s. Why is he so intent on proving this? Why is it so important to him that mercury poisoning among hatters only began in the 1850s, and not in earlier centuries? That is what I find so baffling. And that’s the axe that he’s grinding here.
Then he quotes a personal source to confirm something about the Mad Hatter.
Then he finishes up with a history of labor legislation concerning mercury.
What do Thackeray’s Pendennis and the Mad Hatter have to do with two studies that may or may not have been flawed due to outdated testing procedures, with Alice Hamilton’s statement that they started using mercury in the 17th century, and with the history of labor legislation?
Actually, I think Dex’s argument is valid when you consider that even if mercury was not in use when Thackeray surveyed the British hat industry, it looks likely that it had been used earlier. Thus, even if 1830’s era hatters did not actually go mad, the expression “mad as a hatter” may have already been in common use from earlier times.
[machine gun noise]
[ack ack ack ack ack ack ack ack ack]
[factoid flutters to the ground, a quivering mess]
Thackery did not “survey the British hat industry”, or if he did, dang if I can find it on the Web. Anybody else wanna have a go? Every Google search I’ve done, “Thackeray biography hatmaking”, “Thackeray hatmaking”, “Thackeray hat”, etc. etc. etc. has turned up precisely nothing.
It’s a misnomer to refer to Thackeray as a “journalist”. Yes, I know, that’s what the Encyclopedia Britannica calls him, but it is inaccurate in the modern sense of the word, of someone who goes out and writes hard-hitting exposes of corruption. That was Dickens, not Thackeray. Thackeray is usually described as a “satirist”. He wrote fun little pieces for Punch. His most famous novel, Vanity Fair":
http://www.cliffsnotes.com/product.asp?prod_ID=1377
He may qualify as a “journalist” because he wrote for magazines, but he’s not really what we would think of as a “journalist”.
I am sitting here with a copy (in 2 volumes) of Pendennis, which I checked out of the library at lunchtime. So far–I am up to Chapter 5, and I’ve peeked at Chapter 10 (see below)–I believe that Leonard Goldwater hereby stands revealed as someone who merely passed along a factoid that someone told him, and got it completely wrong to boot. However, as always, I welcome enlightenment from someone else willing to go find a copy of this and look it up. (Actually, you know, it’s pretty good. Like Dickens, but not quite as hectic, not quite so many amazing coincidences. :rolleyes: )
Here are all the quotes in Goldwater’s article concerning Thackeray and Pendennis:
This makes it sound like Thackeray did some kind of journalistic expose of the British hat industry. A Google search under “Thackeray mercury” shows nothing of the sort, at least on the Web. Not even a hint. Anybody else have any information on this?
The writer William Makepeace Thackeray, as far as I can tell, never wrote or published a “description of hazards in the British hat industry in the early part of the 19th century.”
Okay, here’s the good part. Goldwater quotes an “anonymous source”.
Here is what’s actually in Chapter 10 of Pendennis (to summarize):
I don’t see the words “mad as a hatter” anywhere in this entire chapter. And I’ve been sitting here with an index card, scrutinizing it line by line. Shall we blame my bifocals, or Goldwater’s “source”, for telling him the wrong thing, or Goldwater, for passing along a factoid, or the typist, for typing the wrong chapter number?
So my theory so far is that:
The anonymous source was misinformed–he really did think “mad as a hatter” occurs in Chapter 10, and that Chapter 10 deals with the hazards of the hat industry. And Goldwater accepted this and passed it along intact.
The anonymous source and/or Goldwater have William Makepeace Thackeray confused with some other Thackeray who really did do some kind of expose on the hazards of the British hatmaking industry. Also, maybe W.M. Thackeray did do an article somewhere, and it just isn’t on the Web.
The typist mistyped the chapter number. However, a quick survey of chapter headings reveals nothing that sounds like “a visit to the hat factory”. However, as I keep reading, I may come upon a visit to a hat factory. It’s worthwhile to note that so far, this book is STRONGLY reminiscent of Tom Brown’s School Days. It’s an affectionate paean to a golden age, long ago when we were all much younger. Industrial Revolution nostalgia for a Simpler Time. I would be very surprised, given the tone of the book so far, to have it suddenly descend into Upton Sinclair-type muckraking journalism, or even Dickensian gloom. It’s a very cheerful book. And it has, overall, absolutely nothing to do with hatmaking. Up to Chapter 5, at least, it’s about being 17 and in love and writing reams of bad verse to the Adored Object.
Ah-ha, “mad as a hatter” IS in Chapter 10, after all. Bad on me for skimming. :o
It’s in the middle of several paragraphs of general chitchat. Thackeray was writing for a magazine serial and presumably getting paid by the word.
But it still doesn’t answer the other question, about Thackeray doing an expose on the British hatmaking industry.
And still no signs of a visit to a hat factory.