Wow, a rereading of Goldwater’s article really shows it to be a very flawed argument. For example, he never mentions why Thackeray should have noted incidents of mercury poisoning/use, aside from a mention of an unnamed “description of hazards in the British hat industry”. The article makes it sound like a glaring omission, but never really explains why Thackeray would have had more reason to write about mercury poisoning in hatters than he would have had to discuss the mating habits of cornish hens.
He also quotes Gardner disagreeing with him, then explains that Gardner may not know what he’s talking about, because of the fact that Thackeray never mentioned anything about mercury. He quotes Hamilton, who wrote a chapter on the hat industry in her book on industrial poisons, but dismisses her statement out of hand with the encyclopedia quote that, as DDG pointed out, doesn’t really disagree with her (and is about 110 years before Carroll anyways). And, of course, he brings up Thackeray’s silence on the issue.
Most interestingly, his anonymous source doesn’t actually corroborate his theory. All that the anonymous source provides is a citation of the phrase from Pendennis in 1850 and an amusing legend about the origin of the use of mercury that would seem to predate the 19th century.
So basically, we have the opinion of a few experts against the curious absence of corroboration in an unnamed work by an author whose name he can’t even spell consistentindustryly wrong from sometime in the early 19th century that deals with hazards in the hat making industry. And I’ve looked through a bit of material on Thackeray online, and haven’t found any indication that he ever did write anything of the sort.
======= LATE BREAKING NEWS BULLETIN ==================
OK, as I was writing this, I did more research, and apparently the work in question is he Effects of Arts, Trades, and Professions, and of Civic States and Habits of Living on Health and Longevity, with Suggestions for the Removal of Many of the Agents which Produce Disease and Shorten the Duration of Life by a person named C. Turner Thackrah, Esq., which was published in 1832, so I think I can quote freely from it.
Personally, I don’t find the lack of references to mercury all that unusual. Certainly not enough to put as much faith in its omission as Goldwater did.
OK, that’s about it. Apparently, this Thackrah guy keeps a pretty low profile on the internet these days. Not surprising, considering the fact that just reading the title of his book requires an act of will.
I believe the mystery is “solv-ed” as Inspector Clouseau would say, and if so, I am simultaneously a very happy and a very furious duck indeed. Happy at having solved the mystery, and furious that if true, the answer is so dumb.
I read all the way through Chapter 27 but then I started having trouble keeping my eyes open. So I started skimming, just reading a sentence or two on each page. As it was, this still took a while. I believe I can say with 99.9% accuracy that (a) there is no visit to a hat factory in Pendennis, and (b) Thackeray has nothing to say at all in it concerning the British hat industry. The whole thing, both volumes, all 800 or so pages of closely spaced tiny print in the Everyman’s Library edition, is about Arthur Pendennis and his trials, tribulations, love affairs, and political career. There’s nothing at all about hatmakers or the British hat industry in it.
Except.
And this is the “oh geez” part, the part that had me ranting and raving around the dining room when the Better Half got home from work. “Guess what I did all afternoon?”
There is a milliner.
A very minor character named Mrs. Fribsby inhabits the first part of the first book. She lives in the quaint village where Arthur spends his early manhood.
She’s a milliner, for heaven’s sake. :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: Leonard, come over here with your anonymous buddy. Have a seat, guys, and Ducky will explain the difference between a hatmaker and a * milliner*.
A hatmaker makes the felt. He also makes the basic hat form. Wide-brimmed beaver hat, ladies bonnet (there are 2 references, at least up till Chapter 27, to ladies beaver bonnets), top hat, whatever. Hatmakers sit there all day and do nothing but make basic hat forms. Then they sell these, wholesale, to milliners, who (a) specialize in ladies’ hats and (b) [pay attention, guys, here’s the important part,] basically they only sew. They decorate the basic hats which they’ve bought wholesale from the hatmakers. Sometimes they sew their own hats, from felt or cloth, which someone else has made. They stock ribbons, feathers, cockades, silk flowers, all those sorts of frilly things that you can use to decorate a hat. You can buy a completed hat, decorated in the latest French fashion. Or you can buy the basic hat and the trim and do it yourself at home.
Okay? Got this? The reason Thackeray doesn’t mention mercury poisoning in his book is because Mrs. Fribsby wasn’t a hatmaker making her own felt and blocking the felt into hats–she was a milliner.
Trust me, guys, when it says “makes” hats, it does not mean a milliner is making her own felt. It has always been a specialized process, even back in the 14th century, whether they may or may not have been using mercury.
So I am completely disgusted. Thackeray doesn’t mention mercury poisoning in his book that supposedly deals with hatmakers, and this is supposed to prove that they weren’t using mercury to make hats in the 1830s, but his book doesn’t deal with hatmakers–only a milliner. And she is a distinctly minor character, and it’s not the kind of book that would concern itself with the health problems of minor characters anyway, unless it’s germane to the plot, which it isn’t. Mrs. Fribsby is only there so she can tell the curate that she thinks Arthur’s widowed mother is in love with him, so the curate tells Arthur he wants to marry his mother and is thereby totally humiliated, because of course she doesn’t even know he exists. He’s her son’s tutor, for heaven’s sake.
Thackrah’s girls would have been “sweat shop” workers in London, working to make mass produced off-the-shelf hats. The milliners were sewing and trimming hats, working with felt produced by feltmakers (not making felt themselves), the strawbonnet makers were of course making straw bonnets, to be trimmed. Mrs. Fribsby owned her own shop in a rural village, and she’s described as frequently reading novels in the back of the store. She is definitely not toiling away in an urban sweatshop, and she’s definitely not being exposed to mercury.
While it’s possible that Goldwater’s first three mentions of “Thackrah” are in fact referring to the study, still The Anonymous Source has “Thackrah” and “Pendennis” together.
So is this a typist’s mistake, or what? Did the Anonymous Source think that Thackrah of the study was the same person who wrote Pendennis? Did Goldwater? I sure would like to see a copy of Goldwater’s original out-of-print book.
And now I am going to get on with my life. Arthur is extricated from his affair with the semi-literate actress, goes to college, gets deeply into debt, flunks out of college, goes to London, becomes a writer, hangs out with dukes and things, goes to many many parties, and I actually don’t know whether he does or does not marry the beautiful Blanche Amory because by that point I really didn’t care.
DDG and waterj2 Thanks for taking the time to keep me honest here.
DDG quoted from Thackeray thus
So here we have Thackeray using the phrase mad as a hatter in 1849, and the meaning is clearly that the phrase meant someone was angry. Not deranged.
This is how the term most likely was meant at that time. upset and angry.
waterj2 I can’t thank you enough for discovering that there was a Thackrah. The coincidence of his name with the fact that Thackeray used mad as a hatter is spooky. I would love to read the original work to see if there was indeed more detail about the fur hat industry. I’m sure there was. And if he indeed went into such depth in his discussions, why would he not mention hatters problems with mercury?
I would still be up for someone finding the oldest printed source for Danbury shakes.
Lastly, the Thackrah work is available in reprint:
from abebooks, the best on-line consortium of used bookdealers, IMHO.
OK, so the whole Thackrah/Thackeray thing was a bit of a mixup, presumably on Goldwater’s part. Looking up more about the guy it seems he was pretty well known as being the father of occupational health in Britain. Also, he founded Leeds University School of Medicine. And it looks like his book can be had for a reasonable price. What is less certain is whether the book dealt with anyone who actually made the felt, or just sewed the hats.
The web doesn’t seem to have anything on when the term danbury shakes was first noticed.
I think the Thackeray quote is less than clear in implying anger. I could also easily interpret it as implying fits, such as would be suffered by someone afflicted with mercury poisoning. The Snopes link gives Thomas Chandler Morton’s Clockmaker as the first known usage of the phrase. Perhaps DDG might be willing to read through that if I ask really nicely.
I’m still leaning towards the mercurism theory, as it seems rather improbable that people who appeared mad would happen to also be commonly referred to as mad due to sheer coincidence.
To be perfectly fair to Goldwater, I’m beginning to think the whole mixup stems from the typist’s error in typing that fourth “Thackerah”. In touch typing, “h” and “y” are typed with the same finger. After a good night’s sleep (during which I dreamed incessantly of galloping mail coaches and people drinking punch out of tumblers), I think what happened was that I saw the words “Thackrah”, “Thackerah”, and “Pendennis” and immediately jumped to the conclusion that Goldwater (and/or his Anonymous Source) was the one who was mixed up.
However, it still doesn’t answer the question of why it’s so important to Goldwater that they weren’t using mercuric nitrate in feltmaking until the late 19th century. Is he maybe feeling threatened, in his position as scientist, by the fact that people used a demonstrably dangerous substance for centuries with Science not realizing it, and giving a warning?
I’ll volunteer to read it if somebody will buy it and mail it to me.
At Water’s link, what little description there is of what’s actually in Thackrah’s book.
So Goldwater says that since Thackrah didn’t mention mercury poisoning, this proves that they weren’t using mercury to treat felt in the 1830s.
Possible reasons why Thackrah (the real one) may not have mentioned mercury poisoning in his survey of the 1830s British hat industry.
Maybe he was only talking about milliners, not feltmakers or hatmakers. How many, and which, industries did he cover?
Maybe they didn’t understand yet that mercuric nitrate had toxic fumes. They may have thought that since you didn’t immediately fall over dead upon sniffing mercuric nitrate, that meant it wasn’t toxic.
Maybe back in the 1830s in Britain they weren’t concerned with invisible air pollution yet. There was an increasing emphasis overall on fresh air, good ventilation, and exercise (see Thackrah’s advice to the girls to get more fresh air), but maybe they didn’t really understand that something you couldn’t see or smell in the air could actually be bad for you. They could legislate against bad smells because those are hard to miss, but invisible, odorless fumes might have escaped their notice.
Here’s a website about French air pollution laws in the early 19th century.
The thing that pops out at me from this list (other than the mention of hatmakers) is that all of these things that have attracted official attention are either noisy or smelly, or obviously dangerous. The fumes from mercuric nitrate, AFAIK, aren’t particularly smelly, at least not in the sense of the whole neighborhood where the hatmakers live being full of the smell of what they’re using to make felt. Hatmakers are mentioned as annoying their neighbors because of the dust they produce.
So maybe Thackrah doesn’t mention mercuric nitrate simply because he wasn’t aware of it. Maybe it was just “the stuff the hatmakers brush on the felt”.
Re the word “mad”. Yeah, Sam, you’re right, I thought it sounded like “angry”, too. I was interested to notice, as I waded through this thing, that the word occurred a number of other times, but always in the context of “crazy”.
You begin to see why I stopped at Chapter 27.
[…and isn’t it interesting to note that evidently the problem of angry teenagers possibly getting a gun and shooting someone isn’t a new one…]
Only in the modern era have we tried to classify types of mental illness, and get away from words like “mad” and “crazy.” My WAG would be that the two meanings of “mad” were not all that different – getting angry, turning red in the face, frothing at the mouth, sputtering, yelling, etc would all be symptoms of both mad/angry and mad/loony.
As C. S. Lewis points out in Studies in Words, one must always be careful to distingish between the word’s meaning and the speaker’s meaning. As he explains, if I say, “Take away all this rubbish,” I may mean by “this rubbish” a pile of old newspapers, but that doesn’t mean that “rubbish” means “newspapers”, or even that I think it does.
Similarly, just because Thackeray is using the word “mad” to describe an angry person, that doesn’t mean that he is using the word “mad” to mean “angry”.
There is much debate about whether people are poisoned by mercury today; it will certainly be difficult to assess whether hatters were actually poisoned by mercury in the 1800s. Here are some lines of argument:
Actual hatter poisoning -> public perception of hatters as poisoned by mercury -> public perception of hatters as mad
Actual hatter poisoning -> public perception of hatters as mad (but no one knows the cause of the madness)
No poisoning -> public perception of hatters as poisoned by mercury (because of mercury scare) -> public perception of hatters as mad
No poisoning but other odd hatter behavior (see below) -> public perception of hatters as mad
And then the compound theories:
A few hatters poisoned but mostly other odd behavior -> public perception of hatters as poisoned -> public perception of hatters as mad
A few hatters poisoned but mostly other odd behavior -> public perception of hatters as mad, but no one knows why
I don’t think we can either rule out or accept any of these alternates. We just don’t have data. And this makes us mad as a hatter, because with a character as famous as the Hatter there ought to be some scientific analysis of why hatters were perceived as mad. Yet there is a void.
I am beginning to suspect that whether or not mercury actually made hatters mad, the public perception of madness did not seem to involve mercury.
The online version of OED gives me the impression that the phrase “Mad as a hatter” may have originally had more to do with the notion that hatters were loners than that they used mercury. They may have worked in shops (as opposed to factories) but in a back room where there was peace and quiet. The women in the front of the store (these would be the milliners, according to previous posts?) would sew the exterior of the hats together while the hatter - presumably a man - stayed in the back and made the forms. So, the personable and chatty women in the front might have considered the hatter to be an oddball. This is not surprising if the techniques they used (the bow, etc.) were indeed as odd as has been described.
Anyway, here are two of OED’s early references for “Mad as a hatter”:
These both predate Alice in Wonderland, although it might still have been a fairly new expression for Alice and Lewis, so people at the time ought to have had some idea why hatters were perceived that way…
but definition #2 in OED is:
Of course, these Australian references are after the 1840 reference above, so it’s possible that they just picked up the popular usage. Hatter as loner may thus be secondary to hatter as nut.
So in view of the fact the hatter’s methods were clearly odd, and that it was indeed a lonesome job, and that we have still found no evidence that mercury poisioning was in fact known among them, I tentatively suggest that “Mad as a hatter” probably has nothing to do with mercury.
Another way of putting it is: given the actual job hatters did, only a madman would decide to spend his life doing it.
BTW: Here are some early references to “mad” itself. It always seems to imply insanity, even when it means angry.
A mad freaking fellow!!! In 1664/5??!! I love it!
“That Cecil Adams is such a mad freaking fellow!”
Anyway to summarize: we (some of us, anyway, myself included) want the madness of hatters to derive from mercury poisoning, but there are plenty of other reasons for the popular perception of their madness and no evidence of poisoning. A possibly salvation for the mercury theory: Did hatters actually get poisoned by mercury, and thus add to the already popular perception of their madness?
How much mercury was in that solution? How much is needed to drive someone mad? Could simple lack of ventilation cause concentrations to build up to levels potentially causing madness.
One last thing: Is it possible that “mad as a hatter” is simply a reference to the absurdity of women’s hats at the time? The appearance of the phrase seems so sudden and widespread; can anyone look up the history of women’s hats for a possible explanation? I don’t suppose they got bizarre around, oh, 1840 or so?
Careful! Just because we don’t have a contemporary source saying, “Hatters are mad because of mercury poisoning,” doesn’t mean we don’t have contemporary sources saying, “Hatters are uncommonly inclined to be mad,” and “Hatters use mercury.” As far as I can tell, nobody’s looked.
Yes, when I say we have a lack of data, I mean we in this group. Someone may well have the data.
My point is that with dangerous materials like mercury and lead there can be a tendency even for reputable historians to jump to the conclusion that these were responsible for various social ills. Maybe they were and maybe they weren’t. One way this can happen is that historians raise it as a possiblility and others repeat it as fact.
I mean, this happens even in relatively current events: the debates over Gulf War Syndrome and breast implants could be examples of erroneous conclusions based on possibilities, or they may be real physical effects. But I can easily imagine an historian suggesting that mercury may have been the cause of hatter madness, and then others repeating it as fact.
So I ask:
What evidence is there that hatters in the 1800s were actually poisoned by mercury?
What evidence is there that people in the 1800s believed hatters were poisoned by mercury?
I see modern references to “hatter’s shakes” having been caused by mercury, but if hatters were presumed to be poisoned by mercury at the time (because they were crazy and used mercury), then such an expression might have a popular source, rather than a medical one.
For question 1 above we almost got the answer in that Thackrah piece; it was just not about the hatters themselves.
We must search for more proof! (“We” meaning “you”, that is. I have to get back to work before I get fired.)
The short answer to your question is “no”. Generally speaking, women’s hats in the 1830s and 1840s were just simple bonnets and variations on bonnets and little caps. It wasn’t until the 1870s that hats began to get really elaborate, and during the 1890s of course was when you got the really huge hats, with the dead birds on them, etc.
Also, the word “hatter” has always meant quite specifically the one who made the hats, not the one who wore them.
Well, in spite of what Leonard Goldwatter might think, there is evidence that hatters were using mercuric nitrate to make felt in the early 1800s, and even in earlier centuries. And if they were using mercuric nitrate, then according to OSHA (see below), if they weren’t wearing all kinds of protective clothing, including respirators, then yes, they were being poisoned.
Zero. People didn’t “get it” until the 20th century. They used the phrases “hatter’s shakes” and “mad as a hatter” simply because they observed that hatters’ hands shook, and that hatters sometimes behaved oddly.
Right, because they didn’t “get it”. How could an odorless, invisible vapor make people go crazy? Remember, this was an era that thought diseases like cholera and malaria were caused by bad-smelling air, not by bacteria or blood parasites. When they drained swamps or provided clean drinking water, they were unwittingly removing the real causes of malaria or cholera, but they thought it was just that the bad smells were gone.
This was also an era where a surprisingly large number of people thought that what we would call clinical insanity was actually caused by demon possession.
The public perceived them as mad. The reason they appeared mad was because they were suffering from chronic mercury poisoning.
I’d sure like to see the actual OED cite for that. I don’t see any evidence anywhere that refers to the hatmaking trade being a particularly lonely one.
The Australian usage of “hatter” would be in the sense of “crazy person”, as in “you’d have to be crazy to be a miner out there”.
As far as hatmaking being a “lonesome job”, actually it was a big industry, not a “cottage industry”. The picture you paint here, of the solitary hatter living in the back while his wife trimmed hats in the front, is historically inaccurate. Hatmaking was a huge industry, like brewing or baking or butchering, and making felt is a hairy, steamy, dusty, messy business. No way could feltmaking have taken place in the back of a genteel milliner’s shop. The hatmakers would occupy a big building with workrooms and huge vats for soaking and steaming the felt, and machinery for pressing the felt into place on the hat forms, where their incessant pounding of mass quantities of felt raised clouds of dust and led to protests by their neighbors (see the French air pollution cite, above).
If you can get hold of a copy of Nollet’s L’Art de Faire des Chapeaux, it has some wonderful illustrations of what feltmaking looked like in 1765. Colin McDowell’s Hats: Status, Style and Glamour says:
None of the early usages of “mad as a hatter” sound like “mad as a crazy loner”. “She walked out of the room like a crazy loner…” Nope, doesn’t work for me.
Coming right up. But first, here is an example of what people meant by “mad”. The story of Boston Corbett, the man who shot John Wilkes Booth.
Ducky’s Glossary (with some assistance from Tabor’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary :
Encephalopathy: any dysfunction of the brain. Usually means neuronal degeneration and edema (swelling).
Polyneuropathy: term applied to any disorder or affection of peripheral nerves. Same thing as multiple neuritis.
Peripheral nerves: Any nerve which connects the brain or spinal cord with peripheral receptors or effectors.
Hyperesthesia: Unusual sensibility to sensory stimuli, such as pain or touch.
Paraparesis: Partial paralysis affecting the lower limbs.
Dyskinesia: Defect in voluntary movement.
Neuritis: Inflammation of a nerve or nerves.
Ataxia: Muscular incoordination, especially that manifested when voluntary muscular movements are attempted.
Nystagmus: Constant, involuntary, cyclical movement of the eyeball. Movement may be in any direction.
So if you’re suffering from a non-fatal case of chronic mercury poisoning, your arms and legs tremble. You stumble a lot. You have mysterious aches and pains. You have mood swings, verging on outright psychosis. You’re constantly irritable, and extremely sensitive to touch–people tap you on the shoulder and you jump a mile. And worst of all, your eyeballs roll around uncontrollably in your head.
Your neighbors say of you, “He’s crazy”. After your neighbors have seen other people with these same symptoms, and most of these people seem to be hatmakers, they start saying, “He’s a hatter–what did you expect? Hatters are crazy.”
And, you know, I went looking for the answer to “when did they stop using mercury to make felt” and the answer is, they haven’t.
Like I said, nothing holds its shape in the rain quite like beaver felt. If you want an expensive dress cowboy hat that’ll keep looking nice, you go with beaver.
So that answers the question of who’s buying those Ohio beaver pelts–they’re not being shipped off to some dang fur-happy foreigners, they’re being made into All-American Cowboy Hats.
Here’s the Mad Hatter. See his eyes rolling around in his head? What’s he looking at? Nothing. The March Hare and Alice are looking at each other, but the Hatter’s eyes aren’t looking at anything at all. Tenniel is portraying what he saw in hatters, the random eye movements.
For once, I’ve got to say I find snopes less than convincing.
Sorry, I don’t buy it. In order for “mad as a hatter” to be just a variation on an existing term, one would need to show some connection between the other variations, and show a tendency to fill in the gaps with new words. Given the point in parenthesis about the different variations on meaning of “mad”, I think that works counter to the assertion. That suggests to me independent generation of phrases that appear similar because of the use of the word “mad”, and the ambiguity by its double meaning.
How do they justify that assertion? So what if Carroll knew Theophilus Carter, and intended to lampoon him a bit as the hatter? What keeps Carroll from doing a double word game, and putting a Mad Hatter (because hatters are all crazy) into the story, and then depicting this hatter as Carter? In fact, in the very next paragraph they say
[bolding mine]
Making a play on the phrase “mad as a March hare”? But he already has a March Hare. So he’s also making a new play on the March hare? That doesn’t sound credible. Why would he make 2 mad characters both based on “mad as a March hare”? It has already been shown that the phrase “mad as a hatter” was common - snopes cites two previous uses and claims as much. Yet somehow Carroll comes up with exactly the same phrase based not on a common characteristic (madders act crazy because of mercury poisoning) but purely by word play?
And the mad atter as a venomous snake is even sketchier. How can “mad as a hatter” be both a substitution for “mad as a March hare” and “mad as an adder”? One means crazy, the other means poisonous. It doesn’t connect.
Sorry, this one just doesn’t hold up to me.
samclem said:
It’s hardly clearly meaning angry. It could easily mean crazy, in the sense that “he’s driving me crazy”. We typically comment anything that is annoying, frustrating, and totally infuriating as driving us crazy. Clearly being mad to the point of insanity is a possible and likely usage here.
Axel Wheeler said:
Where do you come up with that? I don’t think anyone questions that mercury is poisonous. I see stories periodically on the news about mercury in cosmetics or dishware from Mexico, and the danger. DDG has provided numerous links on the medical dangers of mercury poisoning.
Again, I don’t follow your conclusion. What do you mean “no evidence of poisoning”? There is plenty of evidence that mercury is poisonous. There is plenty of evidence that hat makers use mercury in the process. There is plenty of evidence that hat makers got poisoned by the use of mercury in their hat making process. The only thing that seems to not be explicitly stated is the specific mercury process being used by hat makers immediately preceeding Carroll’s use of the phrase in his book. Given that the felting process has remained essentially unchanged (better methods, but the process is still the same), given that beaver felt required the mercury to be processed, given that beaver hats were common a lot earlier and all through the time period in question, and given that mercury has been known about and used for centuries prior to the time in question, it does not seem a leap by any means to think that mercury was in use by hat makers at the time. The lack of mentioning mercury as a hazard to hat makers by contemporaries hardly qualifies as proof mercury wasn’t used, as the dangers of a lot of things (including mercury fumes) were not understood at the time.
Certainly we should be aware of a tendency to leap to conclusions, and to spread misinformation via the media. And since they did not know about the hazards of mercury fumes at the time, we certainly don’t have a contemporary explanation about hatters being mad because of mercury poisoning. However, it is not a large leap to reach that conclusion upon reflection. We now know mercury is toxic, in relatively small doses. We know hatters were exposed to mercury by way of their methods. Current felt making processes are most assuredly not the same - a minimum of protective gear would be required, including respirators, heavy gloves, smocks or aprons, etc. We know the effects of mercury poisoning include severe nervous disorders, affecting mobility, coordination, sensitivity, and mood (even if not directly, being on constant pain can’t be easy to stay cheerful). The only thing that seems to be in question is if hatters getting mercury poisoning and thus behaving odd was the origin of the phrase, or it the phrase was coined in some other manner and just coincidentally reflected a common situation.
Duck Duck Goose, I’ve just got to say you’ve gone the extra mile on this one. You rule! Have you considered boxing this up and sending it to snopes? I think they could stand a new review of the topic, in light of your efforts.
But I do have one quibble with you - looking at the illustrations I can’t tell if the Mad Hatter’s eyes are rolling around or not. Sorry.
This is a particular sticking point of mine, because I wrote into the Snopes message board about their entry for “Mad as a Hatter” a long time ago. I have photocopied references, I even got copies of their sources (really, their one source, since one of them cites the other). I had every bit of evidence I needed to point out that their argument contradicted demonstrable facts. After two years of basically being ignored, I checked their “Mad as a Hatter” page to find that it had been changed slightly. The status had been changed to “undetermined” and they still cited the same “mad' meant venomous’” argument that I feel I had thoroughly debunked, though this time they used weaker language. Now they’ve downplayed that argument even further, but still cite it.
This issue has already been very nicely handled in this thread, so this isn’t much of a contribution, but just because I’ve been sitting on this so long, I’m going to reproduce my Snopes post, which is less thorough than Duck Duck Goose’s contributions, but nonetheless quite conclusive where the “mad' meant venomous’” argument is concerned:
I think the better claim is that the expression evolved from/or along with such expressions as mad as a buck , mad as a marsh hare, mad as a wet hen, mad as maybutter, etc., all of which were precursors, one as early as the 16th Century. I think the sheer number of similar expressions counts for something. It wasn’t like the phrase mad as a … was just invented around the 1830’s. It wasn’t.
But mad as a hatter' is a fairly curious addition to that list. Why should a hatter in particularly be called mad’? Did they also say, mad as a baker'? Mad as a blacksmith’? `Mad as a cooper’?
This curious expression is still curious, even though the first three words have been used in a lot of other expressions. The mercury theory explains it, though certainty has not been attained. An alternate theory, that hatter' is a corruption of adder’, is viable, but not compelling. It might be more compelling if someone could dig up an actual use of the term, but so far it appears to be mere speculation that `mad as an adder’ was in circulation long enough to be corrupted, and even if could be shown that it was used, that doesn’t make that explanation any closer to certainty than the mercury theory.
From DDG’s reasons that Thackrah may have failed to mention mercury poisoning:
This seems doubtful, as I recall having run across references to mercury miners working lessened hours due to poisoning.
Given what I saw about Thackrah, this also seems unlikely. Apparently, he was specifically looking for things of the sort. It is possible that he was still inclined to only look at pollutants that could be noticed, but certainly he would have seen the effects. Well, most likely.
So if Thackrah’s book with the unwieldy title contains references to hatters, and does not mention any madness, and indicates that the carrotting agent was something other than mercury, and no more reliable source can be found to indicate that mercury was used at the time, that would cast a pretty substantial cloud of doubt on the mercury poisoning theory. I’m still waiting to see if the hatsUK forum people reply to me to provide an authoritative answer on whether mercury was used at the time. That would pretty much render Thackrah irrelevant.
As for some of Axel’s ideas:
It is incredibly improbable that people would have really cared that hatters were being exposed to harmful levels of mercury vapor before noticing the symptoms.
But we know that hatters were later victims of mercury poisoning, which would be silly if people were that scared of mercury. Also, I don’t think the public was terribly aware of the dangers of mercury.
This just seems contrived after the fact to get around thinking that hatters acted mad due to mercury poisoning. Plus, what DDG said about the other odd behavior.
As before, the “other odd behavior” seems hardly convincing, while what is known about mercury poisoning is a far more satisfying explanation.
That’s because, at the time, mercury was not known to be the source. Mercury did make hatters mad, but all the public saw was the mad hatters, and they really didn’t know why. I don’t understand why you expect the people in 1830’s Britain to be educated in the effects of mercury poisoning and in the fact that mercury was used by hatters.
There is evidence of poisoning. We are only lacking evidence that it occurred as early as 1837. Just because no one knew that mercury was the culprit at the time does not mean that we can’t look back and see reports describing various symptoms, connect that with the chemicals that hatters would have been using, and make an accurate diagnosis. At the time, knowing far less about mercury, the public, and probably even doctors, couldn’t. Actually, I think it’s fairly common that we now can theorize on the causes of supposed madnesses of the past, for example, St. Vitus’ Dance.
Given that hatters used mercury as late as the 1940’s, when it was banned, I think it’s pretty certain that mercury poisoning was having a noticeable effect on hatters. If you’re going to argue “maybe the reputable historians are all wrong” you need more than “we can’t really be sure”.
So, Snopes is suggesting that perhaps Lewis Carroll made up a phrase that had been in print for twenty years, but that he had never heard of, that also happened to accurately describe a real situation? Sure, it can’t be entirely ruled out, but neither can demonic possession.
As it stands, the mercury theory stands far ahead of the adder theory. The only weakness in the mercury theory is that it has not been established that hatters were using mercury in the 1830’s, but the competing theory is just as weak, since (according to Snopes) “I can find no citations where someone has actually used “mad as an adder.””
I agree a little bit, but I think it’s far more likely that people filled in the blank with things they thought were mad than just random things that would later appear mad entirely by coincidence. Most likely, “mad as a hatter” arose sometime in the early 19th century (perhaps earlier) as a variant on that theme, based on the fact that hatters seemed mad.
OK, I’ll stop now, because I think I’m perhaps being a little repetitive.
The missing link, it seems to me, is the question: when was it known that mercury poisoning caused the various symptoms described in DDG’s post above?
My reconstruction of what we’ve got so far: the phrase “mad as a…” was certainly in common use for a long time, right up there with “wise as a [owl, fox, pope…]” or “stupid as a [mule, post, George Bush…]” Such expressions have been around for centuries.
At some point (1700s, I think we’ve established?), hatters started using mercury to cure beaver felt. This produced mercury poisoning and symptoms (the shakes, among others, and mood swings) that were noticed as common amongst hatters. ASIDE: Note that many of the symptoms are physical behavioral symptoms, that could easily have been classified as insanity (as opposed to coughing fits, for instance, that might have been viewed as disease.)
IN ANY CASE, the cause (mercury poisoning) was not known at that time. Thus, the expression, “mad as a hatter” arose in the early 1800s. The term “mad” certainly meant insane, and the distinction between violent temper (mad/angry) and mood swings (mad/insane) was probably not made.
Carroll therefore took a reasonably common expression and made it into a character, as he did with “a cat can look at a king” and the March Hare and the poem about the knave of hearts stealing the tarts, etc. Carroll was probably unaware of the mercury connection – I think he was taking a popular expression that he thought amusing. If he had thought there was a serious pollution-related illness, I doubt he would have worked it into his story for children. There are certainly death-jokes in the Alice books, but they are fairly subtle rather than overt. And there are no jokes (IIRC) about crippling diseases.
Since Carroll’s time, we have learned that the cause of hatters’ shakes was most likely the mercury poisoning.
This seems to me to be what all the evidence indicates. The alternate expressions “mad as an adder” have some plausibility, but the sequence I’ve just outlined has a very high plausibilty, internal consistency, and is consistent with external evidence.
I’m a great admirer of Snopes, but I think they blew this one.
