Mad Hatter -- "it's believed"

[Duck_Duck_Goose]

To clarify one thing first: They stopped using mercury to make hats in the U.S. in 1941, but they must still be using it elsewhere. Stetson must be getting their beaver felt from somewhere. From Leonard Goldwatter’s article.

http://h%2ddevil%2dwww.mc.duke.edu/oem/hatters.htm

On December 2, 1955 the New York Times ran a full-column story, with a dateline from Danbury, Connecticut and headlines: “600 Hatters Mark 1941 Nitrate Ban.” The story notes that “The occasion was the 14th anniversary of the outlawing of the use of nitrate of mercury in the hat industry.” This notable event had come to pass since “On December 1, 1941, the United States Public Health Service brought an end to mercury’s use by hat manufacturers in 26 states through mutual agreements.”

originally posted by CK:
**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? **

Note: The following is from an anti-amalgam website, but I don’t see any reason to quarrel with its historical facts.
http://www.garynull.com/Documents/mercurydentalamalgams.htm#1-9

Tales of mercury’s damaging effects date to ancient Roman and Spanish history, when imprisoned slaves who worked in mercury mines suffered from acute symptoms of fatigue, dyspnea and epigastric pain on their first day. As time passed, they developed other highly common symptoms of mercury poisoning. These included lesions of the nervous system such as erethismus mercurialis (moodiness and other mental disturbances) and tremor mercurialis (involuntary, choreatic shaking movements).

Interesting to note that even today, we still say someone has a “mercurial” temperament, to mean someone with mood swings.

Note: the following is from a “do it yourself” alchemy website.
http://www.triad-publishing.com/PON-safety.html

The effects of mercury exposure have long been recognized as hazardous. In Austria, where cinnabar was mined extensively, miner exposure was recognized as a hazard and the number of days per month that miners could work in the mines was limited. This information was recorded as early as the mid 1600’s. The United States government recognized mercury and its compounds as an industrial hazard in the 1800’s. [note: in the late 1800s–see Goldwatter, below] A mercury compound was then used in making felt hats, and hat making was recognized to be a hazardous occupation [again, in the late 1800s]. The saying, “mad as a hatter” came into being because chronic exposure to mercury and its compounds leads to emotional instability.

And back to the amalgam website.
http://www.garynull.com/Documents/MercuryDentalAmalgams.htm

A more recent example of mercury’s dangers comes from the British hatmaking industry of the late 19th century. At the time, the expression “mad as a hatter” characterized workers who used mercury compounds in the shaping of felt hats. The workers exhibited unusual shyness, mood swings and a dwindling intellect, all symptoms of severe mental retardation. But these dangers were recognized for three-quarters of a century before the use of mercury in the U.S. hatmaking industry was banned in 1941.8

From Goldwatter again.

First among the major studies of mercury poisoning in the American felt-hat industry was that made by Dr. J. A. Freeman of New Jersey and reported in 1860. Freeman’s findings were confirmed in a report published by the Board of Health of the State of New Jersey in 1878 (Dennis). In 1910, under the aegis of the Women’s Welfare Department of the New York and New Jersey section of the National Civic Federation, Mrs. Lindon W. Bates, assisted by Miss Florence Roehm, undertook a survey of industrial mercury poisoning in the New York metropolitan area. The results were published in 1912 (Bates). Dozens of cases of severe mercurialism were found among hatters, a state of affairs which was confirmed by the New York City Department of Health in 1915 (Harris).

Additional reports on the health of hatters appeared during the 1920’s, notably those of Alice Hamilton (1922a, 1922b), Wade Wright (1922) and the United States Public Health Service (Neal et al. 1937, 1941).

Figuring backward from 1941, three-quarters of a century puts it at 1866. So people may have known that mercury ore and elemental mercury were poisonous, and they may have known that hatters all behaved oddly, but it wasn’t until the last quarter of the 19th century that folks finally put it all together and fingered mercuric nitrate as the specific culprit responsible for making hatters act crazy.

It’s worthwhile to note that they started using mercury in dental fillings in the early part of the 19th century, so the image of “mercury” as “toxin” couldn’t have been universally recognized, certainly not to the degree it is today.

http://www.garynull.com/Documents/MercuryDentalAmalgams.htm

Mercury got its start in the dental industry in 1826, when a Paris dentist combined it with silver, copper and other metals to create a paste. Seven years later, two brothers in New York City with no dental training began to promote mercury as a cheap alternative to gold fillings. By the end of the 1830s, mercury amalgam’s use was commonplace in the U.S. Not only was the material cheap and durable, but it also required less time and skill to place than the trickier gold fillings.

When the American Dental Association formed in 1859, it…defended the use of mercury amalgam, helping to establish it as a popular dental filling by the end of the 1800s.

So you tell me. Was it all a giant conspiracy somewhere to keep those hatmakers making hats using mercuric nitrate?

Or was it just that they didn’t realize that mercuric nitrate, as opposed to cinnabar ore or elemental mercury, was so toxic until the 1860s? After all, silver nitrate is a different kind of substance from silver ore and elemental silver. Maybe their chemistry wasn’t advanced enough to realize mercuric nitrate could be toxic, too.

Or maybe they did know but they just brushed it aside as unimportant, until the big “social conscience” era of the late Victorian period. Maybe some people knew perfectly well that it was dangerous to use mercuric nitrate to make felt, but hey, it’s a job, you know? It was dangerous to dig coal for a living–you got black lung. It was dangerous to make pottery–you got potter’s silicosis. Tannery workers could get anthrax. I would say the vast majority of people simply ignored the whole problem of “mad hatters”.

And I think the answer to CK’s question would be, “Officially, not until the last quarter of the 19th century”, which was well after the phrase “mad as a hatter” was in common usage.

[C_K_Dexter_Haven]

<< “Officially, not until the last quarter of the 19th century”, which was well after the phrase “mad as a hatter” was in common usage. >>

… and after Lewis Carroll penned his famous character.

[MandaJo]

Normally I try not to clutter up a thread with ass-kissing, but I have to chime in and say that you have all impressed the hell out of me here. (Not that impressing me, in particular, is signifigant, but I thought you might like to know that oyu do have an audience).

[Irishman]

Another hazardous job that was ignored - seafaring. Seaman running large sailing vessels were at high risk. Climbing rigging 150 ft into the air without any safety gear, during storms and high winds, sliding down lines instead of climbing down, carrying water in kegs for months, so long it grows green things and teems with life. Eating stale biscuits stored so long they hatch weevils. And that’s without considering the conditions of war, with cannon fire. (We all know war is hazardous.) Yet it was done, it was a career for some people, and in time of war there was a very strong draft that consisted of grabbing able bodied men off the street and sticking them on a boat against their will. (England in the Napoleonic era.) Who cares what drives hatters mad, they make hats, that’s all that matters.

samclem said:

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.

You’re begging the question. So what if versions of that saying were in common parlance? So what if they took the common phrase and substituted a new antecedent. The question is why did they pick hatters? What made hatters a good choice to be “mad as a”? Look at the previous expressions. While I don’t know what a maybutter is, much less why it’s mad, the buck and wet hen and marsh hare are all explainable by looking at the behavior of the stated animal. So what about hatters is mad, that they would make a logical extension of the common saying? Being a variation on a common phrase does nothing to explain why that particular variation developed.

Johnny Angel, good response on the “adder” version.

“I’m mad as a wet hatter in march with a hare down my pants, and I’m not going to take it any more!”

[samclem]

Since it was my day off, I went to the library. Read the OED. Curiouser and curiouser as they used to say.

I personally agree that the adder suggestions don’t sit well and aren’t correct.

OED cites: 1607, mad as Ajax
1732, mad as Ajax
1609, mad as a weaver

The interesting one, of course, is mad as a weaver. Here we have a profession used in an expression indicating perhaps craziness, but I am not familiar with literature indicating weavers were unusual. (Well, there was that Silas Marner thingy, but…).

So I offer this as evidence to bolster my statement

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.

This, of course, doesn’t mean that mercury compounds weren’t used before the 1840’s nor does it mean that hatters weren’t acting funny before that time. It just removes statements such as

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’?

and

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.

from the argument.

I personally think the evidence shows that people stuck into the phrase Mad as a … about anything they damn-well pleased. And, IMHO, they came up with the phrase Mad as a Hatter some goodly time before the 1830’s.

About the only thing that will help solve this now is a cite in the literature indicating that mercury compounds were in use in the hat industry prior to the 1840’s-50’s or a cite indicating that hatters exhibited symptoms of mercury poisoning prior to the 1850’s, whether in England or the US.

[waterj2]

I personally think the evidence shows that people stuck into the phrase Mad as a … about anything they damn-well pleased. And, IMHO, they came up with the phrase Mad as a Hatter some goodly time before the 1830’s.

What evidence? Just because once a phrase was used 200 years earlier that you can’t connect to any obvious madness? Don’t tell me that you now won’t let up until we examine the weaving industry of the early 17th century.

The only reason to suspect that hatters had coincidentally stopped using mercury for the period of time when the expression was coined was that Thackrah doesn’t mention it. We have accepted that mercury was used earlier and later than the early 19th Century. It strikes me that the idea that hatters stopped using mercury, and then were coincidentally fingered as being mad for no real reason, and then started using mercury again should be eliminated by Occam’s razor. The other explanation is obviously more satisfying, due to the lower number of inexplicable coincidences involved.

[samclem]

We have accepted that mercury was used earlier and later than the early 19th Century.

You have accepted that. I have seen no evidence that this is true.

[samclem]

I would ammend my statement above to say: I have seen nothing concrete to indicate that mercury was used in the hat industry earlier than the 19th Century.

Sorry. Not trying to be argumentative. Just hoping for facts.

[Duck_Duck_Goose]

I would ammend my statement above to say: I have seen nothing concrete to indicate that mercury was used in the hat industry earlier than the 19th Century.

Okay, my Final Answer is going to be that I think it’s definitely documented as far back as the 17th century, but with some quibbles, mainly, that I don’t agree with Alice Hamilton that it was an exclusively Huguenot secret process. I think she got her dates right as far as the documentation, but I think she bought the pretty story about fleeing Huguenots and secret processes (see below). I am assuming that she’s using Weiss as her source.

“Secretage” on Google. The only places it appears are Goldwatter, and on a website quoting heavily from Goldwatter, and in the Webster’s Dictionary from 1913. The only Google hit for “composition water Huguenot” is Goldwatter.

Leonard Goldwatter thinks Alice Hamilton is wrong. So I went looking for Alice Hamilton. Short answer–she was a very serious person.

http://www.distinguishedwomen.com/biographies/hamilton-a.html

Alice Hamilton (1869-1970)
Alice Hamilton, the founder of occupational medicine, first woman professor at Harvard Medical School and the first woman to receive the Lasker Award in public health, was born in 1869 in New York, New York, U.S.A and raised in Indiana…In the typhoid fever epidemic in Chicago in 1902, she made a connection between improper sewage disposal and the role of flies in transmitting the disease and her findings led to reorganization of the Chicago Health Department.
[In 1910] She looked at the hazards posed by exposure to lead, arsenic, mercury, organic solvents, as well as radium, which was used in manufacture of watch dials.

So, parenthetically, it wasn’t until 1902 that they figured out the typhoid/sewage/flies connection, and it wasn’t until 1910 that they really started looking at mercury as an industrial hazard, and it wasn’t until 1925 that she published her book.

Leonard Goldwatter, on Alice Hamilton.

http://occ-env-med.mc.duke.edu/oem/hatters.htm

According to Hamilton, the process of treating the fur with mercury nitrate, the so-called secretage, “…has been traced back to the middle of the 17th century when it was a secret in the hands of a few French workmen, evidently Huguenots; for at the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 when the Huguenots fled to England, they carried the secret with them, established the trade there, and for almost a century thereafter the French were dependent on England for their felt.”

I disagree with this, that “France was dependent on England for their felt for 100 years”, because I have two books on the history of hats right here, and neither of them mentions this. It would be hard to miss, a whole French industry dependent on John Bull for their raw materials for nearly a hundred years. As a matter of fact, both books mention how pleased the French hat industry was to start receiving beaver pelts from French Canada, because this meant that they were no longer dependent on beaver pelts from English traders in the New World.

Goldwatter disagrees with Hamilton because, he says,

This statement is difficult to reconcile with that which appears in Diderot’s encyclopaedia published in 1753, to the effect that in preparing fur for making hats “…the pelts are rubbed with an acid solution before the fur is removed…”

As already discussed, mercuric nitrate is formed by the combination of mercury and nitric acid, so it isn’t totally incorrect to refer to it as an “acid”. Although, as I was working on this, I realized that it’s possible that what he’s actually saying is, “The French were not dependent on England for their felt, because Diderot says they rubbed the pelts with acid.” He’s disagreeing with Alice that the mercury process was a secret known only to those Huguenots who fled to England, that beaver feltmaking disappeared from France when the Huguenots fled, and I would agree with him (see below).

And he also disagrees with Alice Hamilton because, he says,

It is also at variance with an account of secretage given by Lee (1968) in which he states that the process was introduced into England from Frankfurt around 1870.

As already discussed, Lee could have been either referring to a slightly different felt-making process, or he could simply have been wrong. Like I said, Alice Hamilton doesn’t sound like someone who would have her facts wrong on something as basic as a date–in 1925, when she wrote her book, she’d been working on the problem of industrial hazards for 25 years. If I had to choose between Lee and Hamilton, I’d pick Hamilton, especially because I have no idea who Lee is. To find out the cite for Lee for the Goldwatter article, you have to e-mail whoever posted the article, and I’m not that interested, frankly.

Goldwatter goes on to say,

The latter [referring to Lee’s saying that the secretage process wasn’t introduced into England until 1870] is in consonance with 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.

As already discussed, there are several good reasons why Thackrah might not have mentioned mercury poisoning in his book.
[ul]
[li]He might not have covered hatmakers and feltmakers, only milliners, who as already noted, would not have come into contact with mercuric nitrate.[/li][li]He might not have noticed the peculiar behavior of hatters, it being something so obvious that it wasn’t worth mentioning.[/li][li]He might not have been aware that this peculiar behavior could have an organic cause.[/li][li]He might not have been aware that mercuric nitrate was the culprit responsible for the peculiar behavior of hatters.[/li][/ul]
Goldwatter again.

The complete story of the process of secretage has been difficult to ascertain, particularly for the period between the middle of the 18th and the middle of the 19th centuries. Some features are well documented while others are not. That the Huguenot hatters left France around 1685 is well established (Unwin 1904; Kellogg 1925; Cunningham 1897; Smiles 1868; Weiss 1854; Erman and Reclam 1782-94).

So it’s clear that some Huguenot hatters left France around 1685, presumably taking their skills with them. However, hatmaking never was, and never has been, an exclusively Huguenot trade. Just because we’re talking about a French Huguenot trade secret here, doesn’t mean that other hatters in other places didn’t also have the “secretage” information. And not all the Huguenots left France in 1685.

Goldwatter again.

In commenting on this, Weiss [1854] says:

The manufacture of hats, indeed, was one of the finest branches of business with which the refugees endowed the English. In France, it had been almost entirely in the hands of ‘the Reformed.’

Note the words “almost entirely” here. I infer that other feltmakers knew the “secret”, too.
Weiss again.

They, alone, possessed the secret of the composition water,

Weiss has not proved this. This is his personal unsupported assertion.

…which serves for the preparation of the rabbit, hare, and beaver skins, and they alone furnished to trade the fine hats of Caudebec, so much sought after in England and Holland.

AFAIK, mercuric nitrate was only used on beaver fur, not on rabbit and hare. Also, Weiss seems to be implying that the “fine hats of Caudebec” were the only “fine hats” to be had. This is manifestly untrue. In a big booming era of capitalism, such as was taking place in the 17th and 18th centuries, there would have been many people with a market niche for “fine hats”. And since the finest hats were made with beaver felt, and since beaver felt works better and looks nicer when processed with mercuric nitrate, I infer that all the other purveyors of fine hats were also using mercuric nitrate.

Weiss again.

After the revocation, [the Revocation of Nantes, 1685] most of them retired to London, taking with them the secret of their art, which was lost to France for more than 40 years.

Again, note the words "most of them. I infer that some of them were left behind, in full possession of the "secret.
Weiss again.

It was not until the middle of the 18th century, that a French hatter named Mathieu, after having worked long in London, stole the secret, which had been imported by the refugees, took it to his own country, generously communicated it to the hatters of Paris, and founded a large manufactory in the Suburb of Saint Antoine.

We have only Weiss’ unsupported personal assertion that the secret had been imported by the refugees. This seems to imply there were no beaver feltmaking establishments in Paris before Mathieu got there, which I believe is not true.

Before that fortunate theft, the French nobility and all those who prided themselves on the elegance of their dress, wore none but hats of English manufacture, and the cardinals of Rome, themselves, sent for their hats from the celebrated manufactory of Wandworth, which had been established by the refugees.

Just because certain French nobles preferred hats from a certain factory doesn’t mean that fine beaver hats weren’t available anywhere else. This makes for a pretty story, but I don’t think it’s true. The only Google hit for “Wandworth Huguenot” is Goldwatter’s. If it did exist, it wasn’t famous enough for anybody else to have it posted on the Web.

Leonard Goldwatter again.

This account by Weiss, which is entirely credible, has often been quoted and, no doubt, the quoters have in turn been quoted, as evidence by the variations which have appeared.

Just because something has been widely quoted by others doesn’t mean it’s true. I’m beginning to wonder if Goldwatter (and Hamilton) had ever heard of “urban legends”, and the concept of the “factoid”. It’s axiomatic, here at the Straight Dope, that just because something is widely quoted by others doesn’t make it true.

What is not clear is the fate of felt making in England after M. Mathieu absconded with the “secret.”

Goldwatter seems to be implying that beaver feltmaking in England went to hell in a handbasket after Mathieu took the “secret” back to France. In order for this to be true, Mathieu would have had to have been the only living person in England who knew the “secret”. I seriously doubt whether this could possibly be true. Feltmaking and hatmaking, as already discussed, were huge industries. What–only one man, all up and down the length and breadth of England, knows the secret of the “composition water”, and when he goes back to France, the secret goes with him? I don’t think so. :rolleyes:

Thackrah’s failure to note the occurrence of mercury poisoning in the early 1800’s in England adds support to the assertion that mercury carroting was introduced, or rather, re-introduced after 1830.

No, sorry, Leonard, it “doesn’t add support to the assertion.” We’ve already discussed several times why Thackrah might not have mentioned mercury poisoning in his report.

You know, I’ve got two books on the history of hats from the library here on my lap. One is The Mode in Hats and Headdress, by R. Turner Wilcox, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1959. The other one is Hats: Status, Style and Glamour, by Colin McDowell, Rizzoli, New York, 1992. Neither one of these books mentions an exclusive Huguenot/hatmaking connection. The McDowell book has an entire chapter on hatmaking, feltmaking, beaver, mercury, etc. and it doesn’t mention anything at all about a “Huguenot trade secret”. He does, however, have this to say:

… But when the process first began in Europe, in the late Middle Ages, the fur normally used was beaver, and the best quality hats were always made from beaver hair. In fact, in the past, felt hats were known as “beavers”. Beaver hats were prestigious objects, costly and precious–and worn only by the rich. By the end of the fourteenth century, they were being widely manufactured in the Low Countries: there were hatter communities in Louvain, Liege, Bruges, Brussels and Ghent. From there the trade spread to Spain, where felt hatmakers began to settle in towns evacuated by the Moors. Beavers were produced in Alicante, Seville, Cadiz and Malaga. Felt hat manufacturing reached London by the end of the fifteenth century and appeared in North American almost a century later.

As already discussed, we know that they had access to mercuric nitrate in the fourteenth century, and we know beaver felts better with mercuric nitrate. So why is it such a stretch to believe that back in the fourteenth century, somebody experimented with mercuric nitrate on beaver felt and a whole new process was born?

And I think I see where Weiss might have gotten the idea that beaver feltmaking was a Huguenot trade. Holland in the 16th century was a hotbed of the Reform movement, but just because a lot of “Reformed” people lived there, and just because there were a lot of hatmakers there–

thehatsite.com
Beaver felt hats date back as far as the 14th Century with the majority of production being based in Holland and Spain.

–and just because a certain percentage of them were “Reformed”, doesn’t make hatmaking a “Reformed” trade. It’s worthwhile to note that the Low Countries belonged to Spain until 1713, when they were handed over to Austria.

Belgium

. In the 16th century, Belgium, with most of the area of the low countries, passed to the duchy of Burgundy and was inherited by Charles V, who incorporated it into his Holy Roman Empire. Then, in 1555, the low countries were united with Spain. By the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, the country’s sovereignty passed to Austria.

And actually, Huguenots started leaving France much earlier than the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

http://www.ukans.edu/heritage/cousin/huguenot.html

The mass exodus of Huguenot immigrants from France to Geneva, Amsterdam, London, and other places started in 1572 after the “St. Bartholemew’s Day Massacre” on 24 August.

http://www.home.aone.net.au/mclark/huguenot_history.htm

Huguenots were prohibited from joining some trades and professions, and excluded from public office…severe restrictions were put on Huguenots practicing medicine and law…

Isn’t it reasonable to suppose that being barred from the safer trades, they took up the more dangerous ones, like hatmaking? But hatmaking would have been taking place for nearly 200 years before the Huguenots got involved. It’s a bit of a stretch to assume that they would have walked in, cold, and suddenly pioneered a technique for making better beaver felt by using “composition water”, or mercuric nitrate. Much simpler to believe that they just copied what other hatters were doing.

http://www.ls.net/~newriver/va/manakin.htm

Refuge in Great Britain was sought by the Huguenots early in the sixteenth century, and in the latter decades of that cycle, emigration thither steadily increasing, had contributed immensely to the constituent population and useful citizenry of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, comprising all ranks, from the peasant to the noble-artisans, cloth-makers, lace-makers, silk-weavers, glass-makers, printers and manufacturers.

http://www.orange-street-church.org/text/huguenot-rearguard.htm

As a result, the refugees who arrived here brought little material wealth, having escaped with just what they were able to carry away. But they brought their skills and crafts and these were invaluable, both to themselves and to the country of their adoption.

Previously, wool had been produced in Britain and sent over to the Continent to be dyed and woven into cloth. Attempts had previously been made to persuade dyers and weavers to settle here and a few had already done so. Now these people came over in large numbers and set up their trades. In 1561 a large number of Flemings landed near Deal and also near Sandwich and were given assistance. Others landed at Harwich, Yarmouth, Dover and other places. Many moved on to London, Norwich, Maidstone, Canterbury and other centres.

The immigration from various parts of France and Flanders continued for many years. Cloth-makers came from Antwerp and Bruges, lace-makers from Cambray, glass-makers from Paris, stuff-weavers from Meaux, shipwrights from Dieppe and Havre. Steel-makers from the neighbourhood of Liege started the manufacture of steel at Newcastle and Sheffield. Potters from Delft instituted pottery. Many merchants set up business in the City of London and prospered. It will be of interest to British Israelites to learn that Flemish weavers settled at Glastonbury in 1549.

So they did other things besides hatmaking. And just about all these trades have some degree of industrial hazard. Goldwatter, and Weiss, make it sound like hatmaking in England for that time period was an exclusively Huguenot province, and it wasn’t. Huguenots did other things, and other people besides Huguenots made hats and felt.

[Duck_Duck_Goose]

I had to go to the library anyway.

From The Huguenots: Fighters for God and Human Freedom by Otto Zoff, translated by E. B. Ashton and Jo Mayo, Kingsport Press, 1942.
Speaking of French Protestants (Huguenots):

Protestants founded the great merchant firms of La Rochelle, Bordeaux, Dieppe, Nantes, Calais, and Rouen. They established the big textile mill in Abbeville, the biggest in France, employing 1200 workers, and the smaller ones in Reims, Rethel, Mezieres, and Caudebec. They developed the silk industry of Lyon, the paper factories of Auvergne, the tanneries of Touraine, the iron foundries of Sedan, the weaving mills of Gevaudan, the lace-making plants of Paris.

Of Huguenot refugees in the late 17th century:

In Germany, the refugees found permanent homes chiefly in the Protestant principalities along the Rhine and in the Mark of Brandenburg, the nucleus of future Prussia…The Huguenots who stayed in Germany–their number has been estimated at some 30,000–created the entire German textile industry, besides developing the manufacture of ceramics and paper, and the printing trade.

To England came a much larger number than to Germany–about 60,000 of whom more than one-third remained in London.

<snip>

Now, under William [of Orange, who became king of England in 1688], the French immigrants at last were allowed to show what they could do. Their methods of producing silk, linen, batiste, carpets, and paper were so highly perfected and so astoundingly modern that it became a sought-after distinction for English boys to be taken into their shops as apprentices.

The largest number of refugees came to the Netherlands–about 100,000 all told…Here, again, paper and hat manufacturing, printing, and the ceramic industry were the principal beneficiaries of the Huguenots’ arrival.

Of late 17th century Huguenot refugees in America:

When they did not succeed in raising grain crops, the English colonists gave them credit so that they might try their hands at more accustomed pursuits, such as viniculture, tailoring, shoemaking, or the silk industry.

But whatever pursuits they followed, these noblemen, bankers, tanners, hatmakers, physicians, printers, vintners, factory laborers, weavers, and musicians, they never abandoned the first principles of their ancestors: to let their faith, and their generous philosophy with its libertarian and egalitarian ideas, guide their daily lives…

Textiles in general get the biggest mention from Zoff, and special note is made of the big textile factories. Silk is specifically mentioned 3 times, weaving twice, lacemaking once, linen and batiste both mentioned once.

Papermaking is mentioned four times.
Printing is mentioned three times.
Ceramics is mentioned twice.
Banking (merchants) is mentioned twice.
Vintners are mentioned twice.
Tanners are mentioned twice.

Then there’s “other”: Iron foundries, tailoring, shoemaking, making carpets, physicians, factory workers, musicians. I’m not sure how to interpret the reference to “noblemen”.

Hatmaking is mentioned twice, the same as tanners, vintners, ceramics, and banking. Feltmaking is not mentioned at all. I am going to infer from this that the Huguenots were not particularly famous for making either felt or hats, and certainly that they didn’t have a lock on the market for fine beaver hats, utilizing a “secret process” that made their hats come out so much nicer than anyone else’s.

Zoff also mentions, almost in passing, that the Huguenots brought to their adopted countries “not alone experience but trade secrets heretofore jealously guarded for France.”

A Google search under “trade secrets Huguenots” turns up a website for women watchmakers of the 17th century that refers to an article by a Mr. Baines from 1960, which quotes George Trevelyan.

http://members.aol.com/donnl/filles.html

the article by Mr. C. C. Baines finally came to hand. The rest of this story is based primarily on his article in the March, 1960, issue of Antiquarian Horology , and bits and pieces gathered from further research. Quoted material is from Mr. Baines¹ article.

The English historian George Trevelyan wrote [on the subject of Huguenot refugees in England]: ³The sum of human misery thus wantonly brought about is horrible to contemplate. In the course of years some hundreds of thousands succeeded in escaping, mostly into EnglandŠ A large proportion were artisans and high-class merchants who brought to the lands of their adoption trade secrets and new production methods.²

There is no key given to the footnotes, so I have no idea where Trevelyan said this. Google doesn’t bring it up.

However, as the White Oak site points out, “trade secrets” may have just applied to different methods of blocking the felt into shape. It seems clear from their website, at least, that treating the beaver fur with mercuric nitrate took place as standard operating procedure.

http://www.whiteoak.org/learning/furhat.htm

Step 3: Shaping and Finishing
It seems that there were different steps used by different Hatters at this point. The differences may have been part of “trade secrets” or simply differences in the way individual Hatters liked to finish their work. There are some basic techniques they probably all used.

So. This whole thing, of relying exclusively on one authority for a particular fact–Goldwatter for one thing, Hamilton for another, Weiss for still another–is starting to give me the Straight Dope Fight Against Ignorance Willies. Normally, if I can’t find it posted in at least 2 places on the Web, I ignore it. It’s “unproven”. But this…

My family thinks I’ve flipped.

[Duck_Duck_Goose]

And here I am again, proving my family right…

Textiles means specifically “woven fabric”, according to my Webster’s Deluxe Unabridged. Felt isn’t woven. So the big textile factories couldn’t have been feltmaking factories. Besides, if they were, then the histories of beaver hats would surely have mentioned the enormous French feltmaking factories in Abbeville, Reims, etc.

[samclem]

Just got back from the library again, this time “with my hat in hand”.

I apologize to all who have contributed to this thread for my tone, which often borders on insulting. No excuse for it.

I’m lucky that my library has full-sized OED with supplements. I found conflicting info by looking under carroting. I found an 1835 cite which says, flat out, that mercury nitrate is used in the process! But then they cite ChambersEncyclopedia saying that carroting is the action of heat in combinaton with sulphuric acid.

So I stand corrected about how early printed sources mention the use of mercury compounds in the carroting process. And if it is mentioned in print in 1835, there would be every reason to believe it was in use for some time before.

An aside to Axel-I envy you your ability to access the OED. The term freaking as used by Pepys, referred more to freakish, capricious, whimsical than as a euphemism for F******.

[waterj2]

Well, I think we’ve wrapped this one up. Anyone want to see if they can get Snopes to eat some crow? I think we’ve explored every angle of this, and completely disproved their statement:

Even though there exists a strong tie between mercury poisoning and strange behavior in those long-ago hatters, it’s still more than likely the term we now toss about so casually did not spring from this combination.

Volunteers?

[Duck_Duck_Goose]

Wait, I ain’t done yet.

It occurred to me to wonder whether you can make beaver felt without using mercury, in other words, is there some magical relationship between beaver felt and mercury nitrate? Does it have to be mercuric nitrate, or can you use something else, like whatever they were using on wool and rabbit hats?

Without a doubt they were making beaver hats back in the 14th century. Chaucer’s Merchant is wearing a beaver hat, right there in the Prologue.

A MARCHANT was ther with a forked berd,
In mottelee, and hye on horse he sat;
Upon his heed a Flaundryssh bever hat,
His bootes clasped faire and fetisly.

The Lumiansky translation gives this as:

There was a MERCHANT with a forked beard, dressed in clothes of varied colors and sitting proudly on his horse; he wore a beaver hat from Flanders, and his boots were neatly fastened.

[I can’t take any credit for being familiar enough with Chaucer to have remembered this–the McDowell book pointed it out.]

So, there it is, the 1390s, at the “Tabard” in Southwark, and there’s a wealthy man wearing an expensive beaver hat. What were they using to process the beaver, if they weren’t using mercuric nitrate?

To learn how they make felt in the first place, I read New Directions for Felt: An Ancient Craft by Gunilla Paetau Sjoberg, Interweave Press, 1996, translated from the Swedish by Patricia Spark, originally published as Tova in Stockholm, 1994. I found out a great many very interesting things. Evidently making your own felt is a big craft thing in Scandinavia. This book has complete instructions for making hats, socks (they actually look like what I would call “booties”), jackets, capes, and of course the inevitable Martha Stewart wall hangings.

To make all these things, you basically spread out your fiber, from whatever sort of animal, in a teased-out flat layer, and then you start out by patting it with your hands (at least, the home artisan does this–I doubt whether the folks at the Wal-Mart hat factory do much hand patting). All animal hair fibers have microscopic scales up and down the shaft, all facing one way. The right kind of fiber, what you want to make good felt, is also fairly crimpy or wavy. Stick-straight hair, like long guard hairs or Caucasian human hair, just won’t felt. Felting happens when the crimpy hairs lock into each other and form a dense mat. Patting it with your hands make the fibers start to lock together. You can make felt just by patting it with your hands, and nothing else. However, it takes a really long time, and the finished product is quite loose, really more of a mass of tangled hair, rather than “felt”. To get an idea of good quality felt, visualize a fedora hat, or the felt liners from a pair of boots.

To make better quality felt, you add lubrication by adding water. You get the felt a little bit wet, not sopping, just damp. Hot water works better than cold water, because it tends to shrink the fibers, making them lock together even better.

To make even better felt, you add a “felting solution” at some point in the proceedings. A felting solution is strongly acid or strongly basic (alkaline) and it makes the scales stand up on the fibers. (The word “strongly” doesn’t apply to the strength of the solution, but rather to its pH.) Having the scales stand up makes the fibers lock together even better. It also speeds up the process considerably.

There are big differences in how you work the felt after you have the basic layer spread out and ready to start felting. You can pat it and tease it with your hands, you can pound it with a mallet, you can rub it up and down a wooden washboard, you can fasten it around a rolling pin and roll it up and down the table, if it’s a really big piece you can fasten it around a huge roller and put it on the ground and roll it back and forth with your feet. You can even run it through the washing machine, although that’s more of a finishing step, after you’re sure you don’t have any holes in your basic layer. The important thing is that you agitate it so the fibers can lock together.

Then, after you have your basic layer of felt, if you’re making hats or socks, you place it on a form and pat it and tease it and coax it into shape. Again, it makes a difference what kind of felting solution you’re using, how hot it is, what kind of wool you have, and what you want the finished product to look like.

It makes a difference, too, at what point in the felting you add the felting solution. As soon as you add it, those scales are going to stand up and it’s going to lock together, boom, like that. So if you’re trying to make something that’s going to need a lot of shaping, you want to wait until later. If you wait until the felt is already “felt”, then it’s called a “fulling solution”, which is what it’s also called in the textile industry. “Fulling” is what you do to woven cloth, especially wool cloth, after it’s woven. You add a strongly acid or strongly basic solution to it and pound on it with beaters or mallets, which makes the fibers swell up (the scales again) and lock together more tightly, and makes the surface of the cloth tighter and nicer.

Kinds of felting solutions: This is where it gets interesting. Did you know the Romans used to dip their felt armor in vinegar to make it sturdier? As noted in Goldwater, urine has also been used in the past as a fulling solution. Ms. Sjoberg suggests soapy water made with “saponified oil soap” as a felting solution for the home felter, but it has to be soap, not detergent. Her soapy solution has a pH of 10.2. The translator suggests that in the U.S., one could use either Murphy’s Oil Soap, 1 liter of water to 2 tsp. of soap, or make your own solution with 1/2 cup of grated bar soap in a gallon of boiling soft (not hard) water.

Or you could just use sulfuric acid. :eek:

As a beginning felter, I read with great astonishment that hatmakers added sulfuric acid to their felting solutions. They never used soap, which acts both as an adhesive to hold the fibers together in the beginning of the process and as a lubricant to promote migration of the fibers.

She has a step-by-step interview with a traditional Hungarian hatmaker, with photos, in which he uses sulfuric acid, as he was taught by his father, and his father before him, etc. The dilution is given as 30 ml (2 tblsp) to 50 to 70 liters (13 to 18 1/2 gallons) of water. And yes, I’m quite certain it’s sulfuric acid–it’s even spelled out “H[sub]2[/sub]SO[sub]4[/sub]”.

He adds his solution after he has the basic shape of the hats, so it’s thus a “fulling solution”. But he’s definitely patting it with his hands, which look very pale but not particularly scarred. He can make 6 hats in two days. (The finished product looks like an oddly proportioned, undersize sombrero, but hey, he looks real proud of it, and who am I to be judgemental? :D)

So then that reminds of of “fuller’s earth”, which I go and look up on the Web and find out that it’s

http://www.rchme.gov.uk/thesaurus/mon_types/F/69107.htm

FULLERS EARTH PITSN A pit for the extraction of fullers earth (a hydrous silicate of alumina), which was used for cleansing, and finishing, cloth and wool.

Okay, now back to beaver wool. Can you make beaver felt without a felting solution? Beaver underfur is described as being very short and fine. Sjoberg points out that very short, fine wool, if it’s greasy or dirty, tends to pill before it will felt. The theory is that the natural oils and dirt in the fibers make the fibers want to roll up in little balls before they will felt. Therefore, when working with very short, fine wool, either you have to wash it first, or you have to use a felting solution to make the scales stand up so the fibers will lock together.

In earlier ages, when people didn’t even bathe, I somehow doubt they wasted much time on washing wool before they made it into felt. There are hand spinners today who firmly believe you should “spin it in the grease”, i.e. spin the wool just as it came off the sheep–you can gently rinse the manure and straw out of the fleece, but you should leave the lanolin and oils in it. Then after it’s spun, you wash it.

So, it looks to me like if you’re a 14th century hatmaker and you’re going to make beaver felt, you’ll need to use a felting solution.

So, if they weren’t using mercury, if mercuric nitrate didn’t come into use until the middle of the 19th century, then what were they using for beaver felt? They could have been using vinegar, or urine, or sulfuric acid, or fuller’s earth, or some other kind of acid, or even soapy water, even though Ms. Sjoberg says they weren’t. She’s not writing the history of hatmaking, just trying to give the home felter a little background.

And, you know, this means that everyone can be right. Alice Hamilton can be right–the Huguenot “composition water” could have been just some other kind of felting solution. Samclem can be right–there’s no mention of mad Huguenot hatters because they may have been using a different kind of solution. The OED can be right–hot water and sulfuric acid can be a “carroting” felting solution. Diderot can be right–they could have been using any kind of acid. Lee can be right–the “process” that was introduced from Frankfort could have been adding the mercuric nitrate at some other point in the proceedings from what hatters in England had been doing up to that time. (And considering that it came from the industrial haven of Frankfort, I would guess that the “process” also involved some kind of mechanical stamping to press the felt into shape, using tremendous heat and pressure.) Thackruh can even be right, if the hatmakers he talked to (if indeed he talked to hatmakers and not just milliners) happened to have been using a different kind of felting solution.

Unfortunately, it looks like the only person who can’t be right is Goldwater. If, as he says, the hatmaking industry did shift from “something else” to mercuric nitrate in the middle to late 19th century–then why isn’t it mentioned anywhere? And it’s not as if I haven’t looked. I’ve been sitting here for days now :rolleyes: running combinations of “hatmaking hatters hat making history chemicals felt feltmaking mercury mercuric nitrate” through Google, and there’s not a single solitary mention of anything like this. There’s not a single cite that I can find, either on the web or in books about hats, that says something like, “Big Hatmaking Industry Change: In 18xx, Hassenpfeffer’s mercuric nitrate process was inaugurated”. Because, you know, a cite like that really ought to go on to say, “…to the great detriment of the hatmaking industry, as now we know how toxic Hassenpfeffer’s process really was.” But there’s nothing like that.

There is plenty of other information available on other big industry changes during the 19th century, where an entire industry changed a basic manufacturing process because it was easier, or faster, or cheaper, or all three. This is information that can be corroborated in other places. For example, we know when tanners stopped using urine and alum to tan leather and switched over to chrome salts.
http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/sci/A0847808.html

Mineral tanning includes tawing, or alum tanning, another ancient method, and chrome tanning, the process most common today, based on the use of chrome salts and requiring only a few hours. Known as early as 1856, chrome tanning was first patented in the United States by Augustus Schultz in 1884.

We know when the mirror industry changed over from making mirrors by gluing sheets of metal to pieces of glass, to coating the glass surface with silver.

http://www.mirrorresilvering.com/a_brief_history_of_mirrors.htm

A method of backing a plate of flat glass with a thin sheet of reflecting metal came into widespread production in Venice during the 16th century; an amalgam of tin and mercury was the metal used. The chemical process of coating a glass surface with metallic silver was discovered by Justus von Liebig in 1835, and this advance inaugurated the modern techniques of mirror making.

We know when dental fillings were first pioneered, and we know when they were perfected.

http://www.gumshield.com/history/dental_fill.html

Cavities in teeth have been filled since earliest times with a variety of materials: stone chips, turpentine resin, gum, metals. Arculanus (Giovanni d’ Arcoli) recommended gold-leaf fillings in 1848. The renowned physician Ambroise Pare (1510-1590) used lead or cork to fill teeth. In the 1700s, Pierre Fauchard (1678-1761), the father of modern dentistry, favored tin foil or lead cylinders. Philip Pfaff (1715-1767), dentist to Frederick the Great of Prussia (1712-1786), used gold foil to cap the pulp.

Gold leaf as a filling became popular in the United States in the early nineteenth century; Marcus Bull of Hartford, Connecticut, began producing beaten gold for dental used in 1812. In 1853 sponge gold was introduced in the United States and England to replace gold leaf. This was followed by the cohesive, or adhesive, gold introduced by American dentist Robert A. Arthur in 1855. Gutta percha was used for fillings beginning in 1847.

Numerous experiments were made from the 1860s through the 1890s to develop improved amalgam fillings materials. The Chicago, Illinois, dentist G. V. Black (1836-1915) finally standardized both cavity preparation and amalgam manufacture in 1895.

We know when Louis Tiffany and the glassmaking industry perfected the technique of a certain type of glass.

Icon20.com is for sale | HugeDomains

He began experimenting in the 1870s, and before 1885 had perfected a substance he would call “favrile glass” (from “fabrile,” the Old English term for handmade), which he patented and later trademarked. It was a molten combination of the common white glass, called opalescent, used by the cosmetic industry to bottle creams and ointments, and the clear colored glass, called antique, that had been used for centuries in stained-glass windows.

Tiffany was not the first to use opalescent glass in windows, but the others who did so merely inserted the plain white glass behind the antique glass to opacify the light transmitted through the window. Those attempting to combine the two glasses while hot produced only a dull fragmented material that interfered with the flow of light. Tiffany, after extensive studies in chemistry and many failed attempts, succeeded in mixing the opalescent and antique glass together, in a blend of as many as five separate colors, that was then rolled into sheets to create the embryonic favrile glass. This process would change forever the look of stained glass windows, with artistic and economic repercussions that continue to the present day.

We know when the papermaking industry started using sulfites to make paper.

http://www.sepprc.org/history_frame.htm

A.D. 1850 - Friedrich Gottlob Keller of Germany devises a method of making paper from wood pulp. However the paper is of poor quality.

A.D. 1852 - Hugh Burgess, an Englishman, perfects the use of wood pulp by ‘digesting’ the wood with chemicals.

A.D. 1867 - C.B. Tilghman, an American chemist, improved the process of making paper from wood by using sulfites during the pulping process.

A.D. 1879 - C.F. Dahl, a Swede finally perfected the use of wood by adding yet another chemical. His ‘sulfate’ method spread rapidly and reached the United States around 1907.

We know when the textile industry stopped using various sorts of vegetable dyes for cloth and started using aniline and various sorts of synthetic dyes. (This is a huge list, from somebody’s term paper. I’m just giving you a short snip.)

http://www.straw.com/sig/dyehist.html

1834 Runge, a German chemist, noticed that upon distilling coal tar, aniline would give a bright blue color if treated with bleaching powder. This helped to pave the way to the development of aniline (basic) dyes 22 years later.
1856 William Henry Perkin discovered the first synthetic dye stuff “Mauve” (aniline, a basic dye) while searching for a cure for malaria and a new industry was begun. It was a brilliant fuchsia type color, but faded easily so our idea of the color mauve is not what the appearance of the original color was.
1858-59 Magenta (fuchsin) discovered by Verguin the 2nd basic dye and more widely used than Mauve
1861 Methyl violet, basic dye, by Lauth
1862 Hofmann’s Violet, Hofmann was one of the great dye chemists of all time
1862 Bismarck Brown developed by Martius and Lightfoot, first soluble azo dye

We know when the steel industry started adding things to steel to make it better.

http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/0/0,5716,115400+8+108659,00.htm l

Alloys had already begun to become important in the iron and steel industry in the 19th century (apart from steel itself, which is an alloy of iron and carbon); self-hardening tungsten steel had been first produced in 1868, and manganese steel, possessing toughness rather than hardness, in 1887. Manganese steel is also nonmagnetic; this fact suggests great possibilities for this steel in the electric-power industry.

We know when the bookbinding industry started using cloth bindings for books.

http://www.redwood1747.org/OnlineExhibition/moreintro.htm

The introduction of cloth cased bookbindings was perhaps the most significant development in the evolution of the book during the 19th century. Prior to the 19th century when books had a limited readership, only the privileged classes were literate, with leisure time for reading. During this period the majority of books were sold by the printer/bookseller in paper covered boards. The paper covered boards were intended as a temporary covering only, as it was the practice of the time for the buyer to take his purchase to his own bookbinder. The newly purchased book would be bound in leather in the style specified by its owner.

The use of cloth for bookbinding was first employed in England. It is generally accepted that publisher William Pickering used cloth on a production run of his Diamond Classic series in 1825. Prior to this, there was some experimentation with the use of cloth bindings, but the laurel goes to Pickering for introducing cloth or large-scale production in runs.

We know when the paint industry changed.

http://www.eng.buffalo.edu/Courses/ce435/PaintsandCoatings/tsld003.htm

1865 - first US paint patent
1867 - production of ready-mixed paints in US

http://home.nycap.rr.com/useless/paint/paint.html

It wasn’t until the 19th century that people started to paint their places of dwelling (the rich had done it prior to this).

Why? …Linseed Oil…was being mass produced.

They also had pigment grade zinc oxide - we call it white paint.

http://www.labthink.com/paint.htm

ZINC WHITE

First introduced in 1840, this white is colder in appearance than lead white, and doesn’t cover nearly as well, yet it is far less expensive.

http://home.nycap.rr.com/useless/paint/paint.html

Sherwin had this idea for ready mixed paints (actually, the first ready mixed paint was patented by one D.R. Averill of Ohio in 1867, but it never caught on).

They spent ten years trying to perfect the formula where fine paint particles would stay suspended in the oil. In 1880 they succeeded in developing a formula that far exceeded the quality of all paints available at the time.

We know the history of fine artists’ pigments, and especially, as in the textile industry, when they switched over from natural pigments to synthetic pigments.

http://www.lilinks.com/mara/history2.html
http://www.lilinks.com/mara/history3.html

So, why is there no information like this for the Great 19th Century Hatmaking Industry Mercuric Nitrate Switchover?
[Okay, now I’m done. And I vote for Cecil in a Ladder Match with Barbara Mikkelson. Who’s with me?

[hawthorne]

Nah, I vote for you to talk to BM, DDG. Great job, careering towards obsessive.

As a side-note, I look forward to reading what ensues when someone asks “What are you wearing?”.

[Duck_Duck_Goose]

“Serendipity”–things you stumble across while looking up something else.

A picture of a wealthy merchant wearing a beaver hat in Bruges in the 1430s, which is not too far off from Chaucer’s Merchant.

http://ebooks.whsmithonline.co.uk/encyclopedia/19/P0008319.htm

And now I really do have work to do…

[samclem]

Got back from the Univ. of Akron library a while ago. Read Dr. Andrew Ure’s Philosophy of Manufactures…(1835) which was the cite I gave from the OED in my last post. He wrote an dry but interesting book, but, alas he was more interested in the wool biz than in hats and mercury.

The exact words in his book were The furs of the hare, the rabbit, and the castor, being naturally straight, cannot be employed alone for felting, til they have acquired a curling texture at their points, by the application of nitrate of mercury-an artiface called secretage.

I actually found this by looking up secretage in the OED, not by looking up carroting.

The previous quote in the OED for secretage was 1791,Berthollet’s Dyeing which said The furs of hares…cannot be employed alone for felting, without having undergone a previous operation which is called secretage.

Seems like the good Dr. URE kinda lifted some of the language from Berthollet.

The copies of Berthollet in the Akron U. library were in French(Damn, I read German), so I skipped that tonight.

It will be interesting to find out if the Berthollet book said anything about mercury. If not, then where did URE get the info to add to Berthollet’s phraseology?

[waterj2]

OK, I’m now (and have been for months) home in Boston from college. Thus, I have access to a first-rate research library. Earlier today, I made it down there, and located a copy of the Thackrah book mentioned so prominently, if confusingly, in Goldwater’s article. Since the Boston Public Library does not allow you to check out books from the research library, I had to copy down on paper anything in the book relevant to our current (I use the term broadly) discussion. And now have to manually type it in to the computer. I am truly obsessed, and may have actually surpassed DDG.

Actually, I must first admit that I did not actually find the book in question, merely a book on Thackrah, which included Thackrah’s work itself, presumably in its entirety. The book was The Life, Work, and Times of Charles Turner Thackrah, Surgeon and Apothecary of Leeds (1795 - 1833) by A. Meiklejohn, published by E. & S. Livingston Ltd. of Edinburgh and London in 1957. The bulk of this book is the text of The Effects of Arts, Trade, 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 C. Turner Thackrah, Esq. (Second Edition, Greatly Enlarged), published in London by Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longman [sic], and Simkin & Marshall, and in Leeds by Baines and Newsome, in 1832.

There were three excerpts which dealt specifically with hatters. The first is found on pages 69-70.

HATTERS, employed in the Bowing department, that in which rabbits fur and Spanish wool are mixed by striking a string or bow, inhale much fine dust. The apartment, moreover, from the care which is taken to prevent currents of air disturbing the material, is particularly close. The men are rather pale, complain often of tightness in the chest, particularly in damp weather, and are subject to asthma. Many are nevertheless able to pursue the employ for 20 years, though the time spent in their close and dusty rooms, is generally 14 hours a day. Their exemption from the urgent disease may be ascribed to the early period at which they commence the employ. Scarcely an old man, however, are to be found among hatters; and I believe the practice, aided, as it often is, by impertinence, decidedly shortens the duration of life.

The next excerpt is found on pages 121-122.

HATTERS have their hands frequently immersed in a solution of sulphuric acid, which is used in the process of “felting;” and hence their nails and the cuticle of their fingers, are often corroded and sore. This inconvenience might perhaps be prevented by the use of some oily substance.

The last excerpt dealing with hatters specifically is found on page 127.

HATTERS are exposed to vapor from the vat, as well as to considerable atmospheric variations. They are subject to asthma, but not, as far as we can find, to any acute disease. They are often intemperate and short-lived.

Now, switching from hatters to mercury poisoning, we find on page 198, under the heading “Agents affecting the nervous system in general” information on its effects.

[beta]. poisonous substances, which act through the medium of the skin, as solution of lead applied to the hands and arms of potters; the types, to printers; mercury to the makers of looking-glasses, &c.
Results, Constipation, palsey, salivation from the action of mercury.

So, in order to determine whether the lack of reference to mercury poisoning in hatters is relevant, it would be wise to compare it to an industry that Thackrah knew to be harmed by mercury. We find the relevant section on makers of looking-glasses on pages 111-112.

MAKERS OF LOOKING-GLASSES, or rather MEN WHO SILVER MIRRORS, are exposed, both by inhalation and touch to the action of mercury oxygenated in the atmosphere. The operatives are chiefly Italians. Few can bear the employ daily for a long period. Some work on alternate days; and many, more constantly engaged, are obliged from illness to be absent for weeks or months. An English master tells me that he has been in the habit of silvering mirrors, for two to three hours a day for the last fourteen years, and considers it remarkable that he has suffered, even from this short diurnal employ, no other injury to health than constant though not great trembling of hands. The general effects of the art are difficult enunciation, pain and constriction at the base of the chest, emaciation, debility, tremors, and lastly salivation. The gums are often wasted and the teeth left loose in the sockets. As the fingers and hands are generally the first part disordered, it appears that the primary impression is on the nervous system at large, and is made through the medium of skin rather than that of the lungs. Intemperate men suffer most.

(It bears noting that Thackrah was apparently a great advocate of temperence.)

It is easy to see why Goldwater would, being familiar with this work, find the lack of mention of mercury poisoning, either directly, or through similar symptoms to those recorded of “men who silver glass”. I still disagree, noting that Thackrah seems to not have been told what is in the sulfuric acid solution (which may likely have been a trade secret), and seems to have not studied any hatters, of which there would have been a large number, who worked with beaver felt. As Goldwater’s area of expertise was in industrial poisoning, not in the state of felting in 1832, it is easy to see how he may have come to believe that mercury poisoning did not regularly occur in early 19th century hatters.

Any other sources I need to track down on this?

[samclem]

Masterful, waterj2. Thanks for your work. But, if Thackrah noticed that glass/mirror workers suffered the effects of mercury in their profession, why would he not be aware of mercury’s effects in the hatting industry?

He correctly noted the effect of lead poisoning in industries such as potting and printing. He went to great lengths to describe the effects of mercury on mirror makers. He never commented on Hatters other than to say they had asthma-like diseases from the dust. He never offered that they had “trembling of hands” “difficult enunciation” “tremors” “salivation” “emaciation” or anything else which he noticed in other professions which came in contact with mercury.

I propose the following:

waterj2, by reading Thackrah in the original, has confirmed that mercury-exposure related effects were in evidence in professions in England by 1832. The professions did not include being a hatter.

My cite from Dr. Andrew Ure,1835 indicates that merury nitrate was in use at that time in the hatting industry. Dr. Ure’s borrowing of info from the French Berthollet’s Dyeing, 1791 in which there was no mention of mercury, might indicate that mercury was used sometime after 1791, but before 1835.(I know this is a stretch, but prove I’m wrong).

Wj2–you say that"I still disagree, noting that Thackrah seems to not have been told what is in the sulfuric acid solution (which may likely have been a trade secret), and seems to have not studied any hatters, of which there would have been a large number, who worked with beaver felt."

I missed the part about where he “seems to have not studied any hatters who worked with beaver felt.” Was this something you read? If you describe it, I missed it.

Any other sources I need to track down on this?

If you can find a Berthollet’s Dyeing, 1791 and read it trying to see if mercury is mentioned in any way, that would be helpful. As I said, my availabe copy was in French, and that’s not my stong suit. If mercury is mentioned that early, then we will all have evidence that 1830’s hatters would have had enough exposure to exhibit symptoms similar to mirror makers.

For my money, your new evidence would indicate that hatters had not yet been exposed to mercury compounds over a long enough period to exhibit the symptoms of poisoning which were so evident in mirror makers.

[erislover]

I just have to say: Holy Shit.

I nominate everyone in this thread to be a part of the Advisory Board.

WOW. Never, ever, ever would I have imagined that felt could possibly contain such controversy. And yet, I am strangly attracted to thinking of this whole affair as a macrocosm of the “Why is a raven like a writing desk?”

~erl, who is getting emails when this thread is updated