In other words, it entailed a loose assortment of symptoms that might well have gone unremarked by anyone other than those suffering them, and it did not resemble insanity.Īfter long-term exposure to mercury vapors, however, the symptoms become more severe, veering in a neurological direction. In its early stages, mercury poisoning shows up as rashes, muscle pain, digestive issues and mouth sores. Though it wasn’t known then, mercury is a neurotoxin.Īfter years of inhaling vapors from the mercury, hatmakers would begin to exhibit some very bizarre and disturbing symptoms. Throughout the 19th century, before industrial safety standards, hatmakers used mercurous nitrate, a form of mercury, to cure the felt used in hats. Suffice to say, there are multiple historical accounts of hat makers who were thought to be mad, and plenty of instances of unusual people being referred to as “mad as a hatter.” Toxic Mercuryīeyond the metaphor, Victorian-age hatters really did tend to face neurological challenges, including tremors, slurred speech and irritability. Ogden was indeed a hatter in Manchester, and was known at the time as “Mad Sam.” Another contender who might have provided inspiration for the Hatter is Samuel Ogden, as mentioned in Gardner’s More Annotated Alice. It seems he was not unlike the character who tormented Alice at the tea party. He also had a reputation for rude behavior. The Original Mad HatterĬase in point: Carter was known to have invented an “alarm-clock bed” that dumped a sleeper onto the floor when it was time to get up, according to Gardner in The Annotated Alice. Carter, whom Dodgson probably knew (since Dodgson lived and taught at Oxford University), was regarded locally as the Mad Hatter, most likely because of his eccentric ideas. One candidate, according to The Annotated Alice by Martin Gardner, polymath and popularizer of mathematics, is Oxford furniture dealer Theophilus Carter, who was said to wear a top hat all the time. When Alice encounters the Hatter at a tea party, he continually interrupts her, and finally exasperates her with his bizarre logic and increasing hostility, leaving Alice “dreadfully puzzled.” After some time, she gives up and stomps away from “the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in all my life!”Ĭritics and history suggest that Dodgson’s fictional Hatter may have been inspired by a non-fictional, real-life person. You may remember the Hatter from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the 1865 book by Lewis Carroll, the pen name of Charles Dodgson.
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