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Was the Mad Hatter Really Mad?

© Sharon K. West

The image of the Mad Hatter has been indelibly imprinted upon our minds ever since childhood when we sat cross-legged in front of our television sets. Walt Disney gave us the hatter's classic face and large felt hat. The Mad Hatter will live on not only in memory but also by his name on the signs in front of countless hat and novelty shops.

Just how did a hatter come to be known as mad? Lewis Carroll's book, "Alice in Wonderland" was written in 1865. In it, the Cheshire cat alludes to two characters, the Hatter and the March Hare, as: "they're both mad." The phrase "mad as a hatter" was in common use during the lifetime of Lewis Carroll, although in his book, the phrase is not actually used.

This brings us to a mysterious implication. Was there a reason that Carroll made this particular character to be mad? Some say that the phrase "mad as a hatter" could have been a corruption of "mad as an adder." However, examining the origins of the process of making felt for hats will give us a clue to this mystery.

Felt is a cloth formed when its fibers are matted together. Instead of being produced by knitting or weaving, the cloth fibers are worked together either by pounding or beating or through a process of pressure, heat, chemical action or some other means. The result is a fuzzy material with a heavy insulating property.

From the early days of felt making, fur fibers of animal skins were matted together using a liquid solution. It started in Turkey where camel hair was felted for tents, and camel urine was applied to speed up the matting process. After the practice migrated to Western Europe during the Crusades, perhaps either from convenience or a lack of camel urine, workers came up with the idea of urinating on the fur fibers themselves.

The story is told that one day in the life of the felt makers, one worker, who was being treated with mercury for a venereal disease, discovered that his urine matted the fur fibers faster and better than the others. Thus, mercury became the secret ingredient in the liquid solution for making felt.

Although the practice of urinating on the fur fibers ended sometime during the history of felt making, the use of mercury did not. This ingredient was so secret in the art of felt making that it became known as the "secretage." This secretage was passed down and finally resided with only a few French Huguenots, and when they fled to England in 1685, they took the secret with them. The result was that English felt hats were considered to be the finest and most fashionable to own. The English hat makers cornered the felt hat market until sometime in the 18th century when a French hatter stole the secretage and took it back to France.