Top Hats: A 'Tall' Story...

The top hat today is associated with splendid occasions such as weddings, Ascot etc, (otherwise known as a “ posh do” ), but this was not always the case...

Back in 1797 when the first top hat appeared in London, it almost caused a riot. The wearer, John Hetherington, apparently terrified passers-by in the street to such an extent that ….. ”women fainted, children screamed, dogs yelped and an errand boy’s arm was broken when he was trampled by the mob.”  Hetherington was accused in court of wearing “a tall structure having a shining lustre calculated to frighten timid people” and was bound over to keep the peace in the sum of £500, which was an enormous amount of money at that time.  In fact he was only wearing a taller, black silk version of a beaver riding hat that was quite common at the time and when all the fuss had died down, the black silk “tall”  hat  began to gain in popularity.

The original hats were made from beaver fur and in order to soften the pelts, they were treated with mercury nitrate, a highly toxic chemical. The hatters who were in regular contact with this poisonous substance often developed serious mental and psychotic problems and it is said that is where the phrase “as mad as a hatter” originated.

Possibly because of this, tall hats were also made in a variety of other materials, including straw, leather and even wood. They also came in several different colours such as brown, white, grey, green and maroon, as well as the more traditional black.

The first black silk top hats were made in Florence around 1760 from  “plush” or “shag” and by the early 1800s they were being produced in England. The wearing of a top hat by Prince Albert set the seal of approval on the style and the nineteenth century became the hey-day of the top hat. The height of the crown and the width of the brim fluctuated between the decades, but they reached such ridiculous proportions that a Frenchman, Antoine Gibus, invented a collapsible top hat specifically for opera-goers when there was no longer room for them in the cloakrooms! Another Frenchman attained notoriety by being the first conjuror to pull a rabbit out of a top hat in 1814.