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Mad as a hatter? |
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Velouring department
© Sidney Barnes - Warwickshire libraries |
The layers of wool had to be hardened using steam. Individually, this normally meant the hatter spending many hours a day bent over a large kettle. At Joseph Willday's factory in Long Street, the nearest thing to mass production that the Atherstone hat industry possessed was a boiler on the ground floor that piped steam upstairs for the shapers. In every other Victorian industry, steam was used to generate power; but in the hat trade, steam was only needed to produce steam.
Bumping department
© Sidney Barnes - Warwickshire libraries |
As if the steamy atmosphere was not injurious enough, the hapless hatter was next obliged to dip the felt several times into a bath of hot sulphuric acid to harden it, with hazardous mercury fumes in the air. If all that was not enough to ruin his or her health, there was also the dust to inhale once the felt had dried out.
It was a wonder people working amid these toxic substances lived long enough to go mad. Given the conditions, it was no wonder that the hatters of Atherstone had the reputation of putting back their lost moisture in the ale-house.
Once it was steamed and shrunk, bumped and planked, the finished article was ready to take its place on the Great British head - and not only on British heads either. In 1852, two Atherstone hatters - Charles Vero and James Everitt - set sail for Australia to find a market for local hats in the colonies.
They set up business in Melbourne, and for a time the Atherstone hatters were constantly supplying the rapidly expanding market. Sadly the boom proved to be short-lived, both in Warwickshire and Australia, and within four years James Everitt was on his way back to England.
Words: Chris Upton
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