I was perusing social media and came across a video that ascribed the ‘Mad Hatter’ in Lewis Carrol’s “Alice In Wonderland” to mercury poisoning.

It was a compelling video, and it got me wondering about names. For example, people with the last name Baker had ancestors that were… imaginatively… bakers.

Hatt, as it happens, is a rare name, and with that video – correlation! People with the last name of Hatt would have died of the mercury poisoning, right? After all, they used mercury to make the felt from animal furs, called ‘Carroting’ in England because it changed the color to orange.

You’d think someone would have made that connection by now, but searching on the Internet did not find anything that connected the rarity of people with the surname ‘Hatt’ to a mercury poisoning issue. In fact, I came across this video, which I have started where the context of this post is.

The full video is worth watching.

And so we have an example, yet again, about how a video making the rounds isn’t accurate but is compelling enough to be believed. Professor Graeme Yorston did a good job dispelling the myth, and leaving us with a mystery why, “As Mad as a Hatter” came into being.

To me, I think the combination of alcohol with the symptoms of mercury poisoning might be where it came from, but it certainly doesn’t age well and it perpetuates a myth of Hatters.

Either way, Hatters are… misunderstood.