Hats
Until the early 1960s it was rare indeed to see a man outdoors not wearing some type of hat. Designs changed over the years but the well-dressed man wasn’t well dressed unless he wore a hat, well brushed and shiny, usually manufactured from animal hide and fur. Beaver was long popular for hats, and during the Victorian Age hats made of felt became popular for daily use, due to durability and affordability.
Felt was made by gluing together layers of fur from rabbits and hares. In order to make the glue adhere to the fur, and thus the fur to each layer, it was first treated by brushing it with a composition of mercury. Like arsenic, mercury had many uses by the Victorians, including medicine, but in the manufacturing of hats it was predominant. And deadly.
Mercury fumes inhaled by the hatmaker caused a variety of symptoms as it poisoned the body gradually. The first to appear was likely trembling, an uncontrollable shaking of the hands, followed by the remainder of the limbs. Paranoia soon emerged, followed by bursts of uncontrollable rage. Heart and breathing problems were another step in decline, along with frequent dental problems leading to the loss of teeth.
By the 1860s mercury was known as was the source of these problems, but its use continued unabated. For one thing,as far as society was concerned, the problem only affected the worker, who was expendable, but not the fashionable hat wearer, who presumably was not.
Using mercury in hats continued until the Second World War, when it was suspended largely because mercury was needed for other uses, mostly in explosives. After the war its use resumed; not until the wearing of hats went out of fashion did its widespread use in their manufacture cease. But even if the Victorian’s banned the use of mercury in hatmaking they would have exposed themselves to the metal in other ways.