The self-castrated hatmaker who killed John Wilkes Booth (2015)

Re:The self-castrated hatmaker who killed John Wilkes Booth ... by NickNaraghi on Sunday April 13, 2025 @05:21PM (#43675948)

I’ve gotten to study a lot about hat making recently, and a little known fact about is that the use of mercuric nitrate in the felting process poisoned many workers in the hat factories, creating a condition called erethism, also called "mad hatter disease."

The exposure resulted in slurred speech, tremors, stumbling, and, in extreme cases, hallucinations.

It’s pretty likely that Corbett was exposed to the same!

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Re:The self-castrated hatmaker who killed John Wilkes Booth ... by frenchwhisker on Sunday April 13, 2025 @05:30PM (#43676011)

This was mentioned in the article:

> Having spent much of his life in the hat industry, Corbett could have been succumbing to mercury poisoning. The ill effects of the mercury vapors used in finishing, Corbett’s specialty, had become public by this time, even part of folklore after Lewis Carroll introduced the country to the Mad Hatter in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in 1865.

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Re:The self-castrated hatmaker who killed John Wilkes Booth ... by gwern on Sunday April 13, 2025 @05:57PM (#43676164)

That's not 'little known'. That's the only thing almost anyone knows about hat-making.

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Re:The self-castrated hatmaker who killed John Wilkes Booth ... by quuxplusone on Monday April 14, 2025 @11:09PM (#43688644)

Agreed. But that only makes me wonder: Out of the "a lot" that GP recently learned about hat-making, what are the next one or two most interesting factoids after that one?

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