Being a hat maker was a deadly profession of the 19th century, as the life of Boston Corbett (died probably 1894) shows. Corbett is most famous for being the man who shot President Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth. Less well known is his unfortunate history of mental illness, likely caused or very much exacerbated by his exposure to mercury nitrate during his career in the hat-making industry. Hatters regularly worked with this toxic substance when they cured the animals used for felt. They paid a steep price for their sartorial contributions, for the mercury gave them tremors, caused them to drool, and made them walk in a lurching fashion – it affects the nervous system. Mental illness went along with other physical ailments. (That’s the reason the Mad Hatter in the _Alice in Wonderland_ books got his name.) For poor Boston Corbett, the illness brought him into religious fanaticism so severe that, filled with horror after being approached by some prostitutes, he took a pair of scissors to his body and castrated himself.
