One of the best-known characters in Lewis Carroll’s “Alice
in Wonderland” is the Mad Hatter, with whom Alice takes tea together with his
companions the March Hare and the Dormouse.
By the time that Alice in Wonderland was published in 1865
it was well known that people who made hats often fell victim to an illness
that displayed early symptoms of what could be termed madness, such as
irritability, a lack of patience, difficulty in thinking or concentrating, and
changes in movement, which could become coarse or jerky.
These symptoms resulted from long-term mercury poisoning, which
was an occupational hazard for hat makers who used a form of mercury to treat
felt. When used in an enclosed space, the mercury gave off vapours that were
then inhaled. The expression “mad as a hatter” became commonly used in
Victorian England and would have been well known to readers of “Alice”.
However, it seems highly likely that Carroll had a real
person in mind – not a hatter – as his model for the Mad Hatter character.
This was Theophilus Carter, a well-known furniture dealer
who lived near Oxford and, like the Mad Hatter in Tenniel’s illustrations for “Alice”,
always wore a top hat.
Carter was renowned for his eccentric ideas and inventions.
At the 1851 Great Exhibition in the Crystal Palace built in London’s Hyde Park,
he exhibited his ‘alarm clock bed’, a contraption that woke the sleeper by
literally throwing him out of bed at a pre-determined time – an idea that, very
much later, also occurred to Nick Park, the creator of the stop-motion characters
Wallace and Gromit.
Not only would Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) have seen Carter’s invention at
the exhibition, he would also have been familiar with the latter’s presence
around the streets of Oxford, which was where he lived.
The prevalence of furniture in the Tea Party episode – the
table, the writing-desk and the armchair, as well the fascination with time,
also point to a strong connection with Theophilus Carter.
© John Welford
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