What caused the Mad Hatter to go mad?
Did he sniff the glue in the hat? Was it mercury poisoning? –Jeff Imparato Dear Straight Dope: In a discussion of the recent Nicor debacle, the effects of mercury came up, namely that overexposure causes insanity. “In fact,” I said, “that’s the origin of the phrase ‘mad as a hatter,’ since people who made hats were exposed to mercury in the course of their work, and it was thus common for aging hatters to go mad.” Someone else disagreed, saying that it was the people who wore the hats who were the “mad hatters,” because of exposure to mercury residue on the hats. Can you straighten out this disagreement for us? — Don Blaheta The most famous Mad Hatter, of course, is the one from the Mad Tea Party in Alice in Wonderland, the partner of the March Hare. Both mad, of course. But Lewis Carroll did not invent the phrase, although he did create the character. The phrases “mad as a hatter” and “mad as a March hare” were common at the time Lewis Carroll wrote (1865 was the first publication da