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While it is not confirmed, this is one popular theory in regards to where the phrase came from. He eventually escaped, and no further records of his life exist. After his brief moment of fame, he was admitted to a mental asylum after threatening people with a gun. This included an incident before the war, where he castrated himself with a pair of scissors. There are moments of record in his life that might’ve hinted at some mental instability that could’ve been related to mercury poisoning. He disobeyed his orders and shot and killed Booth rather than capturing him. His regiment was assigned to track down the booth and eventually found him in a barn in Virginia. Corbett worked in a hat factory prior to joining the Union Army during the Civil War. Corbett, famed for his killing of John Wilkes Booth after the assassin shot Abraham Lincoln. Some scholars have suggested that the originator of the “mad hatter’ phrase might’ve been D.C. Symptoms that would’ve seemed like madness in the 1800s. Mercury poisoning and bring on physical and mental problems that manifest as speech problems and hallucinations. It was used every day as part of the process of turning animal furs into hats. The material was used for years before anyone became aware of its toxic properties. The expression is linked to the hat-making industry and the terrible consequences of mercury poisoning. In truth, it has much more complicated and more interesting origins. The phrase “Mad as a hatter” is commonly misattributed to Lewis Carroll’s novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It relates to the hat-making industry of the 18th and 19th centuries and the effects of mercury poisoning. The “hatter” part of the idiom is slightly more complicated. The first three words, “Mad as a,” reveal to the listener/reader that the person to whom the words are directed is considered “mad” or crazy. Unlike many idioms, this one’s meaning is fairly straightforward, at least in part. 5 Why Do Writers Use “Mad as a hatter?”.4 Example Sentences with “Mad as a hatter”.The following year, this possible “mad hatter,” who was then in his 50s, escaped the facility and soon disappeared for good. In 1887, he landed in a mental asylum after threatening a group of people at the Kansas Statehouse with a gun.
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Eventually, he resumed working in the hat industry in the Northeast before moving to Kansas in 1878, where he lived a solitary existence as a homesteader. Corbett was cleared of blame by the military and lauded by many in the public as a hero for his role in avenging the president’s death. On April 26, the soldiers surrounded Booth in a Virginia barn however, Corbett disobeyed orders to capture the fugitive alive and instead shot and killed him. He went on to serve in the Union Army during the Civil War, and after Lincoln was shot by Booth on April 14, 1865, at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., Corbett and his regiment, the 16th New York Cavalry, were sent to track down the gunman, who was on the lam. Corbett, who’d been employed as a hat maker since he was a young man, became a religious zealot and in 1858 castrated himself with a pair of scissors as a way to curb his libido. Researchers have suggested that Boston Corbett, a hat industry worker who killed John Wilkes Booth, President Abraham Lincoln’s assassin, might’ve suffered from poor mental health due to mercury poisoning.
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