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Danbury is nicknamed the "Hat City" because it was the center of the American hat industry for a period in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The mineral danburite is named for Danbury while the city itself is named for Danbury in Essex , England.
Mar 4, 2024 · A marker naming Danbury as 'Hat City U.S.A.,' with the city of Danbury Seal, is in the passageway next to the Danbury Music Center, on Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2024, in Danbury, Conn.
- Reporter
- Hat History
- Danbury Mad Hatters
- Diagnosis
- Better A Mad Hatter…
- Alice Hamilton
- Dec. 1, 1941
Danbury’s hat-making history goes back to the late 18thcentury. According to local legend, a man named Zadoc Benedict plugged a hole in his shoe with fur. He found sweat and friction turned it into felt. Benedict began making felted fur hats on his bedpost and eventually opened a hat shop on Main Street. Others followed, setting up small hat shops ...
Working in the factories was awful. By the outbreak of the Civil War, doctors knew the symptoms of mercury poisoning. But no one did anything about it for almost a century. To make hats, workers matted together rabbit or beaver skins and smoothed them with an orange solution containing mercuric nitrate. Hatters then shaped the resulting felt into l...
The first clinical description of the problem was published in 1860.However, the U.S. Public Health Service didn’t study it until 1937 after prodding by the hatters’ union. A British Journal of Industrial Medicine articledescribed the mad hatters’ symptoms in 1946:
Hatters in the 19th century faced a more lethal health problem than mercury poisoning: tuberculosis, then the leading cause of death in the United States. In the close, steamy hat workrooms, hatters easily caught the disease. The hatter’s union fought for safer working conditions. Employers dismissed their complaints. They said the mad hatter sympt...
During the 15 years the Danbury Hatters case moved through the courts, a socially prominent doctor who lived in Hadlyme, Conn., took up the cause of workers who got sick on the job. Alice Hamilton with her sister Edith Hamilton, the classicist, had attended Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, Conn., about 50 miles from Danbury. She earned a medical...
Finally, on Dec. 1, 1941, Connecticut banned the use of mercuryin hat making. Hat makers instead used hydrochloric acid, a safe alternative. For years thereafter, they celebrated the December 1 anniversary. But it was almost too late. The hat industry had declined, and by 1923 only six hat factories remained in Danbury. The city’s last hat factory,...
Feb 1, 2011 · The rise -- and fall -- of hatting in Danbury. By John Pirro, Staff Writer Feb 1, 2011. ... The city's first hat factory was established by Zadoc Benedict in 1780. It employed three workers who ...
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Location. 41° 23.7′ N, 73° 27.166′ W. Marker is in Danbury, Connecticut, in Fairfield County. Marker is at the intersection of Main Street and West Street, on the right when traveling north on Main Street. Touch for map. Marker is in this post office area: Danbury CT 06810, United States of America. Touch for directions.
Feb 24, 2016 · The answer is very fascinating. Everyone knows Danbury is sometimes called the Hat City because of it's Hat manufacturing plants that were located here, and thrived during the early part of the twentieth century. Did you know that Danbury produced 24% of all hats worn in this country by 1904?
Hat City of the World. Hatting History. According to local folklore, a Danbury resident named Zadoc Benedict, plugged a hole in his shoe with some fur and discovered that friction and sweat had transformed it into felt. Applying his Yankee ingenuity, Benedict used his bedpost to mold and shape the felt into hats.
