Why Oxford Street's Hidden Beavers Are a Hat-Making Legacy
Why Are There Statues of Beavers on Top of This Oxford Street Shop?
Four beaver statues perch atop 105–109 Oxford Street, a former hat factory built in 1887 for Henry Heath. The beavers symbolize the use of beaver fur in top hats, prized for its water-proofing. The factory employed around 70 people and supplied hats to fashionable gentlemen until silk overtook beaver in the mid-1800s. Working with beaver fur involved mercury poisoning, leading to the phrase 'mad as a hatter'.
By the time Heath's factory was built, the expression 'mad as a hatter' would have been in common usage.
- healsdata
Hopefully Buc-ee's doesn't decide to sue them too for trademark infringement.
- sharkjacobs
It's funny to me, a Canadian,
that this even warrants a did-you-know article because everything about the beaver fur/hat making industry is something I learned extensively about in elementary and high school because it was like, a major driver of the European exploration and colonization and therefore significant to the history of my country.
But outside of here it's just a footnote to a fashion trend.
- niccl
> Factory workers soaked the skins in a orange-coloured solution containing mercuric nitrate; a process called 'carroting'. Vapours from the mercury poisoned the workers' nervous systems, making them prone to tremors, irritability, depression, paranoia, dementia and worse.
This is where the Mad Hatter in Alice Through the Looking-Glass comes from.
- saaaaaam
The other interesting but useless fact is that silk top hats (which as the article points out supersede beaver as the fibre of choice) are no longer made - and the technique for making them is effectively lost because they need specialised looms which are also no longer made.
But if you want to go somewhere super fancy like Ascot and look the part, a silk top hat is de rigueur.
There are now a handful of shops that basically have the entire remaining (good) stock and rent them out for an arm and a leg, and take care of them like rare precious things. Which I guess they are.
- amiga386
What such a hat looks like:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Black_beaver_hat_-_D...