The Caregiver and the Medium

Protection vs Victimization of the Vulnerable

      After 40 years of reading and researching 19th century advertising and literature to understand popular perceptions about the quality of life, I can tell you that society’s focus, then as now, was on physical health. Despite the unsettling “before” stories of the hucksters, people usually recovered from most sicknesses: fevered brows cooled down, guts stopped puking, and wounds healed. The sincere and insincere often praised the product or healer that cured them and life went on.

     In contrast, mental health issues were unpopular topics in the public discourse; squeamish Victorians tried to hide the subject in the dark cellar of public embarrassment, alongside discussions of venereal disease, while whispering about probable links between the two. Capitalizing on the public's discomfort, unabashed nostrum vendors weren't shy to claim their nerve tonics or brain restoratives cured nervousness, melancholy, hysteria, and insanity. As ridiculous as such promises sound now, at the onset of mental decline, they were popular options to avoid the devastating alternative. When erratic behaviors were identified by family, medical professionals, government officials, or a combination of all three, those stricken were often isolated from society in almshouses or institutionalized in facilities that the century frequently referred to as the “lunatic asylum” or the “madhouse.” Unfortunate souls suffering from any type of mental illness or decline were often institutionalized like pariahs, forbidden to return to the society of former friends or fitting back into the family circle. And to be clear, confinement was not limited to such severe issues as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and psychotic disorders, but also to those suffering the cognitive decline, behavioral changes, and motor function losses that often accompany aging, like those that manifest as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases.

      I have a particularly tender spot in my heart for this issue because my dear wife of almost 49 years has been enduring a decline from Parkinson’s Disease for 16 months now. I have recently added a letter, dated 1881, to my collection that describes the efforts of the author, Hannah, to be a caregiver to her mother and I feel a shared bond with her experience, being in many respects like my own. It touches my heart to have a private glimpse of this woman’s courageous efforts to care for her mother; I feel her worries and her hope. It has been a privilege that Hannah shared her story with me and I hope to honor her efforts by sharing them with you.

      Hannah shared several experiences that, intentionally or not, demonstrate two very different outlooks on the treatment of the mentally and/or emotionally vulnerable public in that year: the compassionate care she gave to her declining mother and the victimization of the emotionally vulnerable she witnessed by a spiritualist medium that brushed through her world.

     

Hannah, the Caregiver

      Hannah’s letter reads like a play without a program. We don’t know the last name of her family or how many unnamed members there were in the cast; we’re only sure of Hannah, the letter writer; her sisters Lyde & Mollie to whom she jointly addressed the letter; Harry, who seemed to have the role of her husband; and then there were Mother and also Father, who was only referenced in terms that implied he was recently deceased, his loss perhaps being the primary reason for Mother’s decline. The only other well-described character in Hannah’s letter was the archvillain of this story, Mrs. Bliss, who we will meet later.

      The vast majority of the story is set in Hannah’s house; from the scant evidence provided by the letter, Mother was living with Hannah and Harry at their home, which was apparently in London, Ohio, roughly 25 miles west of Columbus. The location of the house where Hannah's parents had been living is not clear, but Lyde and Mollie were apparently living nearby, watching after it in Mother’s absence.

Portion of the first page of an 8-page letter from Hannah to Lyde and Mollie. Folded letter, missing envelope. Dateline: London, Apr 1st 81 [1 APR 1881]. Rapoza collection.

      Hannah’s primary purpose in writing the letter to both sisters was to get them caught up on how Mother was doing. Hannah had received a letter from each of her two sisters over the previous 24 hours and her response may be a reflection of the concerns they had expressed about their mother’s well-being. Some of the subtext in Hannah’s response hinted that Father had recently passed away and Mother was unwilling and perhaps unable to stay in their home alone and hoped to never see it again, “she said she did not care a snap for the home [and] wished it would burn down.” Mother’s personality had become an unpredictably emotional forecast of gloomy fog with sudden downpours, occasional thunder, and intermittent rays of sunshine. “And so it goes,” Hannah wrote philosophically. Mother was a mess and her daughters were very worried.

      Hannah noted Mother had broken down in tears and carried on in a flood of emotions while reading Lyde’s letter (Hannah regretted that she had not gotten to read it before Mother). It was Harry’s intervention that got Mother under control; he “talked strong and to the point til she braced up.” It was the remedy for the moment, but there were many more moments. She had her “gloomy spells and her bright ones.” The news that daughter Lyde was planning to move out of Mother’s house “upset her entirely” to the point that “she could not move.” Today this is called a “freeze” response, where the nervous system shuts down due to overwhelming stress or trauma; in 1881, Hannah could only muster, “[it] was her worst day.” But a letter from Mollie that Mother next read

… just brightened her up like magic, and after [a] while, she went to her room and came out with her new cap on, and says she, Hannah, I am going to wear my new cap and look on the bright side like the rest.

      Despite all of Hannah’s good works and intentions, the responsibility to care for her aging, infirm, dependent mother was a heavy weight and was taking its toll on Hannah; she wrote,

I feel better to have her here than there [at Mother’s old house], for I have had more sad hours thinking about her [when absent from her] than I have when I can see her even in her most despondent moods.

      Hannah realized that those who had known Mother before she started her mental decline would see the difference; maybe Hannah had already heard some of the snickers and sneers. Fairweather friends would be judgmental about the changed woman they had once known, but a loving and protective daughter would have none of it; through all of her mother’s changes, Hannah saw the angel inside:

… the world wags on in its own way. … False impressions will arise among outsiders and all that, but we must do what is right and let people outside form opinions to suit themselves. If the inner life is correct it matters little what the outer is. And right here Mother’s inner life is far better and lovelier than her outer indicates. She is so honest, so artless and a child of nature. There is much to admire and emulate in her.

      As a caregiver to my spouse, I read Hannah’s description of her mother, “so honest so artless [without guile] and a child of nature [innocent; child-like],” as signs of her mother having cognitive decline – dementia; I would describe my dear wife the same way.  

      It was obvious to Hannah and Harry that they had to care for Mother with love, tenderness, and understanding. Each one of Mother’s difficult moments needed a proportionate response, customized to the situation. It was a constant challenge since Hannah and Harry were not doctors or psychiatrists, but just a daughter and son-in-law; they were compassionate caregivers, however, which was exactly what Mother needed. One evening she “asked in all sadness” how she could visit her old neighbors without seeing her old house. Once again it was Harry who brought her out of her funk: “‘Why Mother, you can walk backwards.’ She just laughed in her tears at his ridiculous answer, said in his yankee way.” Hannah reassured his sisters, “Mother is doing well here. … It is well for her that she is here.”

      The day would come, Hannah realized, when Mother would need to go back to her own house, but Hannah was committed to ensuring her mother would continue to be safe and thrive, even when that day eventually came:

I do not intend to let her dig [a] ditch for herself … I [in]tend to keep her just as long as I can for I know I am the one to control [be responsible for] her. … I am coming home with her when she goes [back home]. … [Do] not flatter yourselves that she will be contented [back home, but] that has to be tried. We are all doing as daughters the best we can and that is all we can do. [emphasis added]

     

Mrs. Bliss, the Medium

      Hannah’s letter to her sisters made only one detour from the subject of homecare for their mother, but it was a dramatic, unexpected detour; sort of like blurting out she had witnessed an aerialist walk across a tightrope over Main Street or a neighbor’s cow had given birth to a two-headed calf. To Hannah, the diversion was equally startling and disturbing: a spiritualist medium was holding séances in town.

      Hannah performed her caregiving service for her mother quietly, in the privacy of her home, without fanfare, spectacle, or the slightest thought of compensation; it was exactly why she would have made a terrible medium. As the 19th century rolled on, spiritualism had cleaved apart the population into devoted believers and harsh critics and the reputation of mediums split down the same divide of amazing and devious. When Mrs. Bliss appeared in London, Ohio, she already had a tarnished reputation, except among the most devoted, gullible disciples of spiritualism; in fact, it wasn’t even believed that she could legitimately be called “Mrs. Bliss.” An 1877 Philadelphia newspaper claimed that when the real Mrs. Bliss had been sick back in Boston, “her husband … transferred his affections to his wife’s nurse, and when he subsequently came to Philadelphia (starting in the spirit business in 1874), that woman followed him and was known as Mrs. Bliss.” The Bliss family historian struggled and stumbled over just how much to write about the sordid affair.

8186: James Albert Bliss, extremely well-known materialization medium, along with his equally well-known partner in illusion, Christiana Baptista Bliss. John Homer Bliss, Genealogy of the Bliss family in America, from about the year 1550-1880 (Boston: 1881), p.603. Courtesy of Internet Archive.

 

       Like most Victorian genealogies, the Bliss Family volume elegantly laid out the family tree, proudly tracing its generations from ancient roots in Great Britain to the glorious fruit of its American progeny. The exhaustive book of begats meticulously detailed every person in America with even a smidgeon of Bliss – at least until it stumbled upon descendant 8186, James Albert Bliss. His is the only name and family group in the online version of this 820-page tome that jars the reader with all kinds of post-published markup, looking less like another refined specimen of purebred Bliss on its pedigreed promenade through the centuries and more like a bug-splattered windshield after a long road trip. The entry described him as a machinist but he was more infamously known as a spiritualist – a “notorious goblin manufacturer” – and an exposed fraud at that. Further sullying the Bliss family name, the author thinly disguised his suspicion that 8186 had a bigamously begotten brood by some wanton woman haltingly identified as “Christiana”; but she was, in fact, as well-known as he was, his partner in nefarious seances and other spirit swindles. The genealogist had reluctantly confessed the facts about number 8186; the tainted fruit in the Bliss harvest was an embarrassment that unfortunately had not quietly fallen out of the family tree.

      This newly revealed female medium was a performing oddity shrouded in mystery. Born in Cuba, she was Christina Baptista Suaz D'Alverda Norton, the daughter of a French-Canadian sea captain who married a widow from Cuba. A newspaper stated she had a deep brown, shiny complexion, “flashing black eyes and straight, raven, Indian-like hair.” Her Spanish accent was apparently seldom heard at that time in London, Ohio; Hannah incorrectly thought it was Dutch. She was often described as being stoutly built (one newspaper wrote, “broad enough to be called dumpty”); Hannah told her sisters, “Her landlady told me she was a big eater and ate like a wash woman.”

      Hannah had met Mrs. Bliss face-to-face at her boarding house (purposely or by chance was not explained) and while newspapers focused on the medium’s superficial features, Hannah’s observations were far more insightful:

She is a travel-wise woman, clever and broad, but that she practices deception on the people is in harmony with her make up and intelligence that she has gathered from observation. … she is a good-looking clever Dutch woman with a great deal of magnetism and no doubt makes the audience see anything they want to see.

      And her audiences got to see plenty. Hannah told her sisters that Mrs. Bliss was one of those mediums who held materialization séances. One such performance by Mrs. Bliss in Kansas City, Missouri, just days before Hannah wrote her letter, was attended by a reporter from The Kansas City Evening Star, and he was quite flustered by what he had witnessed. He was one of a dozen people brought into a small, dimly lit room with a “neatly painted” pinewood enclosure within it with a curtain drawn across the front. It was commonly referred to as a cabinet, but in his article about the event, which he titled, “GHOSTLY VISITANTS,” he referred to it as “the mysterious and awful ABODE OF THE SPIRITS … something never to be forgotten”:

With the first notes of the national anthem, a startling thing occurred which it must be confessed, chilled the journalistic blood. The curtains were thrust aside, and in full view stood the manly form of a United States army officer in full uniform. He was announced as Captain Davis. … the ghastly visitor in glittering uniform standing in the door in full view, surrounded with all the mystery of that other world from which no traveler is supposed to return, made a scene only to be borne by nerves of the stoutest, well-fortified by moral strength and immense willpower.

The level-headed investigative reporter was clearly becoming unraveled by the supernatural events he had never expected to see.

… the awful apparition … appeared again and again … Imagination could hardly conceive a more blood-curdling sight, and yet there was a reality about it all which quieted the nerves, which would otherwise have been entirely unstrung. Language simply fails to describe it, and reason is impotent to explain. 

      The next materialization was of Valentine, the deceased son of Mr. and Mrs. Clary, two of the attendees. The Clary couple were described as “agitated” (meaning quite shaken by the experience) to see their long-lost son and then even getting to shake his hand before he had to leave behind the curtain. It was the ultimate hope of ardent spiritualists – to communicate with deceased loved ones. The grief over lost family members, especially children who had suffered untimely deaths, and the fervent desire to be even briefly able to see them again, made many vulnerable to the theatrical chicanery of sly materializing mediums.  Later in the evening, the Clary’s dead teenage daughter, Jessie, also appeared. She showed her parents “a ring of peculiar pattern which they had given her a year or more ago in Philadelphia.” The Clarys were understandably described as “agitated” once again.

      Several more apparitions appeared in turn, including a humorous boot black, “a bashful little French girl,” “Blue Flower,” a Ute Indian squaw who regularly materialized for Mrs. Bliss, an old Black woman “dressed in the regulation kitchen costume” of a cook, who performed a brisk dance, and the actress, Lucille Western, whom the reporter had personally known in life, but had now been deceased four years.

      Mrs. Bliss had directed a theatrical spirit extravaganza, complete with actors, costumes, roles, and a trap door behind the stage curtain, but in the dimly lit room with a well-paying and anxious audience of often grieving, fragile, hopeful believers, it was an answer to prayers. Most newspaper articles pooh-poohed spirit mediums and said their followers were “credulous old lunatics who would believe that the moon was made of green cheese if they were so informed in a darkened parlor by a spirit form with a beery breath”; this time, however, the Clary’s believed they had communed with their dead children and the investigative reporter was himself too “agitated” to casually dismiss what he had witnessed that evening.

      Hannah knew that James and Christiana Bliss were fakes; she had probably read about both of them in the newspapers along with much of the country in late 1877. Their appearance in court had exposed his abandonment of his first wife and children and his bigamous cohabitation with Christina Baptista Norton and their fraudulent performances in spirit materialization; there was nowhere for them to hide from their sordid activities, yet they still held on to a following of true believers like those in Kansas City, bilking them every chance they could get. Hannah wrote, “Mrs. Bliss is a fraud of course to all but those that would see like Jack Bridgman and Dr Jones, &c &c.” Mrs. Bliss had victimized the vulnerable right in Hannah’s backyard: Jack Bridgman was a 49-year-old auctioneer in London, Ohio, and Dr. Jones was a 61-year-old physician there, but as Hannah put it, Mrs. Bliss’s séance participants “heard the voices of friends and saw them as plain as you can see your family in a dim lighted room, very dim though. … You folks had better lay low next June,” Hannah warned her sisters, “for Bliss may give you a call or make it hot weather ….”

      That was enough about Mrs. Bliss for Hannah. She couldn’t imagine living the medium’s lifestyle of deception for the love of money any more than the medium could adopt Hannah’s lifestyle, selflessly doing so much for the love of Mother.

      Hannah closed her letter with some final reflections on Mother: Hanna had spent the day pasting interesting bits from newspapers into her scrapbook and reading them aloud while Mother was knitting a second sock; she had knit the first one since arriving at Hannah’s. “She is doing first rate,” Hannah reassured her sisters, “never has missed a meal and some nights sleeps all night. She thinks next week she will have to go home but I am going to keep her just as long as I can and see she is not fretting to[o] much.” After all, it was her mom.

     

 

Lynn Massachusetts History – History of Medicine – 19th-Century Health Remedies – Vintage Medical Ephemera – 19th-century Medicine

A Tribute to Mad Hatters & Others Who Just Struggled Along

Was the hatter mad or was it the world around him?

I recently had the opportunity to buy a trade card that was made way back in 1825.

Yeah – 200 years ago – (mic drop).

Forget about airplanes and automobiles – back in 1825 there were no such things as sewing machines, the telegraph, or even photographs. This acquisition predates my few Civil War era trade cards by over 40 years (see my recent blogpost, “The Unwelcomed Success of Dr. Curtis,” for a card from 1867 that most advertising trade card collectors would call an early trade card).

The Mad Hatter from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll, 1865. (Courtesy of Internet Archive)

Truth is, I would have wanted this antique treasure even if it was only promoting the sale of broken wagon wheels, but the fact that it was the trade card of a hat manufacturer in the mid-1820s had a special allure for me because I know my Alice in Wonderland.

“MAD AS A HATTER”

The hat making profession was getting ridiculed even back in the 1820s. A preparation of mercury salts was used to soften the hairs on pelts of beavers, otters, and other woodland creatures for easy use in making the flared "bell" and "chimney" styles of hats worn by men in the early part of the century. Constantly dipping the pelts in the hot bath of mercury and nitric acid allowed the mercury solution to seep through skin pores and into the bloodstream and its noxious vapors were inhaled causing many hat makers to have physical trembling, speech problems, and emotional instability such as:

excessive timidity, diffidence, increasing shyness, loss of self-confidence, anxiety, and a desire to remain unobserved and unobtrusive. The victim also had a pathological fear of ridicule and often reacted with an explosive loss of temper when criticized. (H. A. Waldron, “Did the Mad Hatter have mercury poisoning?” British Medical Journal, Vol.287, DEC 1983, p.1961.) 

A brief interchange in an early play script demonstrates the widely understood association that hatters had with odd and even neurotic behavior back in 1829 when it appeared in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine:

Man Wearing Beaver Hat. Daguerreotype, ca.1855. Hand-tinted on cheeks and chin to appear more lifelike. Courtesy of a private collector.

TICKLER (aside to SHEPHERD.) He's raving.   

SHEPHERD (to  TICKLER.) Dementit. [Demented]

ODOHERTY (to both.) Mad as a hatter. Hand me a segar.

In 1847 a British newspaper correspondent lambasted the hat worn by a member of Parliament, calling it “atrociously ugly” then placing the blame on the hat maker, precisely because he was a hat maker, of being mad:  

The hatter who originally conceived the design must have broke[n] out of a lunatic asylum, and was assuredly more mad than hatters usually are, though the craft are proverbial maniacs. (The Birmingham Journal [England], 27 November 1847, p.8; emphasis added)

Consumer demand for hats had been high for decades and was increasing as England moved towards the middle of the 19th century. Even though the demand for hats was met with real health problems and popular ridicule, many men and some women braved the unpleasantness of both and became gentlemen’s hatters.

JOHN CONQUEST 

Conquest – the name implied success in a dominant way. In Great Britain the word conjures up a history-changing triumph – the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 and its ruthless, successful leader, William the Conqueror. The surname may have its roots in that epic event and commander, but almost eight centuries had passed and no glories, fame, or fortune had been handed down to John Conquest.

He was born the son of a manual laborer in the quiet country village of Clophill, England, floating about 40 miles northwest of London. He was as common a man as common could be: just another Anglican by faith, with unremarkable brown hair and a pale complexion, and he stood 5 feet 6 inches tall, although wearing one of his hats may have made him feel taller. He was also illiterate, signing both of his marriage records with a mark that someone else had to surround with his name to make it official. The only thing that truly distinguished him from most of the countrymen who surrounded him was his occupation – he was a hatter.

It singled him out and, if his trade card reveals anything about the illiterate, diminutive hatter with a pasty complexion, it was that he wanted to make a strong impression – a commercial conquest.

 

Trade Card for J(ohn) Conquest & Co., ca.1825. Rapoza collection. Card dimensions: 3 5/8" x 3" (92.075 mm x 76.2 mm). The card is made from thick, quality paper stock but is flexible and neither as thick or rigid as trade cards from the second half of the century. The reverse side and sometimes the margins on the front side were sometimes used by the proprietor to create a receipt for the customer by writing down the transaction date, purchase price, and payment date; however, the reverse side of this card is blank; J. Conquest & Co. had very little time to record such sales before the partnership was dissolved.

It is a superb, dynamic example of the neoclassical artistic style in an elegant presentation of copperplate engraving and printing. Instead of the previously popular rococo style, which featured flamboyantly curving flourishes profusely garnished with floral and marine decorations, neoclassicism simplified design, using the classic architecture stylings of Rome and Greece, with symmetry and harmony in its presentation. John Conquest’s trade card was all that, arranged with a block paved floor and two classically fluted columns symmetrically flanking each side of the floor and firmly set on solid pedestals, all of which was then secured to a large foundation. Sound, solid, and safe – that was the underlying message about John Conquest’s business, but there was clearly more to catch the eye. The large eagle festooned with ribbon and banner, and boldly surmounted by the name, “J. CONQUEST & Co.”, was likely a duplication of the sign in front of his building that identified his shop; the great bird was literally spread-eagle, dominant in the scene and poised to soar above the hat making industry. There was nothing pale and diminutive in the entire design of the card.

Two of Conquest’s Regency hat styles were posted on the card’s two columns: the gentlemen’s popular bell-shaped Wellington and chimney-styled hat designs, well-formed from fur soaked and steamed in mercury nitrate. Gentlemen’s hats were more status symbol than functional protective headgear. In US dollar equivalents, a beaver hat could cost $10-$25 in a time when the common laborer, like John Conquest’s own father, was making only 10 to 25 cents a day. Although illiterate and of common stock, John Conquest understood the importance of catering to an upscale clientele and his card showed it.

Mr. Conquest also assured his card recipients that he could also resurrect old worn-out hats, relining them with silk. In the 1820s world of men’s hat fashions, silk was the new beaver; for over two centuries, the North American beaver population had been decimated, almost to the point of extinction, and the cost of beaver hats consequently inflated. Silk became an acceptable substitute, looking every bit as shiny and swell as the beaver hats. John Conquest was on the cutting edge of hat fashion, adding the newer and more cost-effective silk alternative next to the beaver hats in his hat showcase. New or refurbished, Conquest’s shop was the place to go.

CHEAPSIDE TO PICCADILLY

John started his shop in big, busy Manchester, England, in 1825. It was much smaller than London (not even a twelfth of its size), but still the second-largest city in the country – ripe with potential for a new hatter whose powerful eagle signage looked ready to make the business take off. He would need all that enthusiasm and confidence because there were already 75 hat makers in Manchester in 1825 (not including the additional 14 shops that were making women's straw hats). With so many hatters in the city, the naming the naming of one of its many pubs the Jolly Hatters Tavern seemed quite logical. The address of John Conquest's new shop, 38 Piccadilly, put his business in the center of the city and just a half-mile away from the Jolly Hatters. His path to Piccadilly had been a long and challenging route strewn with life's obstacles and potholes to overcome.

Business opportunities were not dazzling in Clophill, so in his early twenties John made his way to London, already with a population well over a million people. In 1813 when he was 23, he lived deep in the city and married a country girl named  Ann Fearn who had grown up in another village about 20 miles west of his hometown; John signed the marriage record with an X for his mark, since he was unable to read and write. The young couple set up house on Little Somerset Street in downtown London where eleven months later, Ann gave birth to their first child, a daughter they named Mary Ann; her birth record listed her father as a hatter.

Their wedded bliss was interrupted in January 1815 when John was arrested for perpetrating some unspecified misdemeanor against his employer. He was convicted and sentenced to one month of hard labor, serving his sentence when his little daughter was six months old. Reunited with his little family, they increased in 1816 with the birth of their first son, George.

In the span of the next few years multiple tragedies struck the young Conquest family: wife Ann and daughter Mary Ann both passed away. Now 33 years old, widower John remarried to Ann Chipping in 1823; the marriage record shows he was still illiterate and he likely was for the rest of his life.

For ten years, at least since his first marriage in 1813, John had been working as a hatter in London’s Cheapside Street. The name is a modern corruption of “marketplace” and it was true to the original description; by 1825 it was possibly the busiest shopping district in the city, if not the world. Each day and well into the night, Cheapside was a hive of activity, with shops and sidewalk vendors; horses, wagons, carriages, and coaches; professional offices, residences, apartments, boarding houses; and people – lots of people. Hat makers, haberdashers, and shoe shops offered the newest fashions, ready to be accessorized by watch makers, jewelers, goldsmiths, and silver smiths. China and glass dealers, chair and cabinet makers, wallpaper stainers, and upholsters stood ready to furnish homes, and physicians and apothecaries were poised to help those among the Cheapside shoppers who didn’t feel so well. John Conquest name-dropped his former business location on his Manchester business card precisely because Cheapside was nationally known as the country’s most vibrant business district and he was one its alumni. His Manchester customers didn’t have to make the day-long trip to travel the 200 miles to London to shop in style – he was bringing London to them.

CONQUEST GOES DARK

John Conquest’s trade card, almost certainly created in 1825, presented a business and businessman that was ready to accomplish great things in Manchester.

The firm of John Conquest & Co. was established in Manchester late in 1825. His partners were the Robinson brothers, Isaac and William. Isaac was about the same age as John and William was a dozen years younger. The Robinson brothers were educated Quakers from Leeds, the sons of a shopkeeper and already working as silk hatters in Manchester at least through September 1825 before they agreed to the new partnership with John Conquest. On 29 September, Isaac and his wife also welcomed the birth of their first child, a son, and John’s wife arrived at Manchester very pregnant, shortly before delivering the first child of their marriage.

John had an older brother named William who was also a hatter. He had been with John through the Cheapside years and came with him to Manchester; however, he wasn’t included in the new partnership but chose instead to start his own business, “Wm. Conquest & Co. Hat Manufacturers,” just a half-mile from John’s new shop in Piccadilly. All four men hoped for success in their new ventures but all their dreams were doomed.

The new partnership fell apart almost before the ink was dry on the new trade card. Founded after September 1825, the partnership was formally dissolved on 11 March 1826:

Notice of Dissolution. The Manchester Guardian and British Volunteer, 25 March 1826, p.1.

Seven weeks later, Ann Conquest gave birth to their first child.

It’s easy to guess but hard to know just why the Conquest-Robinson partnership failed so quickly. On paper, John Conquest and the Robinson brothers had nothing in common. He was from a country village and they were from a big city; John’s father was a manual laborer but their father was a middle-class merchant. John was an Anglican and they were Quakers; they were educated and John was illiterate. Their differences could have been molded into shared strengths to help their partnership and business succeed, but all or some of it may have driven a wedge between them; however, the suddenness of their dissolution suggests that something else was quickly pulling them apart. It may have been mad hatter disease.

John Conquest and Isaac Robinson had both been making hats for years; William Conquest had probably been working alongside his brother in Cheapside, and William Robinson may have been helping his brother Isaac for a few years prior to the new partnership. Mercury poisoning can work fast, but in the case of these four men, it had plenty of time to change their minds and alter their personalities.

William Conquest had set out in his own hat making business in Manchester in 1825 but was declared bankrupt by December 1826. In 1828 he tried starting up again, this time with a partner and, perhaps significantly, focused on making only silk hats, probably due to the increasing demand for them, along with concern about the health effects of making beaver felt hats with mercury. Nonetheless, their partnership was dissolved in 1831. In 1834 he shows up one more time, having reopened his old shop briefly by himself. The last we see of him was ten years later, when a newspaper reporter called him “the old curiosity man,” being arrested and brought before the magistrate for stealing a bag of silver from the bar of the Commercial Inn, just a few blocks from his old hat shop.

William Robinson had a sadder fate, dying in August 1827; the youngest of the four hatters was only 24 at death. True, many illnesses and innumerable injuries could kill a hale and hearty young man, but mercury poisoning can damage the brain, lungs, and kidneys, so it could easily have been the cause or a significant contributor to the young hatter’s death.

Less than two months after the partnership had fallen apart, Isaac lost his first-born son at just 10 months old. Again we don’t know why the infant died, but mercury present on Isaac’s clothing and body could easily have transferred as Father Isaac held his baby boy after each long day’s work. The small lung capacity of babies also increased their risk of inhaling any vapors emanating from such exposure. Isaac himself lived a long life, dying at 84, but after 1828 we no longer see him mentioned as a hatter, but rather as a tea dealer, a grocer, and a “retired hatter”.

Even if mercury poisoning didn’t kill any of the Conquests or Robinsons, it often played havoc on a hatter’s mental, emotional, and physical health. All three hatters in the ill-fated partnership were constantly exposed to mercury poisoning and perhaps one, two, or all three exhibited various symptoms that could easily have ruined their interrelationships or the business itself. Physical trembling could have frustrated their ability to make a fine quality hat; speech problems could have been frustrating in trying to deal with customers and suppliers and might have made them resistant to doing future commerce with that hat shop.

The dissolution notice specified that it was John Conquest who was leaving the partnership. The man with all the aspirations for success in Manchester, as displayed on his trade card, was breaking up the team and he was never again listed doing hat making as did his brother and his former partner, Isaac. It seems like John Conquest was the weakest link, even though his younger partner died just 15 months after the dissolution. You can almost hear the sighs of relief from the Robinson brothers when the phrase, “dissolved by mutual consent, so far as concerns John Conquest” was added.

John appears to have been the problem. Perhaps he was exhibiting some of the neurological dysfunctions brought on by mercury exposure. “Excessive timidity, shyness, and anxiety” are significant challenges for many in the workplace, but a complete “loss of self-confidence and a desire to remain unobserved” are more serious and troubling. John Conquest was suddenly, willfully leaving John Conquest & Co. – he was making himself invisible. Had he come to that decision because he had developed “a pathological fear of ridicule” and therefore couldn’t deal with complaints and accusations from his partners about mistakes they perceived he was making? Perhaps he even exhibited “the explosive loss of temper when criticized,” which could destroy any workplace or partnership. 

Worn Out. Both the unidentified gentleman and his hat appear to have had hard lives. Ambrotype, ca.1860s. (Courtesy of FamilyHistoryDaily.com .

What makes me feel that John Conquest may have suffered from some or all of these symptoms of mad hatter disease is how abruptly his partnership ended and how he completely disappeared from the public record for the last nine years of his life – he just vanished from public view. From the 1826 dissolution to his death in 1835, he had gone dark, appearing in surviving records only for the births of his two children in 1833 and 1834 and the death of the latter in 1835 (the first had died in infancy and the latter died at one year old). No records have been found showing that he continued to be employed. Perhaps he had stopped working altogether from the terrible effects of mercury poisoning. Had he become a mad hatter? Was that what brought the end of his career and eventually his life at age 45? We'll never know, but there is a high likelihood that he and his one-time partners, as well as family members were affected to some degree by the mercury solution that marinated their bodies and vapors that filled their lungs during and after hat making. 

John loved and lost – wives, children, his business, partners, and perhaps his own life. Some of the losses may have been due to the mercury he used to make beaver felt for the older style top hats. But his glorious trade card helps us feel his joy for life – the only remaining proof of his hopes, dreams, and ambitions. Whether or not his life was ruined by mercury, we should remember him for the positive messages his trade card tells us about him.

If I could travel back in time to meet John, I would want to compliment him about how wonderfully impressive his trade card was. Maybe, amid all the loss and dashed hopes, he would realize that he had triumphed with that card which has preserved his memory for 200 years – as it turned out, it was his ultimate conquest.

 

AUTHOR’S POSTSCRIPT: On 1 May 1826, just weeks after John Conquest’s business partnership had been dissolved, Ann Conquest gave birth to a daughter, their first child. They named her Mary Ann. It is possible for mercury poisoning to be transferred to a fetus during pregnancy and through breast milk, affecting the developing brain and nervous system, which could then potentially lead to neurological problems later in life, appearing even in adulthood; perhaps it impacted the mental health of Mary Ann Conquest.

In 1865, at 39 years old, she committed suicide by swallowing rat poison and possibly even infanticide. Before her suicide, she was asked if she had given anything to her month-old baby who had suddenly died, but she denied doing so. A newspaper reported that “the loss of her child, and the fact of her having told an untruth, weighed upon her mind and she appeared very much distressed.” She eventually confessed to her husband that their baby had died because of what she had done: the infant “was rather troublesome [so] she gave it a few drops of some mixture ...”  She then told a neighbor she had taken a dose of “vermin poison,” and died shortly thereafter. The coroner’s verdict was that she poisoned herself “during a fit of temporary insanity.”

Was her temporary insanity seeded by mercury poisoning during her fetal and infantile development? The answer to that will forever be buried deep in the depths of history’s mysteries.

ONE LAST NOTE:  And for those readers preparing to jump to Google Maps to see exactly where 38 Piccadilly and China Lane meet, there is now a Kentucky Fried Chicken on the corner; the location has come a long way from a magnificent spread eagle to a box of fried chicken.

The Happy Couple. Dressed in their finest to have one of those newfangled pictures taken. Ambrotype, ca.1860s. (Courtesy of FamilyHistoryDaily.com .

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