mad hatters and more a article "Just Jobs: The Effect of Occupations On British Family Life"
Just Jobs: The Effect of Occupations On British Family Life Article by Elizabeth Simpson in World Conference on Records, 1980 Born in England. evidence of hat making can be found throughout history. [3] If you find an ancestor described as a "hatter," your first question is, when was he a hatter? With all industries, the government of the day can yield an enormous control by tariffs and taxes. During the seventeenth century, foreign-made hats began to trickle into the United Kingdom. This depressed the industry, so the government placed a heavy tariff on these imported hats, pushing up their sale price. This boosted the home trade and made the job of hatmaker more viable. By the eighteenth century, the hat industry was booming and had even developed a flourishing export trade to the Continent. Trade with Canada, then a part of the British Empire, was bringing the best quality beaver skins to England. A master hat maker would probably employ eight to ten workers, who wo
