That said, although I had to quit, the sun did then come out and the rest of the festival was a great success. British summers eh?
It was all part of Chesham's annual Hats Off! festival of arts and crafts. It's so named thanks to an extraordinary character from the town's past - Roger Crab. He may have been the inspiration for one of the most famous storybook characters of all time. And he may also have been Britain’s first vegan.
(Note: I have posted about Crab before here but this is an extended post with more information.)
Roger Crab was born in Buckinghamshire in 1621 and grew up to be a very religious man. However, he believed that the church and the clergy didn’t adhere strictly to the Bible and to the true word of God. He refused to observe the Sabbath on a Sunday and chose to live his life by the words contained in the holy book, rather than by the words of priests.
In his twenties, he developed an obsession with the idea of purity in mind and body. He decided to remain celibate and became a teetotal vegan – very possibly Britain’s first. In Corinthians 8:13 he found: ‘Wherefore if meate make my brother to offend, I will never eate flesh while the world stands’. He took this literally and, from that point on, would drink only water and refused to eat meat or any other produce from animals because, as he put it in his own writings, ‘If Adam had kept to his single naturall fruits of God’s appointment, namely fruits and hearbs, we had not been corrupted ‘. He also set out to learn how to make plant-based medicines and natural remedies (he did later become a herbalist) and, like most people of that age, probably grew all of his own vegetables and herbs. And it obviously did him good because he lived to the ripe old age of 59 ... and this is in a time when the average age of death for men was 31.3 years.
In 1642 he was conscripted to fight for Oliver Cromwell’s Parliamentarians (‘Roundheads’) in the English Civil War. He was to serve for seven years. However, at the Battle of Colchester (1648) he was struck on the head by a sword and ’cloven to the braine’. While convalescing, he moaned about being ‘ill requited’ for his service and appears to have made himself a bit of a nuisance. He had taken up with a movement who called themselves The Levellers, that had formed within the army’s ranks. They were a liberal movement that demanded elected leaders, suffrage, equality and religious tolerance. Crab had already annoyed Cromwell, a Puritan, due to his constant criticism of organised religion. However, he had now become a possible danger politically. Cromwell sentenced him to death. He was sent to prison to await execution but, after two years, his death sentence was unexpectedly lifted and he was released. History does not tell us why. He was also presumably released from service in the army because he moved to Chesham and became a hat maker and seller.
Crab's hat shop was ‘on the High Street near the George Hotel’ (now the George & Dragon Hotel). It is believed to have possibly stood where Francis Yard is now.
Meanwhile, his behaviour started to become more erratic and extreme. He continued to publicly denounce the church and its ministers, which meant that he was constantly in trouble. He was sent to prison for short sentences several times and placed in the stocks. Crab had always been something of an eccentric but his brain injury may have made matters worse. In addition, he was working with dangerous chemicals like lead and mercury which poison the body and affect the central nervous system. Victims develop severe and uncontrollable muscular tremors and twitching limbs, called 'hatter's shakes'. Other symptoms include distorted vision and confused speech. In advanced cases, people can develop hallucinations and other psychotic symptoms.
By the 19th century the condition was well documented and so many hatters spent the final years of their lives in psychiatric hospitals – then called ‘lunatic asylums’ – that the term ‘Mad as a Hatter’ entered the language. Some academics have suggested that reading about Crab may have inspired Lewis Carroll to invent the Hatter character for his Alice in Wonderland books. .
In 1651, he made a huge, life-changing decision, quoting these ‘reasons from the Scripture’:
‘One thing is wanting unto thee: go, sell whatever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.’ (Jeremiah 35.)
‘Then Jesus beholding him loved him and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give it to the poor, and thou shall have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow me.’ (Mark 10: 21.)
Crab sold his shop and his considerable estate – even his clothes – and gave it all to the poor. He saved just enough to rent a small plot of land in Ickenham, near Uxbridge, and opted to live as a hermit. He built himself a hut in a tree, in which he lived for several years, and dressed in homemade sackcloth clothes. He claimed that he could live on three farthings (a farthing was a quarter of a penny) a week and offered herbal medicines to people in return for vegetables to eat.
A sculpture I made of Crab that is currently on display in Chesham Library.
In 1655 he published an autobiography called The English Hermit or Wonder of This Age, in which he implored people to avoid meat and to only drink water. However, he also used it to continue criticising the clergy and the establishment in general. As he saw it:
'The authorities have ruined the innocent, deprived the day-labourer and journeymen and orphans and alms-men of bread that the banqueting tables may be stocked with wine and dainties. The rich have planted ale-houses, not grain, across the nation. They have indebted farmers with exorbitant rents, and do not hold back in their feasting at christenings and weddings and holidays, all of these days being pretexts for gluttony and drunkenness.’
He was arrested at least four times as a ‘wizard’ and was put in the stocks and whipped. He was also given to uttering prophesies which resulted him being accused of witchcraft by a local clergyman.
And so, in 1657, ROGER CRAB moved one last time to Bethnal Green in London’s East End where he spent the rest of his life giving out herbal medicines and writing booklets about how people should live their lives. However, one such booklet - called Dagon’s Downfall - was considered so rebellious and insulting that he was arrested and locked up in Clerkenwell Prison. While in the prison he was given only water and no bread as punishment. However, he later wrote of a ‘miracle’ whereby a spaniel dog brought him a piece of bread to eat.
After his release he seems to have quietened down and there is very little written about him. He joined the Philadelphians, a group that followed the teachings of German mystic Jakob Böhme. They rejected the idea of being a church, preferring the term 'society', and believed that God is in all things, and that one can become enlightened and illuminated by living a virtuous life. Crab’s final two decades seem to have been spent selling his herbal remedies and writing occasional tracts condemning the authorities, but he was no longer viewed as dangerous. He died in 1680, aged 59, and is buried St Dunstan’s churchyard, Stepney.
But was he really the inspiration for Lewis Carroll’s Mad Hatter character in the Alice books?
The theory that Roger Crab may have inspired the character was first put forward by historian Christopher Hill in 1958. He suggested that it is quite possible that Carroll (real name Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) had read about Crab. In addition, Carroll’s uncle Robert Lutwidge was a leading figure in the Lunacy Commission and we know from his diaries that Carroll visited asylums where events such as dances, plays and tea parties were regularly staged for the entertainment of visitors. These ‘freak shows’ would be considered cruel and unacceptable these days but, back then, they were very popular and they generated income for the hospitals.
However, there is another contender for Carroll’s inspiration – a furniture upholsterer and inventor from Oxford called Theophilus Carter. He was a contemporary of Carroll and was known locally as ‘The Mad Hatter’ due to his resemblance to the Prime Minister, William Gladstone (who habitually wore top hats). Carter is said to have inspired Sir John Tenniel’s drawings of the Hatter in the books. He was a noted eccentric who invented many strange devices such as a clockwork toothbrush, a pair of roller skate slippers, and a hat which combed the wearer’s hair. Carroll had definitely heard of him because, when he visited the Great Exhibition of 1851, he mistakenly believed that an alarm clock that tipped the sleeper out of bed was the work of Carter (in fact, it was invented by a man called Robert Watson Savage).
So, perhaps the Hatter was a combination of Crab and Carter? The phrase ‘Mad as a Hatter’ first appeared in print around 30 years before Carroll wrote Alice and originally meant ‘mad’ as in ‘angry’. That certainly fits Crab’s profile more than Carter’s. Apart from his crazy inventions, there is very little that was ‘mad’ about Carter.
We may never know the true story but it it's nice that the people of Chesham may have a a historical link to one of literature’s most enduring and popular characters.
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