Mad as a hatter

"Mad as a hatter" is a colloquial English phrase used in conversation to suggest (lightheartedly) that a person is suffering from insanity.

The earliest known appearance of the phrase in print is in an 1829 issue of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, predating the Hatter from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by several decades.

There are many theories about the possible origin of the saying: Boston Corbett, who shot Abraham Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Booth, spent his early life as a hat maker.

XLIV, there is a conversation between a group of fictional characters: NORTH: Many years – I was Sultan of Bello for a long period, until dethroned by an act of the grossest injustice; but I intend to expose the traitorous conspirators to the indignation of an outraged world.

[6][7][8]Canadian author Thomas Chandler Haliburton used the phrase twice in his 1835 book The clockmaker; or the sayings and doings of Samuel Slick of Slickville: "And with that he turned right round, and sat down to his map and never said another word, lookin' as mad as a hatter the whole blessed time" and "Father he larfed out like any thing; I thought he would never stop – and sister Sall got right up and walked out of the room, as mad as a hatter.