What do Abraham Lincoln, Mr. Peanut, and Rich Uncle Pennybags from the Monopoly game all have in common?
The answer, of course, is their headgear. All three are well known for wearing a top hat; or in President Lincoln’s case, the even more impressive stovepipe.
According to fashion legend, the top hat was invented by an English haberdasher named John Hetherington in the winter of 1797. Supposedly, Hetherington owned a hat-making stall on the Strand in the City of Westminster, in central London, and it was there that he designed a new and striking style of elongated headwear, cylindrical in shape with a broad, stiff brim, and made of rich and lustrous black silk.
Whether or not that history is entirely accurate is somewhat open to question, but it nevertheless appears to be the case that Hetherington was indeed the first person to wear a top hat while walking around the streets of London. And we know that because Hetherington’s choice of headgear eventually landed him in trouble with the law.
Allegedly, it was on the morning of January 16, 1797, that Hetherington decided to premiere his new creation by stepping out of his shop and walking around the streets of London wearing his top hat, to drum up some new business. It’s certainly true that his design turned more than a few heads; but as he continued to walk, the stir he created behind him eventually transformed into a full-scale riot.
“Several women fainted at the unusual sight,” recorded one contemporary report, reproduced by the Hatter’s Gazette almost a century later. “Children screamed, dogs barked,” and the young son of a local cordwainer (i.e. shoemaker) was “thrown down by the crowd which had collected [around Hetherington] and had his right arm broken” in the melee. Eventually, the ruckus caused by Hetherington’s hat caught the attention of a group of police constables, who had him arrested and taken to the Lord Mayor— along with his top hat—on a charge of breaching the peace.
In his defense, Hetherington claimed that he was not breaking any laws but was “merely exercising a right to appear in a head-dress of his own design,” something which he decreed was “a right not denied to any Englishman.” The Lord Mayor, it seems, did not share Hetherington’s relaxed attitude, and when his hat was displayed to the court as evidence, its design was deemed to be “calculated to frighten timid people.”
Hetherington was found guilty of appearing “on the public highway wearing upon his head what he called a silk hat … a tall structure having a shiny luster,” and as recompense ordered to pay bonds totaling £500—a staggering amount for the time, equivalent to more than £60,000 ($82,000) today.
Hetherington’s hat might have landed him in trouble back in 1797, but the design nevertheless caught on. Before long, elongated top hats began to grow in popularity (and we can presume, become somewhat less scandalous and frightening), and by the 19th century were considered the height of fashion in upper-class society. Hetherington’s place in their history, meanwhile, eventually became the stuff of legend.