A top hat, or a “topper” was an essential part of a Victorian gentleman’s wardrobe, and no self-respecting toff would be seen on the streets without one.

The lower classes, with social pretensions also liked to wear one, but there’s was most often a cast off that had been bought from one of the many second hand clothes shops that thrived in the poorer quarters at the time.

Doctors often wore top hats, although, if the following article, which appeared in The Coventry Herald, on Friday the 12th of October 1888, is to be believed, moves were afoot to persuade doctors to dispense with this particular type of headgear:-:-

THE ABOLITION OF THE TOP HAT

A correspondent of The Lancet writes:-

Would it not be a great boon to medical men to abolish the use of the tall silk hat, known as the ‘top hat’?

Has it not every disadvantage as a comfortable and hygienic headgear?

And, could not a substitute he found made of soft felt, the same material as clergymen’s hats are made of, and somewhat the shape of the hat called the “Beaufort”, one flat at at the top and about two-thirds the height of the top hat, which would look equally professional, and be infinitely more comfortable.

PROBLEMS WITH TOP HATS

The tall hat now worn constricts the head, makes many people’s head ache, impedes circulation in the scalp, and is always a nuisance in wet weather – a fact appreciated this summer.

During, in his work On The Skin, goes so far as to say that such hats are a mechanical cause of baldness in men.

To quote his words:-

‘The hard rim of the hat pressing on the temporal arteries narrows the blood-stream, and checks the advance of pabulum to the hair.

Those seated farthest from the periphery suffer most, on the crown, though the temples, as their name indicates, are also easily affected, no doubt because the skin there is wholly dependent on the temporal arteries for its supply.’

A LOT OF PRESSURE

Evidence of its causing headache can easily be obtained; but, to quote a standard work, that of Bristowe’s Practice of Medicine:-

A GREAT BENEFIT

“Thus pain, almost accurately resembling in all its characteristics that of megrim, may be induced by the simple pressure of an unyielding hat upon the frontal branches of the fifth pair, which, though cured by removal of that pressure, often lasts long enough.

If only a sufficient number who wished a change – and I am sure they are numerous – would abolish its use, it would be a great benefit allowing a young man (the older men can more easily please themselves) to wear a comfortable hat without being thought unprofessional in appearance. “Your bonnet to his right use; ’tis for the head.””