So yesterday a reply to a tweet of mine got a lot of traction re: bike safety for skeletons

Anyway, it occurred to me that a bike helmet of sorts already existed when these photos were taken: the bowler hat!

Yes, really.



/1 https://twitter.com/fangeandmiqua/status/1307260867243769856

While we treat it as a a quaint bygone fashion statement, a comedy icon, or a symbol of “Britishness,” the humble bowler (or “derby” here in America) was a hard working hat

A literal hard hat

Seriously! /2

It’s all about the shape, baby! Like the humble arch, a well-constructed bowler deflects force acting upon it.

It’s no modern hard hat or helmet, but for the time it was effective enough to be used by laborers in a variety of fields. /3

It was particularly popular among railroad workers & navvies, such as these digging the Bramhope Tunnel in England in the late 1840s:

/4

(Bramhope is a subject for another time but it’s notable among bother reasons as it resulted in the only National memorial to navvies, let alone the 24 killed & countless wounded digging the long bore) /5

Similarly, these canal workers in the Merrimack Canal/Moody St Feeder in Lowell, MA are wearing... yup, bowlers!

(Image courtesy @LowellNPS Locks & Canals Collection) /6

It’s no surprise that when there’s a call for someone to do reenactment work as an 19th-early 20th century worker, I grab my bowler off the hat rack as I run for the car.

Period appropriate in more ways than one!

Forget what Hollywood tells you; bowlers “Won the West;” FAR more cowboys, settlers, & outlaws wore the sturdy bowler than cowboy hats.

Marion Hedgepeth, one of the fastest outlaw guns in the West, earned the nickname “the Derby Kid” w/ his. /8

The ubiquitous bowler leeched into popular culture. By the 20th century they morphed into the businessman’s hat, & the ubiquitous English “City Gent” was born. Primarily financial workers, thousands of umbrella-clasping Mr. Banks clones swarmed London’s streets into the 1960s. /9

Today we think of bowlers in terms of comedy; Chaplin, Laurel & Hardy. That’s all well & good, but it’s also a working person’s hat. It’s resilient! A tough hat for tough people!

/11 -end-