Hands off my hat! The hidden power of headwear and ‘hatiquette’ in early modern England – new study

By Bernard Capp, Emeritus Professor of History, University of Warwick

Around 8pm on a cold February evening in 1733, a gentleman named Francis Peters was returning to his home near Knightsbridge, London, in a hackney cab, when someone knocked on the wooden shutters of the door. An armed horseman thrust a pistol inside, demanded Peters’s money and valuables and snatched a ring from his finger. Peters handed them over without fuss. But when the thief also snatched his hat and wig, he protested vigorously, though in vain – the robber rode away with his booty.

The puzzle, to the modern reader, is that the hat…

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