We've all heard the term "mad hatter", but few men exemplified it quite like Thomas Corbett. Tommy emigrated to the United States from England when he was still a child, and while living in New York, became an apprentice hat maker. Now the hatters of the time used mercury nitrate to turn the fur of beavers and other animals into felt. For the record, excessive exposure to mercury nitrate can lead to hallucinations, psychosis, and twitching (which people called the hatter's shakes). This being the mid-nineteenth century, instead of wondering what might be making all the hatters go insane, people just assumed that it was an industry that attracted eccentric people. Not to say that some people didn't suspect something, but let’s face it, changing things meant not having some pretty damn nice hats and nobody wanted that. Tommy worked his whole life as a hatter, only taking a short break to become a homeless drunk in Boston when his wife and baby died in childbirth. One night, after some seriously heavy drinking, a Methodist preacher found Tommy in the gutter and preached at him a while. It must have been some mighty fine preaching because Tommy got religion, never drank again, and changed his name to Boston.
The newly christened Boston got his life back together, going to church every day, and getting a new hatter job to boot. However, he didn't have many friends, probably because he spent all of his time preaching and praying, often stopping work to pray any time one of his co-workers cussed, which given he worked with a bunch of looney hatters, was quite often. Boston also sermonized on street corners, bellowing about the joys of heaven and terrors of hell, earning himself a local reputation as a harmless eccentric. To emulate Jesus, he grew his hair down past his shoulders. Now some might say it would be unfair to call Boston a religious nut, but you can just be the judge of that after these next few sentences. At age twenty-six, after a hard day of street sermonizing, Boston was propositioned by two prostitutes. Deeply disturbed by what most of us would call a boner, but what Boston thought of as a one way ticket to Satan's penthouse, Boston fled to his boardinghouse, read a couple of bible verses, and then castrated himself with a pair of scissors. Feeling holier, he ate a meal, went to church, and then finally went to see a doctor.
When the Civil War started Boston joined the Union Army, because while boners were impure, killing rebels was apparently still A-Okay. Boston did not do well in the army. He read out loud from his bible night and day, held unauthorized prayer meetings, refused to follow orders he thought unholy, and verbally reprimanded his superiors for using foul language. Tiring of this shit, the army court-martialed him and were going to shoot him, but instead decided that a dishonorable discharge was probably the less crazy choice. Boston then re-enlisted with a different army unit, because keeping accurate records hadn’t evolved past the “idea” stage back then, and promptly got himself captured and taken to Andersonville prison, a place so terrible that a quarter of the prison population died from shitting themselves to death. As for the survivors, they though the dead were the lucky ones. Boston was freed in a prisoner exchange five months later, after which, instead of being discharged, he was nursed back to health, promoted to sergeant, and sent off with the group responsible for hunting down John Wilkes Booth after he assassinated President Lincoln. The army was ordered to capture Booth alive, so when they found him holed up in a barn they lit it on fire. Boston then heroically shot him through a crack in the wall.
For not following orders, Boston was court martialed again, but then pardoned, because shooting Booth, instead of capturing him, just made things easier. After being discharged from the army, Boston went back to being a hat maker, but was soon fired for his fanatical behavior and paranoia. Convinced people were trying to murder him, he took to randomly pulling his pistol out and waving it around at the most inopportune moments. Boston tried to make money by lecturing on how he killed Booth to Sunday schools and women's groups, but this failed, because nobody likes incoherent speeches and random pistol brandishings. He then worked for the Kansas legislature as a doorman, but after pointing his pistol at several of the legislatures, was sent to an insane asylum. A little over a year later he escaped to Minnesota, where he was presumed killed in the Great Hinckley Fire which consumed 250,000 acres and 420 people.
Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Boston_Corbett_-_Brady-Handy.jpg