| Author |
Message |
    
Scott Medine
Sergeant
Username: Sem
Post Number: 46
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 16, 2003 - 9:06 am: |       |
Can anyone tell me what is a wide awake hat?
Peace,
Scott |
Jim DiPalma
Sergeant
Username: Jimd
Post Number: 11
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 16, 2003 - 9:57 am: | |
Hi Scott,
My understanding is a wide-awake is a soft hat with a wide brim, made out of a felt-like material that has no nap, hence the name.
Cheers,
Jim |
Kevin Braun
Sergeant
Username: Kbraun
Post Number: 37
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 16, 2003 - 10:58 am: | |
Hi Scott,
See http://www.hmg.co.uk/merlin/page6.htm
I imagine the sash or ribbon was optional.
Take care,
Kevin |
Scott Medine
Sergeant
Username: Sem
Post Number: 47
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 16, 2003 - 11:41 am: | |
Kim and Jim,
Thanks.
Peace,
Scott |
Chris Scott
Sergeant
Username: Chris
Post Number: 43
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 16, 2003 - 1:35 pm: | |
Hi Scott
From what I have read, the "Wide awake" hat was best known in early 20th century as the type of hat worn in the early scouting movement. This type of hat is very similat to that still worn by the Canadian Mounted police.
chris
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Monty
Sergeant
Username: Monty
Post Number: 29
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, April 17, 2003 - 11:51 am: | |
Folks,
Just for my own curiosity....was this kind of hat (wide awake) popular in 1888 ??
If so, with whom ?
Monty
|
Scott Medine
Detective Sergeant
Username: Sem
Post Number: 51
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, April 18, 2003 - 8:29 am: | |
Monty,
There is an illustration, I forget where it originally came from nor can I remember which book I have seen it in, but it shows a man in what appears to be a wide-awake hat. As we spoke about in e-mail, this illustration may stem from the Ada Wilson event.
Also, the information I have been received on the style of hat states that it was used chiefly by people in rural areas. However with the coming of the industrial movement and its subsequent migration of people into the city,the hat became more and more popular with people in the city and at the close of the 19th Century, it was becoming fashionable with the upper and middle classes.
Peace,
Scott |
Robert Charles Linford
Sergeant
Username: Robert
Post Number: 41
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Friday, April 18, 2003 - 12:05 pm: | |
Hi all
In the Conan Doyle story "The Yellow Face" a man with a brown wide-awake enters Holmes's rooms. He is a comfortably off hop merchant with an income of seven or eight hundred.
Robert |
Monty
Sergeant
Username: Monty
Post Number: 31
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, April 19, 2003 - 9:01 am: | |
Scott,
You thinking of the 'Kosminski' illustration in the A-Z ??
Cos I am ! Yeah, I agree about the Wilson event.
I was wondering if the hat was a US influence.
Monty
 |
Fred Grogan
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - 4:56 pm: | |
The phrase "Wide-Awake" was associated with the idea of vigilance and unofficial military organizations in mid-19th century America. Its a little confusing, since it was just a saying associated with more than one philosophy, the anti-immigrant "Know Nothings" used the term as a watchword as did some other more liberal groups.
How the hat style came to be so-called, one can only guess. My take on the general look of a wide-awake hat is what we today would consider a classic man's felt or slouch hat. It may have originated on the frontier or with the idea of a watchman's hat. Also have read anecdotes about a streetcar man in the midwest, using the call "wide-Awake!" as a warning to pedestrians, about 1890-1900.
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