bad hat, n. — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

bad hat n.

[according to Charles Mackay’s Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions (1841) f. a London election in the borough of Southwark, c.1838, in which one of the candidates was well known as a hat-maker. As he campaigned he would single out any voter whose hat fell beneath the highest standards and declare: ‘What a shocking bad hat you have got, call at my warehouse and you shall have a new one.’ On the day of the election, as he gave his final speech, his opponents urged a hostile crowd to drown him out by chanting: ‘What a shocking bad hat!’ The phr. caught on and, first in its entirety, and subseq. in its abbr. form, entered popular sl. It survived through the 19C and gradually declined through the first half of the 20C. An alternative ety. attributes the phr. to the Duke of Wellington, who on his first visit to the Peers’ Gallery of the House of Commons remarked, on looking down on the members of the Reform Parliament: ‘I never saw so many shocking bad hats in my life’; but note cit. 1832]

a rogue, an untrustworthy person; thus bad-hat adj.

1831		Mirror of Lit. 16 July 48/1: What A Shocking bad Hat You’ve Got. This phrase has acquired a popularity far exceeding that of BCY, of dead wall notoriety. It is in every man’s mouth, but in no man’s understanding.
[1832		Egan Bk of Sports n.p.: I will allow those blackguard little boys again to insult me with the prevailing, foolish, unmeaning phrase of ‘What a shocking bad hat you have got!’ if ever they lay hold of me more].
1838		R.S. Surtees Jorrocks Jaunts (1874) 23: Vot a swell!—vot a shocking bad hat!—vot shocking bad breeches! [footnote] ‘Vot a shocking bad hat!’—the slang cockney phrase of 1831.
[c.1840		‘Chanting Benny’ in Holloway & Black (1979) II 14: What a dreadful shocking bad hat].
[1840		Flash Mirror 8: What a shocking bad tile you’ve got].
[1846		D. Corcoran Picking from the Picayune 27: Our new hat had been taken ‘by mistake’ from a party, and a shocking bad one left in its stead].
[1855		Bell’s Life in Sydney 2 June 3/2: Here a boy with a tray and a sheep’s head upon it, cried, ‘my eye, there she goes, with a shocking bad bonnet’].
1859		Sussex Advertiser 13 Sept. 7/1: Many remember the saying so popular many years ago in London, ‘What a shocking bad hat’.
[1865		‘Mr Carlisle’ Stray Leaves 19: We all wore ‘shocking had hats,’ 1 but none the less comfortable].
1876		Besant & Rice Son of a Vulcan I 196: After becoming the bad hat of the whole lot [...] my brothers and sisters declined to do anything for me.
1883		W. Besant Captain’s Room II ix: There may be one or two bad hats among eldest sons; but... there cannot be one who would dare to take his wife’s salary and deprive her of her son [F&H].
1886		’Arry’s Spring Thoughts’ in Punch 185: ’Tisn’t shockin’ bad ’ats and soft sawder will muzzle the Radical ’ound.
1894		G.A. Sala in Daily Tel. 28 July in Ware (1909) 15/1: What a shocking bad hat! is the next cry, with something of an historical flavour about it, that I can recollect.
1893		(con. 1830s) H. Vizetelly Glances back 103: No end of unmeaning slang phrases [...] were in circulation liming the multitude and the ‘faster’ section of society. One’s ears were incessantly assailed with such cries as ‘What a shocking bad hat!’ ‘There he goes with his eye out!’ ‘How are you off for soap?’ Flare up! and join the union,’ ‘Does your mother know you're out?’ or ‘It’s all very fine, Mr. Fergusson, but you don't lodge here.’.
1904		L.M. Palmer-Archer Bush Honeymoon 171: His wife was reckoned a ‘holy terror’ too, and they were generally summed up as a couple of bad hats.
1914		C. Holme Lonely Plough (1931) 100: The young folk and Cowgill – bad hats, every one of them!
1925		N. Lucas Autobiog. of a Thief 141: Between you and I [...] I’m supposed to be rather a bad hat.
1935		N. Algren Somebody in Boots 105: He been actin’ bad-hat-about-town goin’ on fifteen year.
1943		‘Myles na gCopaleen’ Faustus Kelly in ‘Flann O’Brien’ Stories & Plays (1973) 162: I want to talk to my sister about a blighter called Kelly [...] A very bad hat, I’m told.
1958		M. Allingham Hide My Eyes (1960) 59: He couldn’t turn out to be a real bad hat after all these years, could he?
1962		F.M. Cutlack Breaker Morant 59: The bad hats in Picton’s part of the detachment were returned to Pietersburg.
1979		S. King Dead Zone (1980) 74: I don’t mean bad hats like you, Sonny, drifters like you we know what to do with.
2024		J. Meades Empty Wigs (t/s) 641: These people are like the bad-hats in the Bible.