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A flat cap is a rounded cap with a small stiff brim in front, originating in Northern England. The hat is also known in Ireland as a paddy cap; in Scotland as a bunnet; in Wales as a Dai cap; and in the United States as an English cap or Irish cap. Various other terms exist (scally cap, cabbie cap, driver cap, golf cap, 7 Gotta-Have Golf Hats for Tee Time. Retrieved June 10, 2023 longshoreman cap, ivy cap, jeff cap, train engineer cap and sixpence amongst others). Flat caps are usually made of tweed, wool or cotton, while some are made using leather, linen or corduroy. The inside of the cap is commonly lined for comfort and warmth.
An act in 1571 of the Parliament of England aimed to stimulate domestic wool consumption and general trade. It decreed that on Sundays and holidays, all males over 6 years of age, except for the nobility and "persons of degree", were to wear woollen caps or pay a fine of three farthings per day (). The act was repealed in 1597, by which time it had become firmly entrenched as a recognised mark of a commoner, such as a bourgeoisie, a tradesman or an apprentice. The style may have been the same as the Tudor bonnet still used in some styles of academic dress.
In the 19th and early-20th centuries, when men predominantly wore some form of headgear, flat caps were commonly worn throughout Great Britain and Ireland. Versions in finer cloth were also casual countryside wear for upper-class men. Flat caps were worn by fashionable young men in the 1920s. Boys of all classes in Britain wore caps during this period; a peaked school cap of prescribed colour and design, of more rounded shape than men's flat caps, was part of the normal school uniform.
The flat cap made its way to southern Italy in the late 1800s, likely brought by British servicemen. In Turkey, the flat cap became the main headgear for men after it became a replacement for the fez, which was banned by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1925. It also became popular in the Balkans around the same time.
In the early-20th century it was worn by working-class men in Spain and it became part of the traditional attire and folklore of Madrid, where it is called , gorra madrileña, or "Madrid Cap".
In Northern England notable wearers include: the television personality Fred Dibnah, from Bolton; the comic strip antihero Andy Capp, from Hartlepool; and the AC/DC vocalist Brian Johnson, from Newcastle.Katie Wales (2006). Northern English: a cultural and social history. p. 26. Cambridge University Press Anthony Bozza (2009). Why AC/DC Matters. p.54. HarperCollins, Retrieved 30 November 2011
In Peaky Blinders, a fictionalised BBC television series about Peaky Blinders, characters are seen wearing Newsboy cap, a similar style often confused for flat caps. It was thought, and adapted, that the gang had sewed-in razor blades on the peak of their flat caps for use as a weapon to blind their enemies.
Usage in the East End of London is illustrated by Jim Branning of the television soap opera EastEnders and Del Boy of Only Fools and Horses. Taxicab and bus drivers are often depicted wearing a flat cap, as comedically portrayed by Gareth Hale and Norman Pace's (Hale and Pace) "London cabbies" television sketches.
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