Catherine Hutchison had never heard of Mrs Lemon – but she had, of course, heard of the RSPB, and so she let me in.

I felt I read too much about the suffragette/suffragist campaign a while ago and too many descriptions of force-feeding to want to go through more just yet, so it’s useful to know about the dual perspective in this one! She was a quartermaster of the local Red Cross branch, member of the workhouse board of guardians, and treasurer of the Children's Care Association. But this too, I feel doesn’t capture the whole essence of the book---If I had known from the beginning that this was about both ladies and both movements—Etta and Emmeline (like one of the chapters), I think I’d have been able to appreciate it much more when reading. Her legacy is the RSPB, grown from an all-female pressure group of 1889 with the splendidly simple pledge: Wear No Feathers. The more I got to know Etta Lemon, the more I found myself wondering if she was perhaps neuro-diverse, like today's eco activists Greta Thunberg and Chris Packham (see images below).Osprey" was an alternative term, although these birds were unlikely to be a significant source of feathers. The thought was so repulsive and off putting (mild words compared to what I felt), but then I realised that this was also a time when people did wear furs too, and with heads and tails attached! Also regarding the hats, I knew about hats with feathers but didn’t realise they had entire wings or even birds. What I especially liked about the book was the well-rounded and holistic picture it paints for us—we see the perspectives of the young girls who worked with feathers and for whom they were a symbol of respectability, to the suffragettes like Mrs Pankhust to whom too, these were a symbol of their femininity which was the basis on which they sought the vote; we peep into glamourous boutiques, and also into a hunt for egrets—the hunter thrilled with the money he makes from one trip (as indeed did the traders who interests weighed with politicians for a long enough time to see the plumage bill shelved many times for over a decade); and of course those, like Mrs Lemon who felt for the birds and could not bear to see them adorning the hats of the fashionable ladies of the day, to even Winifred Portland who had to tread a middle way for while she was a passionate animal lover, a vegetarian and hated blood sport, her husband hunted with equal passion, and she had to balance her role in the RSPB with her role as society hostess.

Although some were obtained from farmed ostriches, huge numbers of wild birds were killed for the millinery trade, many of which were egrets, leading to the trade term "aigrette" for such plumes. The Fur, Fin and Feather Folk society merged in 1891 with the Society for the Protection of Birds (SPB), also founded in 1889 by philanthropist Emily Williamson at Didsbury, Manchester. Etta's long battle against 'murderous millinery' triumphed with the Plumage Act of 1921 - but her legacy has been eclipsed by the more glamorous campaign for the vote, led by the elegantly plumed Emmeline Pankhurst.Instead, we got a look at those in the plumage industry (factory workers - and those who made money by stealing the feathers), those early eco-warriors who took on the millinery industry, and - contrastingly - the middle- and upper-class suffragettes whose eco-credentials perhaps now look a bit shaky. Support our vendors this winter and beyond If you can't visit your local vendor on a regular basis, then the next best way to support them is with a subscription to the Big Issue. Etta was not the pro-women heroine I’d imagined she was, despite her leading role in founding an all-female conservation society. She noticed how they would stand up and look tenderly at their eggs, using their beaks to rearrange them. She was never much of a scientific ornithologist’ wrote the great birder James Fisher , looking back on her achievements.

ETTA LEMON was originally published in hardback in 2018 under the title of MRS PANKHURST'S PURPLE FEATHER. I am quite bewildered, and do not know where I am,” wrote Etta, then aged 79, to one of her trusted male ‘Watchers’ at an RSPB reserve (the Watchers were her own invention; a nationwide system of eyes and ears for bird protection). The two movements ran somewhat parallelly and even contrary to each other for while Mrs Lemon sought a ban on plumes (and indeed whole birds) on hats, Mrs Pankurst’s ladies were encouraged to be more fashionable and lady-like which included flaunting these elaborate creations; Mrs Pankurst sought the vote for women while Mrs Lemon opposed it!She hatched the novel idea of selling bird boxes and bird seed to the British – first imported from Germany, then produced in-house. The village of Peaslake fairly swarmed with suffragettes, including Marion Wallace Dunlop (no-nonsense in tweeds, the first imprisoned militant to go on hunger strike in 1908) and Hilda Brackenbury (a formidable general’s widow, whose daughters had each served six weeks in Holloway). Look at Greta Thunberg, the young climate change activist whose unflinching focus has inspired a love-hate following. Most purchases from business sellers are protected by the Consumer Contract Regulations 2013 which give you the right to cancel the purchase within 14 days after the day you receive the item.

Etta’s long battle against ‘murderous millinery’ triumphed with the Plumage Act of 1921 – but her legacy has been eclipsed by the more glamorous campaign for the vote, led by the elegantly plumed Emmeline Pankhurst. This led to the establishment of a six-member committee headed by Julian Huxley of the Zoological Society of London that proposed changes in the management which included fixed terms for elected members. From these and Boase’s writing, we get a good sense of out two heroines, Etta Lemon and Emmeline Pankhurst—where they came from, what drove them, and their lives, thoughts and ideas which moved in very different directions to each other. A heron was watching the hatchlings from its perch on a tree; the parents circled around protectively.

Two earlier campaigning organisations founded in 1885, the Selborne League and the Plumage League, had amalgamated in the following year as the Selborne Society, [16] but were soon outstripped by the SPB because of the latter organisation's extensive network of local branches [17] and its single-issue focus. William Smith was a captain of musketry in the Royal Sherwood Fusiliers, later to become the Sherwood Foresters, and was adjutant at the musketry training school in Hythe. And the wholesale slaughter of migratory birds flying over countries like Malta or the Iberian peninsula has been carrying on apace for many years though I believe the practice is gradually being curtailed. I’m not sure Etta Lemon would be entirely in tune with my own beliefs – but I sure am glad someone was there to do the right thing by the birds!