Etta Lemon: The Woman Who Saved the Birds

Product Information

The Plumage Act kicked in on 1 July 1921, spelling an end to the voracious trade in bird skins and ‘fancy feathers’. But until my book Etta Lemon was published, Hannah Lemon had heard nothing about her great, great, great aunt, the pioneering eco activist.

Geddes replied that the import restriction would continue "as long as possible" and that he "hoped" that the bill would be passed early in 1920. This was the first time in six years, since moving to London, that Hannah Lemon had chatted to strangers: ‘Not a sad, scary conversation about the Coronavirus, but positive, happy chat about the birdlife on the pond, and about the swans.I’ve shuddered in the past at images of women with parts of birds on their bonnets (and felt queasy as a child seeing fox stoles around the shoulders of older women) but hadn’t realised the extent of the practice or the industrial clout of the manufacturers of such monstrosities.

The book was an eye opener for me in many ways; I did know about feathers on hats as a fashion but did not have an idea of the extent of this practice and trade—I didn’t know how many species of wild birds were driven to the brink of extinction, or that the creations had full wings, or even entire birds on them. She noticed how they would stand up and look tenderly at their eggs, using their beaks to rearrange them. Bringing her story to life has convinced me that every campaigning group needs an Etta, and that characters like her will always earn themselves enemies.In the United Kingdom, Etta Lemon campaigned for 50 years against the slaughter of birds for elaborate fashion. I’ll admit that I came to this book for perhaps strange reasons – I’d heard that it was originally published as ‘Mrs Pankhurst’s Purple Feather: Fashion, Fury and Feminism’ and that sounded right up my street. This redoubtable personality, a woman not afraid to swim against the current, renowned for her public speaking and ‘masculine’ dominance of the field – how could she not get behind the ultimate battle for equality? Alongside, we follow Mrs Pankhurst’s story and the suffragette movement which resorted to violent protest and means to put forth the claim for votes for women; they too faced derision, cruelty, like force feeding when they went on hunger strike in prison or even violence/assault during protests.

The constitution for the newly merged society was written by Frank Lemon, who also served as its legal advisor. It’s something that her great, great, great aunt Etta, living in a far slower age, would have understood.

Etta married Frank Lemon in 1892, and as Mrs Lemon she became the first honorary secretary of the SPB, a post she kept until 1904, when the society became the RSPB. In fact, the book is the story of the broader campaign that took place to save the birds and to get parliament to ban trade in feathers (of which Etta was a prominent member) as also another powerful campaign that was being run alongside by an equally powerful, and perhaps a woman who stood out more, Emmeline Pankhust, the charismatic leader of the suffragettes.