Etta Lemon: The Woman Who Saved the Birds

A heroine for our times, Etta Lemon campaigned for fifty years against the worldwide slaughter of birds for extravagantly feathered hats. Her legacy is the RSPB, grown from an all-female pressure group of 1889 with the splendidly simple pledge: Wear No Feathers.

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 gripping narrative explores two formidable heroines and their rival, overlapping campaigns. Moving from the feather workers’ slums to high society, from the first female political rally to the rise of the eco-feminist, it restores Etta Lemon to her rightful place in history – the extraordinary woman who saved the birds.

Etta Lemon was originally published in hardback in 2018 under the title of Mrs Pankhurst's Purple Feather: Fashion, Fury and Feminism – Women’s Fight for Change.