Etta Lemon: The Woman Who Saved the Birds

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Members pledged not to wear the feathers of any bird not killed for food, excepting the ostrich, which was farmed for its plumes. A handful of redoubtable women – sort of ornithological suffragettes - who (a good decade before Mrs Pankhurst came on the scene) campaigned with mild militancy against the fashion for feathered hats, and coaxed the nation to fall in love with birds. Other early members included the wealthy, unmarried Catherine Hall, and the 15-year-old Hannah Poland, a fish merchant's daughter. It felt almost as if they’d been there to entertain us,’ says Hannah, ‘and now life had got back to normal.

She was made an MBE in 1920 in recognition of her work at the hospital, [2] and in the following year she was appointed as a justice of the peace, thereby becoming one of Reigate's first two women magistrates. She worked for many other organisations, including the Royal Earlswood Hospital, the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League, and the local Red Cross branch.Frank Lemon died suddenly in April 1935, aged 76, and Etta took over his role as honorary secretary. Her legacy is the RSPB, grown from an all-female pressure group of 1889 with the splendidly simple pledge: Wear No Feathers. Margaretta " Etta" Louisa Lemon MBE ( née Smith; 22 November 1860 – 8 July 1953) was an English bird conservationist and a founding member of what is now the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB).

She was never much of a scientific ornithologist,” wrote the great birder James Fisher, looking back on her achievements. Etta Lemon: The Woman Who Saved Birds tells the story of Margaretta ‘Etta’ Lemon, who worked for around five decades to bring an end to a cruel practice—the slaughter of millions of birds every year, simply for the millinery industry—and who was also a founding member of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. I found out online that they might lay seven to eight eggs, and that only two might survive to adulthood. Lemon was one of the first four female honorary members of the British Ornithologists' Union (BOU) admitted in 1909, although she never considered herself to be an ornithologist. 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 therefore conducted the society's daily business as the honorary secretary of the society's publishers and watchers committees. This bullish, determined and frankly fearsome woman steered the fledgling RSPB from its all-female origins, in 1889, all the way up to her brutal ejection by men in 1939.

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. Moving from the feather workers' slums to high society, from the first female political rally to the triumph of women's suffrage and the Plumage Act of 1921, it celebrates the extraordinary, untold story of Etta Lemon, the woman who saved the birds Etta Lemon: The Woman Who Saved the Birds is the story of a pioneering conservationist who led the campaign against the slaughter of wild birds for extravagantly feathered hats and coaxed the world to care for birds. 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.

The upcoming generation of male birders impatiently dismissed the RSPB’s female founders as elderly, unscientific, Christian do-gooders. Eventually, the two were combined and absorbed by the RSPCA but continued to remain for a while a society run by women.

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? Etta was not the pro-women heroine I’d imagined she was, despite her leading role in founding an all-female conservation society. From 1891 to her death in 1954, the president of the SPB was Winifred Cavendish-Bentinck, Duchess of Portland. Mrs Pankhurst and her fellow suffragettes, smartly dressed, their hats adorned with the feather fashions of the day, striving against a male dominated society to get votes for women.ETTA LEMON was originally published in hardback in 2018 under the title of MRS PANKHURST'S PURPLE FEATHER. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. These adverts enable local businesses to get in front of their target audience – the local community.