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Feathered Women and Persecuted Birds: The struggle against the Plumage Trade, c. 1860–1922

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2008

R. J. Moore-Colyer
R. J. Moore-Colyer
Affiliation:
Welsh Institute of Rural Studies, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, Wales, UK.
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Extract

In the personality of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, undisputed mistress of Whig society in the two closing decades of the eighteenth century, were combined a heady mixture of formidable intellectual qualities and a recklessness and frivolity extraordinary even by the standards of the day. Leaving aside her involvement in high politics, the ambivalence of her personal relationships and her adventures at the card table, she would be memorable alone as a fashion icon whose excesses, particularly where her milliner and coiffeuse were concerned, were legendary. From the moment she appeared in public with a three-foot hair tower created with pads of horsehair and set off with an exotic arrangement of stuffed birds and ostrich feathers, female society high and low began its lengthy love affair with feathers.1 Fashions might ebb and flow, yet feathers, in some form or another, would intermittently adorn women's clothes (and the uniforms of some units of the Army) for the next century or so. This article is largely concerned with the efforts of various individuals and groups to bring an end to the trade in exotic plumage which fed upon the demand for the feathers of birds from tropical and subtropical territories.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , April 2000 , pp. 57 - 73
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2000

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References

Notes

1. Foreman, A., Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (London, 1998), p. 37.Google Scholar

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4. Sharpe held his post until 1942. The Society became ‘Royal’ in 1904 as the scope of its work widened beyond a mere concern for the plumage trade. For details see Sheail, J., Nature in Tmst: the History of Nature Conservation in Britain (London, 1976), pp. 4–5Google Scholar; Tomalin, R., W. H. Hudson: A Biography (London, 1982), p. 141.Google Scholar

5. The Times, 28th December, 1897. Ironically the Duchess of York wore an ‘aigrette’ of feathers at an RSPCA prize giving in 1895, while Queen Alexandra eventually abandoned feathers in 1906, two years after the SPB achieved its Royal Charter. As late as 1920, Queen Mary, notorious for her hats, wore egret feathers at a royal garden party notwithstanding that she and the King were patrons of the RSPCA (see Haynes p. 30).

6. The Times, 31st December, 1897.Google Scholar

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13. Report and Minutes of Evidence of the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Importation of Plumage Prohibition Bill, 1908, Cd 136, Q 93.Google Scholar

14. The Times, 16th March, 1920.Google Scholar

15. Cd 137, Q 259.

16. Cd 137, Q 234.

17. The Times, 5th July, 1920.Google Scholar

18. During the course of the debate on the second reading of the Plumage Bill in 1920 a petition was presented with the signatures of 2286 plumage workers who urged that no legislation be passed until a Bill were drafted which protected both the birds and their livelihood (Hansard, 30th April, 1920).

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22. Cd Ibid, Q 235.

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25. The Times, 5th July, 1920.Google Scholar

26. The Times, 16th January, 1920. The contemporary London Directory includes firms of Mosbacher, Kuppervasser, Laufer, Podgurzer and Heymans among the more prominent feather brokers and merchants.Google Scholar

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31. ‘Britannicus’, ‘The Plumage Bill’, Outlook, 45, 19th June, 1920, 688.Google Scholar

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33. Ibid, Q 314–315.

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37. The Times, 6th March, 1920.Google Scholar

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40. W. H. Hudson, who had been friendly with Massingham for some years, wrote in February 1920, ‘Young Massingham is, I know, a tremendously energetic person – he and his wife both write to me occasionally and he is now fighting for a law to exclude feathers from our markets – in which I'm with him heart and soul’. (Garnett, E. (ed), Letters from W. H. Hudson to Edward Garnett (London, 1925), p. 197). Having started the Plumage Bill Group after a campaign in The Spectator, Massingham spent many months trying to drum up public support and obtain funds. By Autumn 1919, progress was palpable and he wrote excitedly to Maude Royden of the importance of non-stop public agitation and the need for pressure to be applied to the Board of Trade (London Guildhall University MSS, GB 106/7/AMR/S/l).Google Scholar

41. Poems about Birds (London, 1922), p. 15.Google Scholar

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43. The system operated such that less than six and no more than twelve months notice was given to the trade in respect of scheduled birds so that traders and brokers could notify clients and dispose of existing stock (The Times, 4th March, 1914).

44. Bensusan, S. L., ‘Birds and the Plumage Trade’, The Nineteenth Century and After, LXXIV (2), 1913, 1067–1069Google Scholar; ‘Bird Preservation and the Plumage Trade’, Outlook, 32, 8th November, 1913, 637–638.Google Scholar

45. The Times, 18th January, 1909.Google Scholar

46. Cd 137, Qs 53–6.

47. Ibid, Q 192.

48. Buckland, , ‘The Plumage Trade’, p. 722.Google Scholar

49. The Times, 26th March, 1920.Google Scholar

50. The Times, 21st April, 1911.Google Scholar

51. The Times, 18th January, 1898.Google Scholar

52. Buckland, , ‘The Plumage Trade’, p. 716.Google Scholar

53. The Times, 23rd March, 1920.Google Scholar

54. The counter-argument of the plumage interests that since large numbers of parakeets and parrots in India were regularly slaughtered to protect rice crops, their carcasses may as well be sold as left to rot, was virtually disregarded (The Times, 4th January, 1898; Cd 137, Qs 260–3). I am reliably informed by Professor William Haresign that the roseate cockatoo (the ‘Galah’) is at present the main predator of wheat in Western Australia. The collection and export of its eggs, however, is totally prohibited.

55. Hansard, , 9th March, 1914.Google Scholar

56. The Times, 30th July, 1914.Google Scholar

57. The Times, 15th July, 1914.Google Scholar

58. The Times, 4th June, 1920.Google Scholar

59. The Times, 11th and 16th June, 1920.Google Scholar

60. The Times, 26th October, 1920.Google Scholar

61. The Times, 6th and 7th May, 1921.Google Scholar

62. At the time of the passing of the Act, only ostrich and eider duck were on the schedule. By 1951 another nine species were included.

63. The Times, 11th May, 1921.Google Scholar

64. Barclay-Smith, P., ‘The Trade in Bird Plumage’, UFAW, Courier, Autumn 1957, 9–12.Google Scholar