Etta Lemon: The Woman Who Saved the Birds

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Although the new organisation adopted the SPB title, in practice the London group provided most of its administration.

Few, today, are aware that Britain’s biggest conservation charity, the RSPB, was born through the determined efforts of a handful of women, led by the indomitable Mrs Lemon. Eventually, the two were combined and absorbed by the RSPCA but continued to remain for a while a society run by women. To these hundreds of poor young women, feathers represented not a living thing (in fact, few had ever had any real contact with birds having lived in the city all of their lives), but certainly a living, ready money (feathers stolen at work), and a symbol of respectability and acceptance. As the government’s national archive for England, Wales and the United Kingdom, The National Archives hold over 1,000 years of the nation’s records for everyone to discover and use. 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.A fascinating trip into the history of the RSPB (which was a complete surprise) and its links to the suffragette movement. Luxuriantly bearded Victorians felt deeply proprietorial about nature, and there was much patronizing sneering. The upcoming generation of male birders impatiently dismissed the RSPB’s female founders as elderly, unscientific, Christian do-gooders.

In 1904, the queen gave her approval for the SPB to be incorporated by Royal Charter and become the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds RSPB. She then spoke so brilliantly at the International Congress of Women in Westminster, 1899 that a male journalist rated her ‘discriminating advocacy’ as far superior to ‘any amount of passionate and headlong declamation’. Her father, Tim Lemon (a source of many Etta anecdotes and pictures) told me his daughter was born with an uncanny ability to find the smallest bird or insect.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. Look at Greta Thunberg, the young climate change activist whose unflinching focus has inspired a love-hate following. And speaking of pictures, I must mention that the images in the book are really high quality which I appreciated a lot. It felt almost as if they’d been there to entertain us,’ says Hannah, ‘and now life had got back to normal. The Plumage Act kicked in on 1 July 1921, spelling an end to the voracious trade in bird skins and ‘fancy feathers’.