When the RSPB made feathers fly in the hat trade | Letters

Tessa Boase writes of the successful campaign against 'murderous millinery', while Malcolm Smith recalls the millions of birds slaughtered to provide for the feather-decorated hats obsession in the 19th-centuryYour feature on the ethics of wearing feathers (G2, 22 May) name-checks the American socialites behind the Audubon society of 1896, but makes no mention of the women who founded our own Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, with precisely the same goal, seven years earlier. Emily Williamson, Eliza Phillips and Etta Lemon campaigned against "murderous millinery" for over 30 years before the Importation of Plumage (Prohibition) Act finally became law in 1922, and feathers fell from fashion. They've not been remembered by history, but our instinctive unease around plumage is the direct result of their radical campaign.If all fashions are cyclical, is the Duchess of Cornwall's flamboyant pink-feathered wedding hat the start of a trend that will soon see whole herring gulls being worn on the heads of women? This was the look at the turn of the previous century. Tessa BoaseAuthor, Mrs Pankhurst's Purple Feather: Fashion, Fury and Feminism - Women's Fight for Change Continue reading...