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The Books

Mrs Pankhurst’s Purple Feather

Fashion, Fury and Feminism ⁠— Women’s Fight for Change

When Mrs Pankhurst stormed the House of Commons with her militant suffragettes in 1909, she wore on her hat a voluptuous purple feather.

This is the intriguing story behind that feather.

Twelve years before the suffragette movement began dominating headlines, a very different women’s campaign captured the public imagination. Its aim was radical: to stamp out the fashion for feathers in hats. Leading the fight to save the birds was a character just as heroic as Emmeline Pankhurst, but with opposite beliefs. Her name was Etta Lemon, and she was anti-fashion, anti-feminist ⁠— and anti-suffrage.

Mrs Lemon has been forgotten by history, but the RSPB lives on. It is, today, Britain’s biggest conservation charity ⁠— and its early story has never before been told. Read more…

Mrs Pankhurst?s Purple Feather: Fashion, Fury and Feminism ? Women?s Fight for Change by Tessa Boase

The Housekeeper’s Tale

The Women Who Really Ran the English Country House

Revelatory, gripping and unexpectedly poignant, this is the story of the invisible women who ran the English country house.

This was one of the most prestigious jobs a 19th or early 20th-century woman could want ⁠— and also one of the toughest. The housekeeper of an English country house might manage a hundred servants and a domestic budget on a par with a small bank. She had no need of a home of her own, or, for that matter, a husband. But for all her importance, she has been invisible to history.

The Housekeeper’s Tale draws on entirely new sources to tell the extraordinary stories of the women who ran some of Britain?s most prominent households. There is an unwanted pregnancy, a forbidden love affair, a prison sentence and several cases of summary dismissal. Far from the cosy, complacent world of Mrs Hughes in Downton Abbey, real housekeepers worked surprisingly hard, often in humiliating circumstances, for very little financial reward. This was not, as it turns out, such a cushy job. Read more…

The Housekeeper's Tale by Tessa Boase

From the Blog

  • Let’s have more statues of women – however controversial

    ‘Mary Wollstonecraft’ by Maggi Hambling. ‘It’s a sculpture about now, in her

    28 November, 2019
  • drawing of Emily Williamson

    Looking for Emily Williamson, RSPB founder

    Victorian campaigner Emily Williamson was so incensed by the millinery trade’s use

    6 November, 2019
  • The strange ritual of the Servants’ Christmas Ball

    Uneasy mingling: the Servants’ Ball at ITV’s Downton Abbey, where Lady Grantham

    29 December, 2018
SEE THE BLOG

News & Events

Woman’s Hour, BBC Radio 4
Hear all about Etta Lemon, the ‘Margaret Thatcher’ of the birding world. How did this remarkable character hone her campaigning skills, and why was she stabbed in the back by the men who took over the RSPB?

Secrets of the National Trust with Alan Titchmarsh (Channel 5)
Erddig Hall in North Wales was once home to the Yorkes ⁠— a family famously kind to their servants. Or were they? I uncovered the story of ‘thief cook’ Ellen Penketh, jailed in 1907 for allegedly stealing £500 from her insecure mistress Louisa Yorke.

Radio Gorgeous interview with Josephine Pembroke, talking twitchers (why are hardcore birders almost always men?), the mysterious workings of the RSPB (why wouldn’t they let me revisit their archives?) and Mrs Pankhurst’s penchant for fashion (why so many feathered hats?).

SEE ALL NEWS & EVENTS
  • HOME
  • BOOKS
    • Press
    • Mrs. Pankhurst’s Purple Feather
      • Book Overview
      • Leading Characters
      • Women & Birds
      • Murderous Millinery
      • Suffragettes
    • The Housekeeper’s Tale
      • Book Overview
      • Meet the Housekeepers
  • THE AUTHOR
  • NEWS & EVENTS
  • BLOG
  • CONTACT
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  • HOME
  • BOOKS
    • Press
    • Mrs. Pankhurst’s Purple Feather
      • Book Overview
      • Leading Characters
      • Women & Birds
      • Murderous Millinery
      • Suffragettes
    • The Housekeeper’s Tale
      • Book Overview
      • Meet the Housekeepers
  • THE AUTHOR
  • NEWS & EVENTS
  • BLOG
  • CONTACT
Tessa Boase