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Murderous Millinery

The fashion for feathers was more than just a moment of madness. For over half a century, from the 1870s to the 1920s, whatever your class, it was de rigeur to deck your hat with plumage, wings and entire birds. Parrots from the jungles of Borneo were paraded on the streets of Mayfair. Hummingbirds were worn in East End gin palaces. Not even the garden robin was safe.

Species around the world were being brought to the brink of extinction, with London as the world’s feather bourse. Plumage was shipped by the ton to the capital, unpacked and displayed in giant warehouses before monthly auctions.

On 21 March 1888, the biggest plumage sale yet recorded was held in the London Commercial Sales Rooms in Mincing Lane. The catalogue contained the following:

  • 16,000 packages of snowy egret, peacock, argus pheasant, duck and heron.
  • 8,000 parrots
  • 1,000 impeyan and 500 argus pheasants
  • 1,000 woodpeckers
  • 1,450 little auks and great crested grebes
  • 14,000 quail, grouse and partridge
  • 4,000 snipes and plovers
  • 7,000 starlings, jays and magpies
  • 12,000 hummingbirds
  • 5,000 tanagers
  • 6,000 blue creepers
  • 1,500 other creepers
  • Several hundred each of hawks, owls, gulls, terns, ducks, ibises, finches, orioles, larks, toucans, birds of paradise.

Once sold, the bundles of bird skins were unpacked, washed, dyed, trimmed and fashioned into millinery adornments in a series of fetid outhouses and backyards in the City of London. The feathered “novelties” then passed to a millinery warehouse, and hence to a milliner ⁠—whose young, workworn fingers would wrestle them onto a wire and cambric base and stitch them into place, pushing and pulling the needle in and out of the hat’s velvet bandeau.

quote-mark
A large lady approached, pointed her finger at the remains of a greater bird of paradise, and with grim determination, said to her shopping companion: ‘There! I want one o’ them, an’ I’m a’goin’ to have it, too!'”
⁠— W.T. Hornaday, 1912

This is a lost world: one in which the hats, their wearers and the women who made them have vanished. I have plundered the archives to bring this shadowy, feathery world back to life. From the Victorian feather washer imprisoned for stealing two ostrich feathers, to the Irish milliner masquerading as an Italian countess, I unveil the female labour propping up the plumage trade.

Who was buying the murderous millinery? Using old ledger books, diaries and newspaper gossip columns, I uncover the shopping weaknesses of titled ladies, suffragettes and brazen slum girls alike.

In 1903, an ounce of snowy egret feathers was worth twice its weight in gold. The so-called 'osprey' added height, grace and movement to a hat: every woman aspired to own one. ⁠— National Portrait Gallery, London
Feather workers ⁠— cheap female labour ⁠—transformed bird skins into millinery adornments. Chronic chest, eye and nose complaints were common among workers. ⁠— Granger Historical Picture Archive
The "bird hat" reached its apogee in the 1890s. Wild bird species around the world were brought to the brink of extinction by the highly lucrative plumage trade. Picture courtesy of The Met
Leading Characters
Women & Birds
Suffragettes

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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?).

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  • HOME
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    • Mrs. Pankhurst’s Purple Feather
      • Book Overview
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    • The Housekeeper’s Tale
      • Book Overview
      • Meet the Housekeepers
  • THE AUTHOR
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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