Tessa BoaseTessa BoaseTessa BoaseTessa Boase
  • 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

Looking for Emily Williamson, RSPB founder

    Home Uncategorized Looking for Emily Williamson, RSPB founder
    NextPrevious
    drawing of Emily Williamson

    Looking for Emily Williamson, RSPB founder

    By Tessa Boase | Uncategorized | 5 comments | 6 November, 2019 | 3

    drawing of Emily Williamson

    Victorian campaigner Emily Williamson was so incensed by the millinery trade’s use of plumage that she invited her friends to tea ⁠— and persuaded them to sign a pledge to wear no feathers. The all-female group called itself the Society for the Protection of Birds ⁠— “a very ambitious title,” noted The Times, under the headline “Birds and Bonnets.” The year was 1889, and the fashion for feathers was reaching a terrible crescendo.

    The story of the RSPB’s unstoppable growth (its ‘R’ for Royal Charter granted in 1904) is, of course, is history.

    Except that it isn’t. Because the writers of history then chose to ignore, or suppress, or even reinvent the remarkable fact that the British bird conservation movement had female founders. The ladies behind this society got none of the credit. Emily survives in the annals as a faceless name, and that is all.

    Who was Emily Williamson?

    When I started researching the RSPB’s surprising eco-feminist roots, it was very difficult to find out. The tea party anecdote cropped up in a handful of books, but with no flesh on its bones. There was no photograph, “and you won’t find one,” the RSPB’s librarian told me. “None exist.” A Blitz bomb had destroyed most of those early archives during the Second World War.

    But Emily’s house is still standing, and so a pilgrimage to Didsbury, Manchester seemed like a good place to start.

    The Croft, Didsbury – where the Society for the Protection of Birds was founded by women protesting about ‘murderous millinery’, 1889

    The Croft is a substantial brick house sitting within the Botanical Gardens at Fletcher Moss Park ⁠— the alpine garden created by Emily and her solicitor husband Robert in the 1880s. The couple had no children. Nature, plant-gathering expeditions and horticulture fulfilled their lives. Today the garden is thriving once again, thanks to a team of dedicated volunteers. It’s a lush, surprising, otherworldly space, seemingly far from England’s north with its spiky palms and giant, fleshy plants. Bird feeders hang from every spare bough, with blue tits and robins darting back and forth.

    The Botanical Garden within Fletcher Moss Park was created by bird-lovers Emily and Robert Williamson in the mid 1880s

    The old brick house is now divided into flats. I’d heard that the RSPB had marked its centenary here in 1989, and so I walked around it slowly, looking in vain for a blue plaque. Where had Emily Williamson been remembered?

    “Who, love?” asked a baffled park warden. “Never ‘eard of ‘er!”

    Had I come to the wrong place? Confused, I rang the phone number on a “Friends of Fletcher Moss” noticeboard, and got chairman Alan Hill. “Ooh, it’s a bit of a scandal,” he said, pleased that I was asking. “Go and see for yourself.”

    He directed me to a dank bit of wall near to the café entrance, where a square metal board bearing the RSPB’s logo was half hidden. “Action For Birds ⁠— 100 years,” it read. But the name on the plaque was not Emily Williamson’s.

    “The unveiling was performed by the Society’s President MAGNUS MAGNUSSON on 17th February 1989 at The Croft, where the Society was founded one hundred years ago,” it read. Incredibly, it made no mention of the founder herself.


    I saw what Alan meant. It was a bit of a scandal.

    I caught the train back south and began to search in earnest for Emily Williamson. When The Manchester Evening News had sent a reporter to the unveiling of the centenary plaque, he’d described Emily Williamson as a “stout Victorian woman.” In 1889 she would have been 34.

    I turned to Ancestry.com, which led me to a living relative: Emily’s great nephew, the animal ethologist Professor Patrick Bateson, Fellow of the Royal Society. I sent an email, and received a charming reply. “Good heavens. Did Great Aunt Emily really start the RSPB? It would be so good if that were true!”

    It was true. Astonishingly, neither he nor any family members had any idea about this aspect of her life. How modest she must have been. This same deliberate anonymity was also true of her RSPB co-founders, Eliza Phillips and Etta Lemon, the Croydon women whose Fur, Fin and Feather Folk merged with Emily’s society in 1891. The magnificent Etta Lemon then took the bird protection movement robustly forward for the next half century.

    I asked Patrick Bateson if there was, by chance, a photograph. And later that day, an email dropped into my inbox. Opening that file was a tremendously exciting moment. I couldn’t have guessed at the power this image would come to hold when it eventually went out into the world, on publication of my book Mrs Pankhurst’s Purple Feather in 2018.

    Rare image: the first and only known picture of Emily Williamson as an adult, unearthed when I contacted family members via ancestry.com

    Melissa Bateson unveils a plaque in honour of her great, great aunt, Emily Williamson. ‘I have loved birds since I was a small child,’ says Melissa, who studied zoology at university. ‘It was an extraordinary coincidence for me to discover that I am the great, great niece of the woman that founded the RSPB’

    When you have a face, you have a personality ⁠— and then you have a story. I am still piecing together Emily’s wider story, combing through the Bateson family archives. Her cousin Edith was a committed suffragist. Was Emily? I don’t yet know.

    “Women are mostly timid in inaugurating anything,” she once wrote to a newspaper, “but they are very ready to give their help to a good cause when they are shown the way.” It was a typically modest statement about her part in founding the RSPB. While others (19th-century male ornithologists) might have written “I showed them the way,” Emily studiously kept her ego out of the story.

    But now that she has a face, Manchester’s eco heroine is being propelled, gently, into the spotlight. In 2019 the good people of Didsbury crowd-funded a fitting plaque for Emily Williamson. A group gathered at The Croft on 1 June for the grand unveiling. Emily’s great, great niece, Professor Melissa Bateson, joined environmentalists, councillors, RSPB staff and garden volunteers as the guest of honour. Sadly, her father Patrick had died in 2017, and so she was picking up the baton.

    Starling specialist Professor Melissa Bateson, of Newcastle University. ‘As a woman involved in the scientific study of birds, I feel a very strong connection with Emily and am hugely proud of what she managed to achieve and the legacy she has left’

    Melissa is another ethologist, expert in the foraging patterns of starlings. Like her father, she’d had no idea that her ancestor was so intimately bound up with the birds. I wondered if her career path was coincidence or destiny.

    When Melissa Bateson stood next to that ghostly image of her great, great aunt, it was an emotional moment for everyone. For me, it felt as if the story had come full circle. A new generation of talented, spirited and trenchant women are driving today’s conservation movement.

    Great things are now planned for Fletcher Moss Park, in honour of Emily Williamson. A competition to create a bronze statue was launched in December 2020. The RSPB-backed campaign will be driven by me, Tessa Boase, together with Andrew Simcock, Didsbury councillor and the man responsible for bringing a statue of Emmeline Pankhurst into the centre of Manchester. Fletcher Moss Park will become a place of pilgrimage for bird-lovers, conservationists and feminists alike. Discover more, and VOTE for your favourite statues from our long list, at https://www.emilywilliamsonstatue.com/

    EMILY MUGS
    The artist and nature lover Clare Abbatt has created a beautiful drawing to use for fund-raising. This limited edition porcelain mug commemorates the tea party where it all started, in 1889. Every purchase raises £5 for the Emily Williamson statue campaign. Click here to buy (£14, incl p&p).

    Plaque unveiling at The Croft, Fletcher Moss Park, 1 June 2019. L-R: Tessa Boase, RSPB’s Jenny Hackland, Manchester City councillor Angeliki Stogia, Melissa Bateson, Alan Hill (Friends of Fletcher Moss Park) and local MP Jeff Smith

    Emily Bateson and younger brother Richard, 1860s. She was born at Highfield, Lancaster on 17 April 1855, the second of five children (one girl and four boys)

    Emily’s husband Robert Wood Williamson: solicitor, naturalist, botanist and ⁠— in later life ⁠— eminent anthropologist. In 1911 the couple moved to Brook, Surrey, to be near Emily’s nephews at Charterhouse school

     

    Clear-eyed beauty: the precious family photograph of Emily Williamson, now digitally restore

     

    Professor Patrick Bateson FRS, Emily Williamson’s great nephew. Patrick was an avid birder, who passed this love on to his daughters: pictured here in the Shetland Isles with a dunlin chick. He died unexpectedly in August 2017

    Mrs Pankhurst's Purple Feather book jacketRead the surprising story behind the RSPB and its brave female founders – Mrs Pankhurst’s Purple Feather: Fashion, Fury and Feminism, Women’s Fight for Change by Tessa Boase ⁠— or listen to it on Audible, read by the author.

    Re-launched in paperback June 2021 as Etta Lemon: The Woman Who Saved the Birds. 

     

    No tags.
    Tessa Boase

    Tessa Boase

    More posts by Tessa Boase

    Related Posts

    • Why we need more statues of women

      By Tessa Boase | 0 comment

      ‘Mary Wollstonecraft’ by Maggi Hambling. ‘It’s a sculpture about now, in her spirit.’ Statues of women are troubling. Just look at the reaction to the 2020 Mary Wollstonecraft statue by Maggi Hambling. ‘Catastrophically wrong,’ cried CarolineRead more

    • The strange ritual of the Servants’ Christmas Ball

      By Tessa Boase | 0 comment

      Uneasy mingling: the Servants’ Ball at ITV’s Downton Abbey, where Lady Grantham rightly couples Carson, the butler ⁠— and Lord Grantham escorts housekeeper Mrs Hughes Was the Servants’ Ball really so marvellous? It is invokedRead more

    • Winter blues: did servants suffer from SAD?

      By Tessa Boase | 0 comment

      Did servants suffer from SAD ??Seasonal Affective Disorder? The Victorian diaries of Mrs Sarah Wells, housekeeper of Uppark and mother to novelist H. G. Wells, reveal the physical and emotional cost of working in subterraneanRead more

    • The Seduction of Heather Firbank, Edwardian It Girl

      By Tessa Boase | 12 comments

      A dozen feathered hats, hidden within the fashion archives of the Victorian and Albert Museum, London, were my first introduction to Edwardian fashion addict Heather Firbank. Having viewed the hats ? seductive, stylish, the lastRead more

    • 20 year old Heather in a large, rose-covered hat, soulful eyes

      Heather Firbank’s feathered hats

      By Tessa Boase | 0 comment

      I stumbled across Heather Firbank, Edwardian fashion victim, when I made an appointment to view a dozen feathered hats at the Victoria and Albert Museum?s archive centre in Olympia, west London.? I was researching aRead more

    5 comments

    • Avatar
      Jane Kirby Reply January 15, 2020 at 10:11 pm

      Fascinated to learn more about Emily. I grew up in Didsbury, and we often went to Fletcher Moss when I was a child. I did see something of this story in an exhibition there in the not too-distant past – perhaps 8 or 9 years ago – but it is good to learn more.

      • Tessa Boase
        Tessa Boase Reply January 16, 2020 at 2:32 pm

        Hi Jane – glad you enjoyed that. Fletcher Moss has been voted ‘Britain’s best-loved park,’ apparently. But still very little recognition of who once lived there, and what she started. We hope to change all this!

    • Avatar
      Molly Baer Kramer Reply June 8, 2020 at 3:27 pm

      Hi Tessa – this is a beautiful story, thank you for your compassionate investigation. I wrote a brief biography of Emily Williamson for the Dictionary of National Biography in 2001 – it contains information on Emily’s roles in the early RSPB (in addition to founding it), if you are interested. At the time, I could not even find Mrs Frank Lemon’s first name!

    • Avatar
      Nick Salt Reply January 25, 2021 at 8:08 pm

      Hello Tessa, Thank you for that fascinating story about Emily Williamson and the founding of the RSPB. I was born & brought up in Didsbury, and for many years we lived in Millgate Lane, just over the road from Fletcher Moss Park, which we used as a sort of extension to our garden. The Croft was the local cafe where we went to get ice creams, and below it was the park keeper’s room from where we used to hire the wooden bowls to play on the bowling green (when the older men would let us kids on!). We also had happy times playing games along the winding paths of the Botanical Gardens (and avoiding the park keeper!). I became aware of Emily and the RSPB connection a few years ago, and am now pleased to know that the garden was also created by her and Robert Williamson at that time. I’m also so glad that it has been voted ‘Britain’s best-loved park (by whom?). The chance connection with Patrick & Melissa Bateson is also fascinating. What a good story it all makes.

      The park was in the news again last week when it was flooded by the overflowing Mersey, and the waters would probably have got right up to The Croft, but hopefully did not damage the gardens too much.

      • Tessa Boase
        Tessa Boase Reply February 19, 2021 at 9:43 am

        Hello Nick – I love the sound of the wooden bowls and the ice creams in the cafe. What a wonderful garden extension this must have made. I’m not sure if you know that our statue campaign is now up and running, with a long-list of 12 entries to vote for. If you haven’t already, please take a look, vote, and sign up to our newsletter, so we can keep you in touch with developments. https://www.emilywilliamsonstatue.com/sculptorslonglist
        Best wishes, Tessa

    Leave a Comment

    Cancel reply

    Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

    This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

    NextPrevious

    Subscribe

    Please check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription.

    Recent Posts

    • Why we need more statues of women
    • Looking for Emily Williamson, RSPB founder
    • The strange ritual of the Servants’ Christmas Ball

    Recent Comments

    • Tessa Boase on Looking for Emily Williamson, RSPB founder
    • Nick Salt on Looking for Emily Williamson, RSPB founder
    • Molly Baer Kramer on Looking for Emily Williamson, RSPB founder

    Categories

    • Uncategorized (16)

    From the Blog

    • Why we need more statues of women

      ‘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
    Copyright © 2021 Tessa Boase. All Rights Reserved.
    Author Website Design by Outbox Online
    • 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