Speaker Series: Women’s History Month | March 15

Monday, March 15, 2021 — 12:00 pm

Join Tessa in England as she tells the intriguing story about women’s love affair with plumes

For half a century, from the 1870s to the 1920s, women on both sides of the Atlantic were gripped by a fashion craze that decreed all hats should be laden with feathers. Not just feathers, but wings and whole birds – often several birds at a time. Species the world over were slowly brought to the brink of extinction, and all for the sake of millinery. Campaigning on behalf of the birds was a small band of angry women with a splendidly simple goal. They were going to stamp out the fashion for feathers in hats.

Leading the battle in Britain was a fearsome woman who has not been remembered by history, and yet for 50 years was the driving force behind the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Her name was Etta Lemon. Where she led in 1889, the Audubon Society would follow.

From her home in the UK, author, social historian and former investigative journalist Tessa Boase brings us the intriguing untold story of women, birds, hats – and votes!

You may recognize some similarities in this British story to that of our club founder, Harriet Strong, and Ebell‘s early days—an excellent way to celebrate Women’s History Month.