Mrs Pankhurst's Purple Feather

Mrs Pankhurst's Purple Feather: Fashion, Fury and Feminism – Women's Fight for Change (republished 2021 as Etta Lemon: The Woman Who Saved the Birds) is a 2018 book by Tessa Boase (Aurum: ISBN 978-1781316542) about Etta Lemon and her campaign against the use of feathers in hat-making (millinery) which led to the foundation of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

[1][2][3][4] The feather of the title is the one which fell from Emmeline Pankhurst's hat on the day in October 1908 when a group of suffragettes "rushed" the Palace of Westminster, for which she received a three-month prison sentence.

"[7] In an interview on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour she said that the idea for the book came when a male "birdy" friend remarked: "Did you know that the RSPB was founded by Victorian women campaigning against feathered hats?

[9]: 1–30 Etta Smith (later Lemon) joined other women in the Croydon branch of the Fur, Fin and Feather Folk, which met over afternoon tea at the home of Eliza Phillips.

[9]: 53–71 The book describes the ups and downs of the ensuing campaign, drawing comparisons with the fight for women's suffrage (to which Etta Lemon was opposed).