White feather
At the start of World War I, Admiral Charles Fitzgerald, who was a strong advocate of conscription, wanted to increase the number of those enlisting in the armed forces.
Therefore he organised on 30 August 1914 a group of thirty women in his home town of Folkestone to hand out white feathers to any men that were not in uniform.
That prompted Home Secretary Reginald McKenna to issue employees in state industries with lapel badges reading "King and Country" to indicate that they were serving the war effort.
Likewise, the Silver War Badge, which was given to service personnel who had been honourably discharged by wounds or sickness, was first issued in September 1916 to prevent veterans from being challenged for not wearing uniform.
[8] Private Norman Demuth, who was discharged from the British Army after he had been wounded in 1916, received numerous white feathers after he returned from the Western Front.
[10] Occasionally injured veterans were mistakenly targeted, such as Reuben W. Farrow who after being aggressively asked by a woman on a tram why he would not do his duty, turned around and showed his missing hand causing her to apologise.
[7] Perhaps the most misplaced use of a white feather was when one was presented to Seaman George Samson, who was on his way in civilian clothes to a public reception being held in his honour for having been awarded the Victoria Cross for gallantry in the Gallipoli campaign.
In the 1870s, the Māori prophet of passive resistance Te Whiti o Rongomai promoted the wearing of white feathers by his followers at Parihaka.
The apocryphal story goes that in 1775, Quakers in a Friends meeting house in Easton, New York were faced by a tribe of Indians on the war path.
Its most notable wearer was US Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant Carlos Hathcock, who was awarded the Silver Star medal for bravery during the Vietnam War.
The 1907 P. G. Wodehouse novel The White Feather is a school story about cowardice and the efforts a boy goes to redeem himself by learning the sport of boxing.
The Man Who Stayed at Home, a 1914 play by J. E. Harold Terry and Lechmere Worrall, was renamed The White Feather when staged in North America.
In Pat Barker's 1991 novel Regeneration, the character Burns is given two white feathers during his home leave from Craiglockhart War Hospital.
Persephone Wright, the protagonist of the story and heretofore a staunch supporter of Pankhurst's Votes for Women campaigns, rejects the idea on ethical grounds, saying "a man who's been shamed into service isn't a volunteer at all".
The Order of the White Feather was the inspiration for the Weddings Parties Anything song "Scorn of the Women", which concerns a man who is deemed medically unfit for service when he attempts to enlist, and is unjustly accused of cowardice.
In 1985, progressive rock band Marillion released an anti-war song called "White Feather" as the ending track to their album Misplaced Childhood.
In the 1980 BBC TV series To Serve Them All My Days, David Powlett-Jones, a shell-shocked officer, takes a position in a boys' school.
In the short-lived 2007 British period drama Lilies, the brother of the protagonists is discharged from the military during World War I after his boat sinks and he is one of a handful of shell-shocked survivors.
In the first episode of the second season of Downton Abbey, a pair of young women interrupt a benefit concert to hand out white feathers to the men who have not enlisted, before being ordered out by an angry Earl of Grantham.
