The Importation of Plumage (Prohibition) Act, (11 & 12 Geo. 5. c. 16) known also as the Plumage Act 1908, is an act of United Kingdom legislation passed in 1921. It had been proposed to the

UK Parliament The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative supremac ...

in 1908 as the Plumage Bill and was the subject of determined campaigning by the

Royal Society for the Protection of Birds The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) is a charitable organisation registered in England and Wales and in Scotland. It was founded in 1889. It works to promote conservation and protection of birds and the wider environment throug ...

. Large amounts of plumage (birds' feathers) had been used to decorate women's hats, and a campaign against this "Murderous millinery" had been waged since the 1880s.

History

The bill was presented to the

House of Lords The House of Lords, also known as the House of Peers, is the Bicameralism, upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Membership is by Life peer, appointment, Hereditary peer, heredity or Lords Spiritual, official function. Like the ...

in 1908 by Lord Avebury, and was passed by the Lords on 21July. It was read in the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. ...

the next day, but did not proceed because of a lack of time. It came to the Commons again in 1913, had two readings, and was again set aside, apparently because of "trade interests".

Gertrude Ansell Gertrude Mary Ansell (2 June 1861 – 7 March 1932) was a British suffragette, animal welfare activist and businesswoman. Life Ansell was the third child and only daughter of the metallurgist George Frederick Ansell (1826–1880) and his wife, S ...

, a 52-year-old businesswoman and suffragette, reacted by smashing a window of the Home Office as a protest and was jailed for a month. During the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, feathers were among the luxury items whose import was banned in February 1917, but only for the duration of the war. In July 1919,

Etta Lemon Margaretta "Etta" Louisa Lemon ( Smith; 22 November 1860 – 8 July 1953) was an English bird conservationist and a founding member of what is now the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). She was born into an evangelical Chr ...

and the

Duchess of Portland The Duchess of Portland refers to the wife or widow of a Duke of Portland, a former title in the peerage of Great Britain. The title was created in 1716 but became extinct in 1990 upon the death of the ninth Duke. Duchesses of Portland * Margaret ...

delivered a letter signed by 150 men, including celebrities such as

H. G. Wells Herbert George Wells"Wells, H. G."
Revised 18 May 2015. ''

Thomas Hardy Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry of William Word ...

, to the president of the

Board of Trade The Board of Trade is a British government body concerned with commerce and industry, currently within the Department for International Trade. Its full title is The Lords of the Committee of the Privy Council appointed for the consideration of ...

, Sir

Auckland Geddes Auckland Campbell Geddes, 1st Baron Geddes, (21 June 1879 – 8 June 1954) was a British academic, soldier, politician and diplomat. He was a member of David Lloyd George's coalition government during the First World War and also served as Am ...

, asking that the war-time restriction on the importation of plumage should be continued until legislation was passed. Geddes replied that the import restriction would continue "as long as possible" and that he "hoped" that the bill would be passed early in 1920. In July 1920,

Henry William Massingham Henry William Massingham (25 May 1860 – 27 August 1924) was an English journalist, editor of ''The Nation and Athenaeum, The Nation'' from 1907 to 1923. In his time it was considered the leading British Radical weekly. Life He j ...

, editor of ''

The Nation ''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper tha ...

'', wrote a column about the bill's lack of success, pointing out that the much-prized

egret Egrets ( ) are herons, generally long-legged wading birds, that have white or buff plumage, developing fine plumes (usually milky white) during the breeding season. Egrets are not a biologically distinct group from herons and have the same build ...

feathers were obtained by shooting birds that had chicks on their nests, and asking "But what do women care? Look at Regent Street this morning". This provoked

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born i ...

to write a strong piece, published in the '' Woman's Leader'', in which she painted pictures of the crowds of feather-wearing ladies in Regent Street and of the cruelty of the slaughter of the birds, but pointed out that it was men who were the bird-hunters and men who were 66 of the 67 members of Standing Committee C which had on five occasions failed to produce a quorum of 20 members for a discussion of the bill. "The Plumage Bill is for all practical purposes dead. But what do men care?". When

Nancy Astor Nancy Witcher Langhorne Astor, Viscountess Astor, (19 May 1879 – 2 May 1964) was an American-born British politician who was the first woman seated as a Member of Parliament (MP), serving from 1919 to 1945. Astor's first husband was America ...

took her seat in the Commons in December 1919, she took up the cause of the Plumage Bill and a parliamentary group was formed to support it; the bill passed into law on 1July 1921. Although it forbade the import of plumage, it did not control the sale or wearing of it, and Etta Lemon wrote in the RSPB annual report that "It is impossible to say that the Act is a wholly satisfactory one". The Act was the subject of debate in the House of Lords in May 1928, following a proposal to amend it. It was further debated in the Commons in March 1936, when it was alleged, and disputed, that bird skins were still being smuggled into the country, and on several other occasions. It was suspended by the Import of Goods (Control) Amendment Order 1954. It was repealed by Section 13 of the Endangered Species (Import and Export) Act 1976.

References

{{reflist Royal Society for the Protection of Birds United Kingdom Acts of Parliament 1921 Bird conservation Wildlife law in the United Kingdom Hatmaking