FASHION, FEATHERS AND ANIMAL RIGHTS
THE MATTINGLEY PHOTOGRAPHS AND THE FIGHT FOR THE PROTECTION OF BIRDS

By Philip McCouat

In this article, we highlight an extraordinary set of photographs, taken in Australia over 100 years ago, which played a significant role in international efforts to achieve legislative protection of wild birds. The photographs surfaced at the height of a vigorous campaign, on both sides of the Atlantic, which had been prompted by the phenomenal growth in the “plumage trade” – the use of bird feathers and other body parts in women’s hats and clothing.
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While this fashion mainly blossomed in the closing years of the 19th century, its roots go back thousands of years, to the general attitudes held about animal protection in the Western world. So it is there that our story must start.

GENERAL ATTITUDES TO ANIMALS IN THE WEST


Humans have long had complex and often inconsistent attitudes to the welfare of other animals (and even each other). In Western society, significant concerns about animal welfare have generally been slow to develop. According to traditional Christian beliefs, particularly in the Old Testament, it was at least recognised that appropriate care for domesticated or breeding animals could be justified as being in the commercial interests of their owners [1]. However, the overriding consideration was that humans had been given dominion “over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth”[2]. These “lower order” animals were generally considered to lack rationality (or sometimes even sentience) and basically existed for the convenience, exploitation and pleasure of humans.

While universally accepting this hierarchical model, later Christian writers presented mixed views about its practical implications. In his City of God, 4th century scholar St Augustine interpreted the Biblical incident of the Gadarene swine – in which Jesus sent devils into a herd of pigs, forcing them drown themselves in the sea – as showing that “there are no common rights between us and the beasts and trees”; and that “Christ himself shows that to refrain from the killing of animals and the destroying of plants is the height of superstition”. Similarly, the 13C philosopher Thomas Aquinas stated that cruelty to animals was not wrong in itself, and that it should only be condemned if it encouraged cruelty to humans [3]. On the other hand, St Francis of Assisi famously argued that animals were worthy of human kindness because of their status as fellow creatures of God.

By the 18th century, various notables were calling for a more compassionate approach [4], with individual preachers, moralists and philosophers urging that greater attention be paid to animals’ concerns. They were joined by writers such as William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Anna Barbauld (see our article Science becomes Art), Byron, Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Alexander Pope, William Wordsworth and Robert Burns.
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The satirist Hogarth also criticised the continuing abuses with his Four Stages of Cruelty, suggesting that cruelty to animals, such as in cock throwing, was the first stage in the development of violent criminals.​





Fig 1: Hogarth. The Four Stages of Cruelty: Stage 1, physical abuse of animals (1751)


Within the larger population, however, such calls received only limited acceptance, and generally uncaring attitudes to animals continued into the 19th century [5]. While the British Parliament passed an 1822 Bill to “prevent the cruel treatment of cattle” – with a sharp eye on their commercial value -- other Bills to prevent bullbaiting or cruelty to horses, asses or oxen met with little success. Later efforts to outlaw dogfights and bullbaiting also failed, prompting the formation of The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (1824) [6]. Most of these animal tortures were finally outlawed by the Cruelty to Animals Act 1835 but this did not apply to wild animals. Birds, which for many centuries had been hunted for food or “sport”, were still quite literally in the firing line.

FEATHERED HATS AND THE PLUMAGE TRADE

The unprotected position of wild birds assumed special significance in the light of an extraordinary development in the latter part of the 19th century. This was the creation of the creation of a fashion industry, not limited to the upper classes, but across a wider spectrum of society. One notable aspect of this was the extensive use of bird feathers in ladies’ fashions, particularly their hats. In fact, not just feathers, but also wings, heads and even entire bodies of birds became extremely popular [7]. Hats crowned by the feathers of the great crested grebe [see our article on Carpaccio], or gowns with several dead robins sewn onto the skirt were considered very chic.

The use of feathers as a fashion accessory was of course not new –ostentatiously plumed hats had been worn by the fashionable wealthy back in the 18th century (Fig 2), and they had become a symbol of exotic beauty. However, what developed in the late 19th century, in cities such as Paris (the manufacturing centre), London (the biggest market) and New York, was an explosive growth in this fashion, crossing class and geographical boundaries, on a scale which today seems almost inconceivable. This change was driven by a wide range of factors – the economic boom resulting from the Industrial Revolution, the growth of department stores, the proliferation of ready-to-wear garments, catalogue-based mail order, the birth of fashion weeklies, and the rise of fashion houses and personalities.

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