The killing trade

MANY cultures have used feathers for personal and ritual adornment and the trade in bird feathers has a long history. But when feathered hats for women became the fashion in the USA and Europe, birds were killed on an industrial scale.

In 1903, exotic feathers were worth $32 an ounce in America: twice the price of gold and 28 times the price of silver. From 1870 up until the First World War, fashionable feathered hats were worn mainly by middle- and upper-class women. However, groups of workingclass women would pool their money by sharing hats, or buy cheaper hats decorated with garlands of bullfinches or dyed house sparrows.

The millinery, or hat, industry was centred in Paris, New York and London. The English capital alone had 550 milliners, but in America the trade