Sees Savagery in Plumes

From The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia

Sees Savagery in Plumes is an article published in The New-York Times on 8 march 1914.


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Sees Savagery in Plumes

The New-York Times (8 march 1914)

Conan Doyle Attacks the Fashion in Supporting Bill Before Parliament.

Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES.


LONDON, March 7. — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was one of the leading speakers at the meeting held this week in support of the Plumage bill. now before Parliament. He said in his speech:

"I hope that as white-feather cowardice is the greatest slur a man can wear, so may white-feather cruelty be the greatest a woman can wear upon her head."

Persons, he continued, sometimes spoke of the slums as showing how near savagery we were, but, after all, slums were only caused by poverty: but if one sat In the upper tier at the opera and looked down on the stalls and viewed the women's head-gear one would often think that hats were a much stronger proof of how near we wore to savagery.

Lord Newton found his argument in support of the bill in the hats worn nowadays by British peeresses.

"We do not see as we used," said Lord Newton, "whole birds perched upon women's hats In the attitude of what I may describe as earnest incubation. The result of my observations in the House of Lords, when there have been so many as forty peeresses present in the gallery, is that not more than three or four have colored hats. Their hats appear to be either black or almost dingy. It fashion in hats has this particular tendency, there can be excuse for the slaughter of birds."