Where did the idea to sell poppies come from?

The first official poppy appeal was held 85 years ago in the UK. But when - and why - was the first poppy sold?

The red poppy worn around the world in remembrance of battlefield deaths has nothing to do with the blood shed in the brutal clashes of World War I.
Instead it symbolises the wild flowers that were the first plants to grow in the churned-up soil of soldiers' graves in Belgium and northern France. Little else could grow in the blasted soil that became rich in lime from the rubble.
Their paper-thin red petals were the first signs of life and renewal, and in 1915 inspired Canadian doctor John McCrae to pen perhaps the most famous wartime poem:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row...

It was this poem which inspired an American war secretary to sell the first poppies to raise money for ex-soldiers.

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Two days before the Armistice was declared at 11am on 11 November 1918, Moina Michael was working in the YMCA Overseas War Secretaries' headquarters during its annual conference in New York. While flipping through a copy of Ladies Home Journal, she came across McCrae's poem, and was so moved that she vowed to always wear a red poppy in remembrance.
Poppy lady
That same day she was given $10 by the conference delegates in thanks for her hard work, which she spent on 25 silk poppies. Returning to the office with one pinned to her coat, she distributed the rest amongst the delegates.

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Since this group had given her the money with which to buy the flowers, Ms Michael saw this as the first sale of memorial poppies. She then threw her efforts into campaigning to get the poppy adopted as a national remembrance symbol. Two years later, the National American Legion's conference proclaimed the poppy as such. Among those at the conference was Madame E Guerin, from France, who saw poppy sales as a way to raise money for children in war-ravaged areas of France.
Having organised the sale of millions of poppies made by French widows in the United States, in 1921 she sent her poppy sellers to London.
Field Marshall Douglas Haig, a senior commander during WWI and a founder of the Royal British Legion, was sold on the idea (as were veterans' groups in Canada, Australia and New Zealand).
So that autumn, the newly-established legion sold its first remembrance poppies. And so the tradition began.