Sylvia Pankhurst

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Lore & Background

Sylvia Pankhurst was born on 5 May 1882 at Drayton Terrace, Old Trafford, Manchester, to Emmeline Pankhurst and Dr. Richard Pankhurst. Her father had been a founding member in 1872 of the National Society for Women's Suffrage, and played a role in drafting legislation that gave unmarried women householders a vote in local elections, and married women control over their property and earnings. He was also distinguished by his support for Irish Home Rule, being 'the first English Parliamentary candidate to pledge himself to Irish self-government when he stood at a by-election in Manchester in 1883'. The family home hosted radical intelligentsia including the Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin, the Communard Louise Michel, and the Fabian Annie Besant. In 1893, her parents joined Keir Hardie as founding members of the Independent Labour Party. Pankhurst attended Manchester High School for Girls, then trained as an artist at the Manchester School of Art in 1903. While completing an ILP commission to paint murals in a social hall built in Salford, she discovered the hall, named after her father, would not admit women—an episode that helped convince her sister Christabel of the need for women to organise independently. In 1904, Pankhurst won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art in London, but was incensed to learn that of 16 scholarships awarded each year, 13 were reserved for men, and that Keir Hardie was told the authorities 'did not contemplate any change'.

Reader's Guide

Sylvia Pankhurst started working full-time for the Women's Social and Political Union in 1906, with Christabel and their mother. She devised the WSPU logo and various leaflets, banners, and posters as well as the decoration of its meeting halls. In 1907 she toured industrial towns in England and Scotland, painting portraits of working-class women in their working environments. She later wrote that she witnessed 'so much distress' that she felt unable to return to her 'beloved profession'. With Alice Hawkins and Mary Gawthorpe she became a full-time organiser, and helped establish the WSPU in Leicester. In 1911, she published a propagandist history of the WSPU's campaign, The Suffragette: The History of the Women's Militant Suffrage Movement, which included her witness account of Black Friday 18 November 1910, in which 300 women marched to the Houses of Parliament and were met with violence, some of it sexual, from the Metropolitan Police and male bystanders. Between February 1913 and August 1914, Sylvia was arrested eight times for protest actions in London. After the Cat and Mouse Act, she would be released for short periods to recuperate from her hunger strikes. In June 1914, supporters carried her to the entrance to the Strangers' Gallery of the House of Commons where she announced she would continue her hunger strike until Asquith agreed to receive a deputation of East London women. Asquith met the deputation of six working mothers, but reiterated the government's position: votes for women would have to await a general democratic reform of the franchise, which did not occur until 1918, with full voting equality taking another ten years. Pankhurst undertook two speaking tours in the United States: in the first three months of 1911 and again at the beginning of 1912. In January 1911 in Chicago, a strike wave had spread to the city's clothing workers; union pickets had been beaten and arrested, and two had been shot dead. Pankhurst visited strikers in their police cells. In New York City she met Margaret Sanger and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. In April 1912, she joined the funeral procession for the 146 garment workers killed in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, speaking beside Rose Schneiderman and saying their deaths were the result of working-class people being denied the right to represent themselves. Returning to London, she renamed the East London Federation of the WPSU the East London Federation of Suffragettes, opened to trade unionists and to men. In November 1913, she spoke at the Albert Hall alongside James Connolly in support of the men and women of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union locked-out by Dublin employers.

Did You Know?

• Sylvia Pankhurst's father, Richard Pankhurst, was the first English Parliamentary candidate to pledge himself to Irish self-government, standing at a by-election in Manchester in 1883.
• In 1904, Pankhurst won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art, but only 3 of 16 scholarships were open to women—and authorities said they 'did not contemplate any change'.
• On Black Friday, 18 November 1910, Pankhurst witnessed 300 women marching to Parliament who were met with violence, some of it sexual, from the Metropolitan Police and male bystanders.
• Pankhurst attended the funeral procession in New York City for the 146 garment workers killed in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, speaking beside labour organiser Rose Schneiderman.
• Her pan-Africanist weekly The New Times and Ethiopia News was regarded by British colonial authorities as a factor in the development of African nationalism and the Rastafari movement in Jamaica.