Christabel Pankhurst

Dame Christabel Harriette Pankhurst (22 September 1880 – 13 February 1958) was a British suffragette and Royalist born in Manchester, England. A co-founder of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) and founder of The Suffragette newspaper, she directed militant actions from exile in France from 1912 to 1913. In 1914, she supported the war against Germany. After the war, she moved to the United States, where she worked as an evangelist for the Second Adventist movement.

She was also a founding member of the White Feather campaign.

Early life

Christabel Pankhurst was born on 22 September 1880 in Trafford, Manchester, England. She was the daughter of women's suffrage movement leader Emmeline Pankhurst and radical socialist barrister Richard Pankhurst, and sister to Sylvia Pankhurst and Adela Pankhurst. Her father was a barrister and her mother owned a small shop. Christabel assisted her mother, who worked as the Registrar of Births and Deaths in Manchester. Despite financial struggles, her family had always been encouraged by their firm belief in their devotion to causes rather than comforts. As a child, Christabel said: "how long you women have been trying for the vote. For my part, I mean to get it."

Nancy Ellen Rupprecht wrote, "She was almost a textbook illustration of the first child born to a middle-class family. In childhood as well as adulthood, she was beautiful, intelligent, graceful, confident, charming, and charismatic." Christabel enjoyed a special relationship with both her mother and father, who had named her after "Christabel", the poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge ("The lovely lady Christabel / Whom her father loves so well"). Her mother's death in 1928 had a devastating impact on Christabel.

Education

Pankhurst learned to read at her home on her own before she went to school. She and her two sisters attended Manchester High School for Girls. She obtained a law degree from the University of Manchester, and received honours on her LL.B. exam but, as a woman, was not permitted to join an Inn and practise law.

Pankhurst moved to Geneva to live with a family friend, but, when her father died in 1898, returned home to help her mother raise the rest of the children.

Pankhurst and her mother were members of the Labour Party.

Activism

Suffrage

Pankhurst was a founder member of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) with her mother on 10 October 1903. The WSPU aimed to campaign for the parliamentary vote for women on the same terms as it was given to men.

On 25 July 1904 Pankhurst published an article in the Daily Dispatch newspaper covering a visit to Manchester by Susan B. Anthony, titled "Woman's Rights: An American reformer in Manchester." In November 1904, Pankhurst was a North of England Society for Women's Suffrage delegate to the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) convention in London.

In 1905, Pankhurst interrupted a Liberal Party meeting at Manchester's Free Trade Hall by unfurling a Votes For Women banner hidden in her blouse and shouting demands for voting rights for women. She spat in the policeman's face and was arrested. At Manchester Police Court, along with fellow suffragette Annie Kenney, she was sentenced to a week in prison for obstruction, rather than pay a fine. They were the first suffragettes to be imprisoned, their case gained much media interest and the ranks of the WSPU swelled following their trial. For example, after reading an article about the arrest while in South Africa, Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence joined the WSPU on returning to England. Helena Swanwick also joined the WSPU after reading of the arrest and later wrote that her "heart rose up in support of their revolt." Her mother Emmeline began to take more militant action for the women's suffrage cause after her daughter's arrest and was herself imprisoned on many occasions for her principles.

After obtaining her law degree in 1906, Christabel moved to the nearby London headquarters of the WSPU, where she was appointed its organising secretary. She lodged with Emmeline and Frederick Pethick-Lawrence in London and in Surrey. Nicknamed "Queen of the Mob", Pankhurst was jailed again in 1907 after an arrest in Parliament Square. Pankhurst gave a speech at the Nottingham Mechanics Institute in December 1907, which inspired Helen Watts to join the cause. Pankhurst and her mother Emmeline gave speeches at the Royal Albert Hall on 19 March 1908, which were recorded as transcripts by the actress, chauffeur and suffragette Vera Holme. Pankhurst, her mother Emmeline and "The General" Flora Drummond were arrested for inciting a "rush" on Parliament when speaking to a mass meeting from the plinth of Nelson's Column, Trafalgar Square, London, on 11 October 1908. They were tried in 1909 at the "Rush Trial" at Bow Street Magistrates' Court, with Pankhurst using her law education for their defence and even cross examining David Lloyd George (then Chancellor of the Exchequer) and Herbert Gladstone. During the trial, she highlighted that one of Lloyd George's daughters had been in attendance at the mass meeting. Following a successful defence, the three were "bound over" by the court to keep the peace with accompanying fines, but refused to pay the fines and were sentenced to imprisonment. Pankhurst was sentenced to ten weeks in the second division.

Pankhurst was painted wearing a sash in the suffragette colours of green, white and purple by society portraitist and suffragist Ethel Wright, for the WSPU's Women's Exhibition held in London in 1909. The portrait is now held in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery in London. She was a speaker at WSPU meetings, including to a mass gathering at the Savoy Theatre on 15 February 1912.

In October 1912, The Suffragette newspaper was established as WSPU's official newspaper, replacing Votes for Women, with Pankhurst as editor and Agnes Lake as business manager. In 1912, she wrote that: "Militant methods have been good for the souls of women ... they have swept away the evils of ‘ladyism’, of timid gentility, of early Victorian effeminacy as distinct from womanliness."

Between 1913 and 1914 Pankhurst lived at a secret location in Paris, France, to escape imprisonment under the terms of the Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill-Health) Act, better known as the "Cat and Mouse Act." Other campaigners visited Paris to have Christmas dinner with her in 1912; these included Irene Dallas, Hilda Dallas, Blanche Edwards and Alice Morgan Wright.

While in France, Pankhurst continued to provide the editorial lead to The Suffragette through her contact with visitors, such as Annie Kenney and Ida Wylie, who crossed the Channel for her advice. She also wrote an article for New Statesman in October 1913, calling to women for a militant approach in the fight for a female vote.

Pankhurst was influential in the WSPU's "anti-male" phase after the failure of the Conciliation Bills. She wrote a book called The Great Scourge and How to End It on the subject of sexually transmitted diseases and how sexual equality (votes for women) would help the fight against these diseases. In 1921, she wrote an article explaining why she never married, saying that the suffrage cause took all of her primary attention.

Pankhurst and her sister Sylvia did not get along. Sylvia was against turning the WSPU towards solely upper-class and middle-class women and using militant tactics, while Christabel thought it was essential. Christabel felt that suffrage was a cause that should not be tied to any causes trying to help working-class women with their other issues. She felt that it would only drag the suffrage movement down and that all of the other issues could be solved once women had the right to vote.