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Adela Pankhurst

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Adela Constantia Mary Walsh (née Pankhurst; 19 June 1885 – 23 May 1961) was a British-born suffragette who worked as a political organiser for the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) in Scotland. In 1914 she moved to Australia where she continued her activism and was co-founder of both the Communist Party of Australia and the Australia First Movement.[1][2]

Adela Walsh
Adela at the Suffragette's Rest
Born
Adela Constantia Mary Pankhurst

(1885-06-19)19 June 1885
Chorlton upon Medlock, Lancashire, England
Died23 May 1961(1961-05-23) (aged 75)
Wahroonga, Sydney, Australia
NationalityBritish
CitizenshipAustralian
Political partyIndependent Labour Party
Communist Party of Australia
Australia First Movement
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1917; died 1943)​
Children5
Parent(s)Richard Pankhurst
Emmeline Goulden
RelativesChristabel Pankhurst (sister)
Sylvia Pankhurst (sister)
Richard Pankhurst (nephew)
Helen Pankhurst (great-niece)
Alula Pankhurst (great-nephew)

Early life

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Pankhurst was born on 19 June 1885 in Manchester, England, into a politicised family: her father, Richard Pankhurst, was a socialist and candidate for Parliament, and her mother, Emmeline Pankhurst (née Goulden), and sisters, Sylvia and Christabel, were leaders of the British suffragette movement. Her mother was of Manx descent.[3] Pankhurst attended the all-woman Studley Horticultural College in Warwickshire, and Manchester High School for Girls.

UK

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As a teenager, Pankhurst became involved in the militant Women's Social and Political Union founded by her mother and sisters.

In June 1906, Adela disrupted a Liberal Party meeting and was sentenced to seven days in prison. Later that year, she was part of a group who entered the House of Commons, wishing to speak with members. Nine women were arrested, including Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Anne Cobden-Sanderson, Charlotte Despard, Teresa Billington-Greig, Mary Gawthorpe, Dora Montefiore.[4]

In November 1909 she joined a protest that interrupted a talk by Winston Churchill at his constituency in Dundee. She was arrested along with Helen Archdale, Catherine Corbett and Maud Joachim.[5] Pankhurst had slapped a policeman who was trying to evict her from the building. Although she went on hunger strike there, she was not force-fed as prison governor and medical supervisor assessed her "heart's action as violent and laboured".[6]

 
Suffragettes Adela Pankhurst, Jessie and Annie Kenney at Eagle House in 1910

Eagle House near Bath in Somerset had become an important refuge for suffragettes who had been released from prison. Mary Blathwayt's parents planted trees there between April 1909 and July 1911 to commemorate the achievements of suffragettes including Pankhurst's mother and sister, Christabel as well as Annie Kenney, Charlotte Despard, Millicent Fawcett and Lady Lytton.[7] The trees were known as "Annie's Arboreatum" after Annie Kenney.[8][9] There was also a "Pankhurst Pond" within the grounds.[10]

Pankhurst was invited to Eagle House in 1909 and 1910. She planted a Himalayan Cedar on 3 July 1910. A plaque was made and her photograph was recorded again by Colonel Linley Blathwayt.[11]

Her mother's favourite was Christabel and the two of them took the Women's Social and Political Union as their own organisation. They fell out with many of their leading volunteers and supporters and this included Sylvia Pankhurst and Adela Pankhurst. Both of the latter believed in socialism whereas Emmeline and Christabel were pushing for the vote for middle-class women. Sylvia was ejected from the party and she set up her own splinter group in East London. Christabel is reported to have said to Sylvia "I would not care if you were multiplied by a hundred, but one of Adela is too many." Pankhurst was given £20, a ticket to Australia and a letter introducing her to Vida Goldstein.[12] Pankhurst was among the first group of suffragettes to go on hunger strike when in prison. She was being targeted by the police, as a high-profile activist. Pankhurst had been given a Hunger Strike Medal 'for Valour' by WSPU.

Australia

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Pankhurst emigrated to Australia in 1914 following estrangement from her family and frequent incarceration. Her experience of activism enabled her to be recruited during World War I as an organiser for the Women's Peace Army in Melbourne by Vida Goldstein.[13] Pankhurst wrote a book called Put Up the Sword, penned a number of anti-war pamphlets,[12] and addressed public meetings, speaking against war and conscription. In 1915, With Cecilia John from the Women's Peace Army, she toured Australia, establishing branches of the Women's Peace Army. In 1916 she travelled through New Zealand addressing large crowds, and again toured New South Wales and Queensland arguing the importance of feminist opposition to militarism.[14] In 1917, she spearheaded a protest in Melbourne against rising food prices. She was arrested for her involvement in the protest but released on bail until her trial. During this period of remand, she married her husband Tom Walsh. Reverend Fredrick Sinclaire married the couple on 30 September 1917. Prime Minister Billy Hughes offered to commute her sentence under the condition that she never gave a speech again. Pankhurst refused Hughes' terms and only weeks after being married returned to jail to serve her four month sentence. A petition was signed by other suffragettes advocating on behalf of her release, but it was ineffective and she served her full sentence.[15] Upon being released in January 1918, the Walsh family moved from Melbourne to Sydney. In Sydney, Adela gave birth to their son and four daughters: Richard (born 1918), Sylvia (born 1920), Christian (born 1921), Ursula (born 1923), and Faith (born and died 1926).[16] Her husband had three daughters from his previous marriage. In 1920, Pankhurst became a founding member of the Communist Party of Australia, from which she was later expelled.[17][18]

She became disillusioned with communism and founded the anti-communist Australian Women's Guild of Empire in 1927.[12] In 1941 Pankhurst became one of the founding members of the far-right nationalistic, Australia First Movement. She visited Japan in 1939, and was arrested and interned in March 1942 for her advocacy of peace with Japan. She was released in October.[13]

Tom Walsh died in 1943; afterwards, Pankhurst withdrew from public life. In 1960, she converted to Roman Catholicism.[19] She died on 23 May 1961, and was buried according to Catholic rites.[13]

Posthumous recognition

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Her name and picture (and those of 58 other women's suffrage supporters) are on the plinth of the statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square, London, unveiled in 2018.[20][21][22]

Pankhurst Crescent, in the Canberra suburb of Gilmore, is named in her honour.[23]

Brian Harrison recorded an oral history interview about Adela Pankhurst with her granddaughter, Susan Hogan, as part of the Suffrage Interviews project, titled Oral evidence on the suffragette and suffragist movements: the Brian Harrison interviews.[24] The interview includes details of Pankhurst's family life in Australia and of her later life. The collection also contains an interview about her mother, Emmeline Pankhurst.

See also

References

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  1. ^ "'Wayward suffragette' Adela Pankhurst and her remarkable Australian life". The Guardian. 23 December 2015. Retrieved 8 March 2022.
  2. ^ Drysdale, Neil (22 October 2020). "The Pankhurst sister sent from Aberdeen to Australia with £20 and a one-way ticket". Press and Journal. Retrieved 8 March 2022.
  3. ^ Bartley, p. 16; Liddington and Norris, p. 74.
  4. ^ "Riotous Suffragettes in the House". The Daily Mirror. 24 October 1906. p. 3.
  5. ^ "Maud Joachim". Spartacus Educational. Retrieved 31 January 2018.
  6. ^ Atkinson, Diane (2018). Rise up, women! : the remarkable lives of the suffragettes. London: Bloomsbury. p. 179. ISBN 9781408844045. OCLC 1016848621.
  7. ^ Historic England. "Eagle House (1115252)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 25 November 2008.
  8. ^ Hammond, Cynthia Imogen (2017). Architects, Angels, Activists and the City of Bath, 1765–1965 ": Engaging with Women's Spatial Interventions in Buildings and Landscape. Routledge. ISBN 9781351576123.
  9. ^ Hannam, June (Winter 2002). "Suffragette Photographs" (PDF). Regional Historian (8).
  10. ^ "Book of the Week: A Nest of Suffragettes in Somerset". Woman and her Sphere. 12 September 2012. Retrieved 27 October 2017.
  11. ^ "Suffragettes Adela Pankhurst, Jessie and Annie Kenney 1910, Blathwayt, Col Linley". Bath in Time, Images of Bath online. Retrieved 31 January 2018.
  12. ^ a b c Sparrow, Jeff (24 December 2015). "'Wayward suffragette' Adela Pankhurst and her remarkable Australian Life". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 March 2016.
  13. ^ a b c Hogan, Susan. "Pankhurst, Adela Constantia (1885–1961)". Australian Dictionary of Biography. Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University.
  14. ^ Outskirts (journal), Volume 39, accessed 28 February 2020
  15. ^ Smart, Judith (1986). "Feminists, Food and the Fair Price: The Cost of Living Demonstrations in Melbourne, August-September 1917". Labour History (50): 113–131. doi:10.2307/27508786. JSTOR 27508786.
  16. ^ Hogan, Susan, "Pankhurst, Adela Constantia (1885–1961)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, retrieved 19 April 2023
  17. ^ "Adela Pankhurst". Spartacus Educational. Retrieved 29 August 2022.
  18. ^ Barlass, Tim (7 March 2022). "Pioneer trio fought injustice, risked arrest". The Sydney Morning Herald. p. 10.
  19. ^ Damousi, Joy (April 1993). "The Enthusiasms of Adela Pankhurst Walsh". Australian Historical Studies. 25 (100): 424. doi:10.1080/10314619308595924.
  20. ^ "Historic statue of suffragist leader Millicent Fawcett unveiled in Parliament Square". Gov.uk. 24 April 2018. Retrieved 24 April 2018.
  21. ^ Topping, Alexandra (24 April 2018). "First statue of a woman in Parliament Square unveiled". The Guardian. Retrieved 24 April 2018.
  22. ^ Saul, Heather (24 April 2018). "Millicent Fawcett statue unveiling: the women and men whose names will be on the plinth". iNews. Retrieved 13 August 2019.
  23. ^ "Australian Capital Territory National Memorials Ordinance 1928 Determination — Commonwealth of Australia Gazette. Periodic (National : 1977–2011), p.20". Trove. 15 May 1987. Retrieved 7 February 2020.
  24. ^ London School of Economics and Political Science. "The Suffrage Interviews". London School of Economics and Political Science. Retrieved 22 February 2024.

Further reading

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  • Verna Coleman Adela Pankhurst: The Wayward Suffragette 1885-1961 Melbourne University Press, 1996
  • Joy Damousi, "The Enthusiasms of Adela Pankhurst Walsh", Australian Historical Studies, April 1993, pp. 422–436
  • Anne Summers, "The Unwritten History of Adela Pankhurst Walsh", in Elizabeth Windschuttle (editor), Women, Class and History, Fontana / Collins, 1980, pp. 388–402
  • Deborah Jordan, "Adela Pankhurst, Peace Negotiator: World War 1, Queensland", Outskirts, 2018, 39, pp. 1–20
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