Christabel Pankhurst

Christabel Pankhurst

Suffragette, Emily Wilding Davison memorial issue of the newspaper edited by Christabel Pankhurst

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

Early life

Christabel Pankhurst was the daughter of the lawyer Dr. Richard Pankhurst and women's suffrage movement leader Emmeline Pankhurst and sister to Sylvia Pankhurst and Adela Pankhurst. 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 and her mother, Emmeline, had a special bond that none of her other siblings had. She and her father were very close as well. In the Dictionary of National Biography, Roger Fulford says that he named her Christabel after the lines of a poem by Coleridge “The lovely lady Christabel/ Whom her father loves so well.” When her mother died in 1928, Christabel grieved deeply for two years. Her family was not wealthy growing up. Her father was a lawyer and her mother owned a small shop. She assisted her mother while Emmeline was working as the Registrar of Births and Deaths in Manchester. Her family always encouraged themselves in their financial struggles by firmly believing that they were more devoted to causes than comforts.

Education

She 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. She received honors on her LLB exam, but was not allowed to practice law as a woman. Later she moved to Geneva in France to live with a family friend, but returned home to help her mother raise the rest of the children when her father died in 1898.

Activism

In 1905 Christabel Pankhurst interrupted a Liberal Party meeting by shouting demands for voting rights for women. She was arrested and, along with fellow suffragist Annie Kenney, went to prison rather than pay a fine as punishment for their outburst. Their case gained much media interest and the ranks of the WSPU swelled following their trial. Emmeline Pankhurst 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 London headquarters of the WSPU, where she was appointed its organising secretary. Nicknamed "Queen of the Mob", she was jailed again in 1907 in Parliament Square and 1909 after the "Rush Trial" at Bow Street. Between 1912 and 1913 she lived in Paris, France, to escape imprisonment under the terms of the Prisoner's (Temporary Discharge for Ill-Health) Act, better known as the Cat and Mouse Act. The start of World War I compelled her to return to England in 1913, where she was again arrested. Pankhurst engaged in a hunger strike, ultimately serving only 30 days of a three-year sentence.

She 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.

She and her sister, Sylvia, did not get along well. Her sister was against turning the WSPU towards solely upper- 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.

On 8 September 1914, Pankhurst re-appeared at the London Opera House, after her long exile, to utter a declaration not on women's enfranchisement but on "The German Peril", a campaign led by the former General Secretary of the WSPU, Norah Dacre Fox in conjunction with the British Empire Union and the National Party. Along with Norah Dacre Fox (later known as Norah Elam), Pankhurst toured the country making recruiting speeches. Her supporters handed the white feather to every young man they encountered wearing civilian dress and bobbed up at Hyde Park meetings with placards: "Intern Them All". The Suffragette appeared again on 16 April 1915, as a war paper, and on 15 October changed its name to Britannia. There, week by week, Pankhurst demanded the military conscription of men and the industrial conscription of women into "national service", as it was termed. In flamboyant terms she called also for the internment of all people of enemy race, men and women, young and old, found on these shores, and for a more complete and ruthless enforcement of the blockade of enemy and neutral nations. She insisted that this must be "a war of attrition". In her ferocious zeal for relentless prosecution of the War she demanded the resignation of Sir Edward Grey, Lord Robert Cecil, General Sir William Robertson and Sir Eyre Crowe, whom she considered too mild and dilatory in method. So furious was her attack that, in its over-fervent support of the National War policy, Britannia was many times raided by the police and experienced greater difficulty in appearing than had befallen The Suffragette. Indeed, although occasionally Norah Dacre Fox's father, John Doherty, who owned a printing firm, was drafted in to print campaign posters, Britannia was compelled at last to set up its own printing press. A gentler impulse was embodied in an early proposal of Emmeline Pankhurst to set up Women's Social and Political Union Homes for illegitimate girl "war babies", but only five children were adopted: sterner interests prevailed. David Lloyd George, whom Pankhurst had regarded as the most bitter and dangerous enemy of women, was now the one politician in whom she and Emmeline Pankhurst placed confidence.

When the February 1917 Russian Revolution took place and Alexander Kerensky rose to power, Christabel Pankhurst, like many others, journeyed to Russia in a vain effort to prevent that vast country with its starving multitudes from retiring from the War. Her circuit was like that of Hervé, the French "anti-patriot", as for many years he had called himself, and of whom she had been an ardent admirer in her youth. She received the commendation of many war enthusiasts.

After some British women were granted the right to vote at the end of World War I, Pankhurst stood in the 1918 general election as a Women's Party candidate, in alliance with the Lloyd George/Conservative Coalition in the Smethwick constituency. She was narrowly defeated, by only 775 votes to the Labour Party candidate John Davison.

Move to California

Leaving England in 1921, she moved to the United States where she eventually became an evangelist with Plymouth Brethren links and became a prominent member of Second Adventist movement. Marshall, Morgan and Scott published her works on subjects related to her prophetic outlook, which took its character from John Nelson Darby's perspectives. Pankhurst lectured and wrote books on the Second Coming. She was a frequent guest on TV shows and had a reputation for being an odd combination of “former suffragist revolutionary, evangelical Christian and almost stereotypically proper “English Lady” who always was in demand as a lecturer.” While in California she adopted her daughter, Betty, after finally recovering from her mother’s death. She returned to Britain in the 1930s. She was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1936. At the start of the Second World War she again left for the USA where she lived until her death in Los Angeles, California. Before her death she received 250 pounds a year from Olivia Durand-Deacon, a widow who was murdered by her male companion. The widow was brutally murdered and her killer dissolved her body in an acid bath. The reason for which she left the sum to Christabel was unknown.

Death

Christabel died February 13, 1958, at the age of 77, sitting in a straight-backed chair. Her housekeeper found her body and there was no indication of her cause of death. Before her death, she had never been sick or injured, except for one car accident that she was slightly injured in. She was buried in the Woodlawn Memorial Cemetery in Santa Monica, California.

See also

• History of feminism
• List of suffragists and suffragettes
• Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom
• Pankhurst Centre in Manchester

Further reading

• Christabel Pankhurst, Pressing Problems of the Closing Age (Morgan & Scott Ltd., 1924).
• Christabel Pankhurst, The World's Unrest: Visions of the Dawn (Morgan & Scott Ltd., 1926).
• David Mitchell, Queen Christabel (MacDonald and Jane's Publisher Ltd., 1977) ISBN 0-354-04152-5
• Barbara Castle, Sylvia and Christabel Pankhurst (Penguin Books, 1987) ISBN 978-0-14-008761-1.

External links

• http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WpankhurstC.htm
• Blue Plaque for Suffragette Leaders Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst
• "Christabel Harriette Pankhurst". Suffragette. Find a Grave. Jun 09, 2005. Retrieved Aug 18, 2011. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)