Sylvia Pankhurst

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Standard Name: Pankhurst, Sylvia
Birth Name: Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst
SP , socialist feminist, was a prodigiously energetic writer, battling in print for most of the first half of the twentieth century for causes like the struggle for women's emancipation, the improvement of work and maternity conditions for poor women, and later for Ethiopian independence, in scores of letters, pamphlets, articles, and non-fiction monographs. She also produced a few poems, and translated poetry by others.
Black and white, half-length photograph of Sylvia Pankhurst, standing looking into the camera, holding a thin book. Her hair is centre-parted and loosely pulled back; she wear a long skirt and a top with long sleeves and embossed detail.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Family and Intimate relationships Christabel Pankhurst
CP in California re-opened correspondence with her sister Sylvia , with whom she had been out of touch for forty years.
Pankhurst, Richard Keir Pethick. “Sylvia Pankhurst’s Last Words on Christabel: an unpublished letter of February 1958”. Women’s History Review, No. 3/4, pp. 467 - 9.
467
Family and Intimate relationships Christabel Pankhurst
CP 's mother was the suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst . CP enjoyed a very close relationship with her mother, which had the effect of excluding her next sister, Sylvia .
Castle, Barbara. Sylvia and Christabel Pankhurst. Penguin, 1987.
18
Mitchell, David J. The Fighting Pankhursts: A Study in Tenacity. MacMillan, 1967.
40
Family and Intimate relationships Christabel Pankhurst
CP 's relations with Sylvia , the sibling closest to herself in age, were always marked by rivalry and conflict. A third sister, Adela , eventually settled in Australia to become a leading figure in...
Family and Intimate relationships Christabel Pankhurst
In January 1914, CP called Sylvia to Paris to demand that Sylvia's East London Federation should break its ties to the WSPU . Although their mother's suffragist impulse had originally grown in close relation to...
Family and Intimate relationships Dorothy Richardson
DR began a close friendship with Veronica Leslie-Jones , a militant suffragette and friend of the PankhurstsChristabel PankhurstSylvia Pankhurst ; this introduction was the most significant result for her of participating in the Arachne Club .
Fromm, Gloria G. Dorothy Richardson: A Biography. University of Illinois Press, 1977.
43, 50-1
Winning, Joanne. The Pilgrimage of Dorothy Richardson. University of Wisconsin Press, 2000.
23
Family and Intimate relationships Emmeline Pankhurst
EP had five brothers and four sisters. The sister closest to her in age and most loyal to her, later Mary Clarke , was also involved in the suffragette activism. Mary died at Pankhurst's home...
Family and Intimate relationships Emmeline Pankhurst
EP gave birth to five children in all, four of them within five years. The two eldest, Christabel Harriette (born in September 1880) and Estelle Sylvia (born in May 1882), became, like their mother, high-profile...
Family and Intimate relationships Emmeline Pankhurst
By 1913, EP had moved to live with composer Ethel Smyth at her cottage in Woking. The latter hints at a sexual relationship in her book Female Pipings in Eden and suggests that this...
Family and Intimate relationships Christabel Pankhurst
CP publicly announced that Sylvia Pankhurst 's East London Federation would no longer be attached to the WSPU .
Marcus, Jane, editor. “Introduction / Appendix”. Suffrage and the Pankhursts, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987, pp. 1 - 17, 306.
315
Friends, Associates Ethel Smyth
During her work with the Women's Social and Political Union , ES became devoted to Emmeline Pankhurst , co-founder of the WSPU . Emmeline Pankhurst's daughter Sylvia paints ES 's devotion in rather unflattering terms:...
Friends, Associates Mary Gawthorpe
During her time with the WSPU, MG worked with Christabel Pankhurst (who was twenty-four when Gawthorpe first met her, before she had yet met Isabella Ford ), whom, like Ethel Snowden , she knew from...
Friends, Associates Mary Gawthorpe
MG 's friendship with Dora Marsden ended in a breach. With Sylvia Pankhurst , too, her relationship later came to grief, but this was after a particularly close period following the birth of Sylvia's son...
Friends, Associates Eva Gore-Booth
In 1901 future suffrage leader Christabel Pankhurst met Esther Roper at a meeting of the North of England Society for Women's Suffrage (NESWS ). Roper introduced Pankhurst to EGB immediately after this, and the...
Friends, Associates Dora Russell
Sylvia Pankhurst enrolled her son as a day-boy at Beacon Hill, and lived nearby while writing The Suffragette Movement; Beatrice and Sidney Webb , and G. B. Shaw also visited. The school hosted annual...
Friends, Associates William Morris
WM 's associates included George Bernard Shaw , Annie Besant , Emery Walker , Vernon Lee , as well as Emmeline and Sylvia Pankhurst . His friendship with Dante Gabriel Rossetti ended in 1875, as...

Timeline

1845
Victoria Park in East London was opened to the public as the first public park in Britain. (The more famous London parks belonged to the Crown.) Situated among the poor, working-class districts of the East...
1866
The Royal Society of Arts established a scheme (believed to be the first in the world) for setting up commemorative plaques on buildings associated with famous people.
Quinn, Ben. “Plaque blues. Cuts hit heritage scheme”. Guardian Weekly, p. 16.
23 October 1906
During a demonstration at the opening of Parliament , eleven Women's Social and Political Union supporters were for the first time arrested and imprisoned: for two months in Holloway .
11 December 1906
Millicent Garrett Fawcett gave a banquet at the Savoy Hotel in London to celebrate the release from Holloway Prison of suffragists arrested on 23 October.
27 June 1907
The Women's Franchise began weekly publication in London; it featured contributions from major societies within the suffrage movement and from individuals.
February 1936
The awesome trio
Laity, Paul. “The left’s ace of clubs”. Guardian Unlimited.
of political theorist Harold Laski , publisher Victor Gollancz , and writer and Labour MP John Strachey established the Left Book Club (LBC) .
21 June 1936
The Stone Bomb or Anti-Air-War Memorial (showing an eighteen-inch bomb nose down in an object resembling Ordnance Survey markers) was officially unveiled at Woodford Green in Essex.
July 1945
Journalist Barbara Castle was elected a Labour member of the British Parliament , where she served for thirty-four years.