Biographies

Sylvia Pankhurst

Sylvia Pankhurst, the daughter of Dr. Richard Pankhurst and Emmeline Goulden, was born in Manchester in 1882. Sylvia's father, Dr. Richard Pankhurst, a radical lawyer, died of a perforated ulcer in 1898. Sylvia had been very close to her father and never really got over his death. Unlike her mother and sister, Sylvia retained the socialist beliefs that had been taught to her by her father when she was a child.

Christabel attended Manchester High School and in 1900 won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art in South Kensington. Although a committed artist, Sylvia began spending more and more time working for the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) that had been founded by her mother in 1903.

Sylvia was also very active in the Labour Party and became a close friend of Keir Hardie, the leader of the party in the House of Commons. In 1906 Sylvia gave up her studies at the Royal College of Art and worked full-time for the WSPU. Later that year she served the first of many periods in prison for her WSPU activities. Sylvia also endured several hunger strikes.

Sylvia Pankhurst was a talented writer and in 1911 her book The History of the Women's Suffrage Movement was published. However, Sylvia was unhappy that the WSPU had abandoned its earlier commitment to socialism and disagreed with Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst's attempts to gain middle class support by arguing in favour of a limited franchise. Sylvia Pankhurst's final break with the WSPU came in 1912 when the movement adopted a policy of widespread arson.

Sylvia now concentrated her efforts on helping the Labour Party build up its support in London. This included the production of a weekly paper for working-class women called The Women's Dreadnought.

The outbreak of the First World War caused further conflict between Sylvia and the WSPU. Sylvia was a pacifist and disagreed with the WSPU's strong support for the war. Sylvia Pankhurst joined with Charlotte Despard to form the Women's Peace Army, an organisation that demanded a negotiated peace.

Sylvia Pankhurst was a supporter of the Russian Revolution in 1917 and visited the country where she met Lenin and ended up arguing with him over the issue of censorship. The government disliked Sylvia's pro-Communist articles in her newspaper and she was imprisoned for five months for sedition.

At the end of the war Sylvia began living with Silvo Corio, an Italian socialist. In 1927 their child, Richard, was born. Sylvia upset her mother by refusing to marry the boy's father. Sylvia was totally opposed to signing a marriage contract or taking a man's name.

Sylvia remained active in politics throughout her life. In the 1930s she supported the republicans in Spain, helped Jewish refugees from Germany and led the campaign against the Italian occupation of Ethiopia. After the Second World War Sylvia moved to Ethiopia where she lived until her death in 1960.

Biographical Links

Emmeline Pankhurst
Christabel Pankhurst
Teresa Billington-Greig
Annie Kenney
Charlotte Despard
Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence

Source Database

1.7
10.5
16.3
16.7
16.8
21.6
23.1
25.2

Internet Links

London Museum: WSPU Collection
http://www.comlab.ox.ac.uk/archive/other/
museums/uk.html

Further Reading

Sylvia Pankhurst, The Suffragette Movement, Longmans (1931)
Richard Pankhurst, Sylvia Pankhurst: Artist and Crusader, Paddington (1979)
David Mitchell, The Fighting Pankhursts, Jonathan Cape (1967)
Marie Roberts (ed.), The Reformers: Socialist Feminists, Routledge (1995)

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