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Adela Pankhurst

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Adela Walsh
Adela at the Suffragette's Rest
Adela at the Suffragette's Rest
Born Adela Constantia Mary Pankhurst
19 June 1885
Chorlton upon Medlock, Lancashire, England
Died 23 May 1961 (aged 75)
Wahroonga, New South Wales, Australia
Citizenship Australian
Education Studley Horticultural College
Manchester High School for Girls
Organization(s) Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU)
Australia First Movement
Australian Women's Guild of Empire
Political party Independent Labour Party
Communist Party of Australia
Spouse Thomas Walsh
(m. 1917; died 1943)
Children 5
Parent(s) Richard Pankhurst
Emmeline Goulden
Relatives Christabel Pankhurst (sister)
Sylvia Pankhurst (sister)
Richard Pankhurst (nephew)
Helen Pankhurst (great-niece)
Alula Pankhurst (great-nephew)

Adela Constantia Mary Walsh (née Pankhurst /.pæŋkhərst/;[1] 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.

Early life

Pankhurst was born on 19 June 1885 in Chorlton upon Medlock, Manchester, Lancashire, 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 Pankhurst and Christabel Pankhurst, were leaders of the British suffragette movement.[2] She was the youngest of the Pankhurst children.[2][3] Her mother was of Manx descent.[4][5]

Pankhurst attended the all-woman Studley Horticultural College near Studley in Warwickshire then Manchester High School for Girls.[2] She also attended a period of teaching training,[6] but did not complete the course.[7] After finishing her education, she accompanied Helen Archdale to Italy.[7]

UK

As a teenager, Pankhurst became involved in the militant Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), which had been founded by her mother and sisters in 1903.[2][8]

In June 1906, Pankhurst disrupted a Liberal Party meeting and was sentenced to seven days in prison.[2] 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.[9] Pankhurst and Jessie Kenney formed The Young Hot Bloods in 1907, which was an inner secret branch of the suffragettes involved in "danger duty".[10][11] She was "recklessly dedicated" to the suffrage movement.[12]

Pankhurst was active in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, from 1908 and protested during the visit of Sir Edward Grey, Foreign Secretary for the Liberal government, who was giving a talk at the Scarborough Liberal Association.[13] She worked with Marion Mackenzie to build a local WSPU branch in Scarborough,[14] and gave talks in York organised by the local WSPU branch secretary Annie Coultate.[15]

In November 1909 Pankhurst joined a protest that interrupted a talk by Winston Churchill at his constituency in Dundee, Scotland. She was arrested for "breaking the peace" along with Helen Archdale, Catherine Corbett and Maud Joachim.[13][16] Pankhurst had slapped a policeman who was trying to evict her from the building. Although she went on hunger strike there,[17] she was not force-fed as prison governor and medical supervisor assessed her "heart's action as violent and laboured".[18]

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.[19] The trees were known as "Annie's Arboreatum" after Annie Kenney.[20][21] There was also a "Pankhurst Pond" within the grounds.[22] 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.[23]

Her mother's favourite child was Christabel and the two of them took the Women's Social and Political Union as their own organisation.[24] 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.[25] 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 Australian suffragist and social reformer Vida Goldstein.[3][26] 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 was given a Hunger Strike Medal 'for Valour' by the WSPU.

Australia

Pankhurst emigrated to Australia in 1914 following a falling out with her family, estrangement from them and frequent incarceration.[27][28] She sailed from Southampton to Melbourne aboard the Geelong.[29]

Pankhurst's experience of activism enabled her to be recruited during World War I as an organiser for the Women's Peace Army in Melbourne by Goldstein.[7] Pankhurst wrote a pacifist booklet called Put Up the Sword (1915),[12] penned a number of anti-war pamphlets,[26] and addressed public meetings, speaking against war and conscription.[13] 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.[30] On 8 March 1917, her mother Emmeline sent an angry telegram to the Australian Prime Minister, Billy Hughes, in which she condemned her daughter for her opposition to conscription and the war effort, saying that: "I am ashamed of Adela and repudiate her."[31]

On 23 August 1917, Pankhurst spearheaded a women's protest in Melbourne against rising food prices. She was arrested for her involvement in the protest but was released on bail until her trial.[32] She was at risk of deportation back to Britain.[27] During this period of remand, she married her husband, trade unionist Tom Walsh.[33][34] Reverend Fredrick Sinclaire of the Free Religious Fellowship married the couple on 30 September 1917 in Melbourne,[7] with Robert Ross, editor of The Socialist, as best man.[35] Prime Minister 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.[32]

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).[7] Her husband had three daughters from his previous marriage.[36] In 1920, Pankhurst and her husband became founding members of the Communist Party of Australia,[37] from which she was later expelled.[38][39] Pankhurst also wrote for the Seamen's Journal (the publication of the Seamen's Union of Australia) and organised for the Social Democratic League.[7]

Pankhurst became disillusioned with communism and founded the anti-communist and right-wing Australian Women's Guild of Empire in 1927.[40] In 1941 Pankhurst became one of the founding members of the far-right nationalistic, Australia First Movement.[7]

When the 1938 Dalfram dispute broke out during the Second Sino-Japanese War (members of the Waterside Workers' Federation of Australia refused to load pig iron onto the steamship SS Dalfram headed for Japan), Pankhurst wrote a report on the situation for Masao Shibusawa, head of a Japanese iron and steel firm.[41] She was a paid Japanese agent.[42]

At the outbreak of World War II, Pankhurst publicly spoke out against forming a trade alliance with America, saying that Japan would be a better trading partner.[27] She visited Japan with her husband in 1939, and was arrested and interned in March 1942, under the Regulation 26 of the National Security Act,[43] for her advocacy of peace with Japan and support for Nazi Germany.[44] She was released in October.[7] Throughout the war she wrote articles presenting the German point of view and claiming that Japan would help maintain a "White Australia policy" in the Empire Gazette.[41] After the end of the war, Pankhurst felt that fascism "had achieved a great deal,"[44] but withdrew from public life and political campaigning.[37]

Pankhurst's husband Tom Walsh died in 1943 and afterwards, she withdrew from public life. In 1960, she converted to Roman Catholicism.[8][44] She died on 23 May 1961, aged 75, and was buried according to Catholic rites.[2][7] She was survived by her three children.[45]

Posthumous recognition

Pankhurst's 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.[46]

Pankhurst Crescent, in the Canberra suburb of Gilmore, is named in her honour.[47]

Helen Fraser wrote her reminiscences of Pankhurst; from when they first met at the time of early suffragette arrests, then in London, again at an Aberdeen by-election and latterly in Australia. Fraser stated that Pankhurst had "humour, the charm of the unexpected and unpredictable" amongst other qualities.[48] Fraser's tribute was published in the periodical "Calling all women", the newsletter of the Suffragette Fellowship, in July 1961.

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. 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.[49]

See also

References

  1. Back to citation "Pankhurst". Collins English Dictionary. 25 February 2026.
  2. Back to citation occurrence 2.0 Back to citation occurrence 2.1 Back to citation occurrence 2.2 Back to citation occurrence 2.3 Back to citation occurrence 2.4 Back to citation occurrence 2.5 Coleman, Verna (23 September 2004), "Walsh, Adela Constantia Mary Pankhurst (1885–1961), suffragette and pacifist", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/56250, ISBN 978-0-19-861412-8, retrieved 27 February 2026
  3. Back to citation occurrence 3.0 Back to citation occurrence 3.1 "The Pankhurst Family". Pankhurst Museum. Retrieved 27 February 2026.
  4. Back to citation Liddington, Jill; Norris, Jill (2000). One Hand Tied Behind Us: The Rise of the Women's Suffrage Movement. Rivers Oram Press. p. 74. ISBN 978-1-85489-110-5.
  5. Back to citation Bartley, p. 16.
  6. Back to citation Cowman, Krista (15 July 2007). Women of the Right Spirit: Paid Organisers of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), 1904–18. Manchester University Press. p. 229. ISBN 978-0-7190-7002-0.
  7. Back to citation occurrence 7.0 Back to citation occurrence 7.1 Back to citation occurrence 7.2 Back to citation occurrence 7.3 Back to citation occurrence 7.4 Back to citation occurrence 7.5 Back to citation occurrence 7.6 Back to citation occurrence 7.7 Back to citation occurrence 7.8 Hogan, Susan (2006). "Pankhurst, Adela Constantia (1885–1961)". Australian Dictionary of Biography. Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. Retrieved 28 February 2026.
  8. Back to citation occurrence 8.0 Back to citation occurrence 8.1 Damousi, Joy (April 1993). "The Enthusiasms of Adela Pankhurst Walsh". Australian Historical Studies. 25 (100): 424. doi:10.1080/10314619308595924.
  9. Back to citation "Riotous Suffragettes in the House". The Daily Mirror. 24 October 1906. p. 3.
  10. Back to citation Christensen, McKenzi (2019). ""Baby Suffragettes": Girls in the Women's Suffrage Movement across the Atlantic". The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing. 48 (1): 20. Brigham Young University. Retrieved 21 March 2025.
  11. Back to citation Simkin, John. "Young Hot Bloods". Spartacus Educational. Retrieved 27 February 2026.
  12. Back to citation occurrence 12.0 Back to citation occurrence 12.1 Mitchell, David J. (1967). The Fighting Pankhursts: A Study in Tenacity. Macmillan. pp. 46, 57.
  13. Back to citation occurrence 13.0 Back to citation occurrence 13.1 Back to citation occurrence 13.2 Godfrey, Barry; Williams, Lucy (24 August 2018). "Adela Pankhurst: the forgotten sister who doesn't fit neatly into suffragette history". The Conversation. Retrieved 19 November 2024.
  14. Back to citation Cowman, Krista (2007). The Militant Suffragette Movement in York. Borthwick Publications. p. 10. ISBN 978-1-904497-21-9.
  15. Back to citation Waters, Michael (1 January 2018). "The Campaign for Women's Suffrage in York and the 1911 Census Evasion". Yorkshire Archaeological Journal. 90 (1): 178–194. doi:10.1080/00844276.2018.1465692. ISSN 0084-4276.
  16. Back to citation Simkin, John (1997). "Maud Joachim". Spartacus Educational. Retrieved 31 January 2018.
  17. Back to citation Crawford, Elizabeth (2 September 2003). The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866–1928. Routledge. p. 15. ISBN 978-1-135-43401-4.
  18. Back to citation Atkinson, Diane (2018). Rise up, women!: the remarkable lives of the suffragettes. London: Bloomsbury. p. 179. ISBN 9781408844045. OCLC 1016848621.
  19. Back to citation Historic England. "Eagle House (1115252)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 25 November 2008.
  20. Back to citation Hammond, Cynthia Imogen (2017). Architects, Angels, Activists and the City of Bath, 1765–1965 ": Engaging with Women's Spatial Interventions in Buildings and Landscape. London: Routledge. ISBN 9781351576123.
  21. Back to citation Hannam, June (Winter 2002). "Suffragette Photographs" (PDF). Regional Historian (8). University of the West of England.
  22. Back to citation Crawford, Elizabeth (12 September 2012). "Book of the Week: A Nest of Suffragettes in Somerset". Woman and her Sphere. Retrieved 27 October 2017.
  23. Back to citation "Suffragettes Adela Pankhurst, Jessie and Annie Kenney 1910, Blathwayt, Col Linley". Bath in Time, Images of Bath online. Retrieved 31 January 2018.
  24. Back to citation Pankhurst, Sylvia (1931). The Home Front. London: Hutchinson & Co, London. p. 99.
  25. Back to citation Purvis, June (5 February 2018). "Pankhurst sisters: the bitter divisions behind their fight for women's votes". The Conversation. Retrieved 27 February 2026.
  26. Back to citation occurrence 26.0 Back to citation occurrence 26.1 Sparrow, Jeff (24 December 2015). "'Wayward suffragette' Adela Pankhurst and her remarkable Australian Life". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 March 2016.
  27. Back to citation occurrence 27.0 Back to citation occurrence 27.1 Back to citation occurrence 27.2 "Adela: suffragette, communist, fascist?". BBC. 28 October 2009. Retrieved 27 February 2026.
  28. Back to citation 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.
  29. Back to citation Pugh, Martin (31 December 2013). The Pankhursts: The History of One Radical Family. Random House. p. 289. ISBN 978-1-4481-6268-0.
  30. Back to citation Outskirts (journal), Volume 39, accessed 28 February 2020
  31. Back to citation Wood, Katie (19 January 2016). "Why Emmeline Pankhurst criticised her daughter". Pursuit. University of Melbourne. Retrieved 27 February 2026.
  32. Back to citation occurrence 32.0 Back to citation occurrence 32.1 Smart, Judith (1986). "Feminists, Food and the Fair Price: The Cost of Living Demonstrations in Melbourne, August–September 1917". Labour History (50). Liverpool University Press: 113–131. doi:10.2307/27508786. JSTOR 27508786.
  33. Back to citation Macintyre, Stuart (1 September 1999). The Reds: The Communist Party of Australia from origins to illegality. Allen & Unwin. p. 1860. ISBN 978-1-74343-235-8.
  34. Back to citation Damousi, Joy (1994). Women Come Rally: Socialism, Communism, and Gender in Australia, 1890–1955. Oxford University Press. p. 27. ISBN 978-0-19-553315-6.
  35. Back to citation Clark, Charles Manning Hope (1963). A History of Australia: 'The old dead and the young tree green', 1916–1935. Melbourne University Press. p. 239. ISBN 978-0-522-84352-1.
  36. Back to citation Hogan, Susan, "Thomas (Tom) Walsh (1871–1943)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, retrieved 28 February 2026
  37. Back to citation occurrence 37.0 Back to citation occurrence 37.1 Hamilton, Clive (1 November 2016). What Do We Want?: The Story of Protest in Australia. National Library of Australia. p. 43. ISBN 978-0-642-27891-3.
  38. Back to citation Simkin, John (1997). "Adela Pankhurst". Spartacus Educational. Retrieved 29 August 2022.
  39. Back to citation Barlass, Tim (7 March 2022). "Pioneer trio fought injustice, risked arrest". The Sydney Morning Herald. p. 10.
  40. Back to citation Sparrow, Jeff (24 December 2015). "'Wayward suffragette' Adela Pankhurst and her remarkable Australian Life". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 March 2016; Stone, Caitlin. "Pankhurst, Adela Constantia". The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia. University of Melbourne. Retrieved 28 February 2026; Daniels, Kay; Murnane, Mary (1989). Australia's Women: A Documentary History from a Selection of Personal Letters, Diary Entries, Pamphlets, Official Records, Government and Police Reports, Speeches and Radio Talks. University of Queensland Press. p. 262. ISBN 978-0-7022-2235-1.
  41. Back to citation occurrence 41.0 Back to citation occurrence 41.1 Winter, Barbara (2007). The Australia First Movement. Queensland: Interactive Publications. pp. 70–71. ISBN 978-1-876819-41-5.
  42. Back to citation Lockwood, Rupert (1987). War on the Waterfront: Menzies, Japan, and the Pig-iron Dispute. Hale & Iremonger. pp. 73–76. ISBN 978-0-86806-300-3.
  43. Back to citation Gottlieb, Julie V. (28 April 2021). Feminine Fascism: Women in Britain's Fascist Movement, 1923–1945. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 158. ISBN 978-0-7556-3364-7.
  44. Back to citation occurrence 44.0 Back to citation occurrence 44.1 Back to citation occurrence 44.2 Webb, Simon (30 June 2020). Suffragette Fascists: Emmeline Pankhurst and Her Right-Wing Followers. Pen and Sword History. pp. 174–175. ISBN 978-1-5267-5691-6.
  45. Back to citation Stone, Caitlin. "Pankhurst, Adela Constantia". The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia. University of Melbourne. Retrieved 28 February 2026.
  46. Back to citation "Historic statue of suffragist leader Millicent Fawcett unveiled in Parliament Square". Gov.uk. 24 April 2018. Retrieved 24 April 2018; Topping, Alexandra (24 April 2018). "First statue of a woman in Parliament Square unveiled". The Guardian. Retrieved 24 April 2018; 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.
  47. Back to citation "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.
  48. Back to citation "Newsletters of the Suffragette Fellowship". Trove. Retrieved 25 August 2026.
  49. Back to citation "The Suffrage Interviews". London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Retrieved 22 February 2024.

Further reading

  • Verna Coleman Adela Pankhurst: The Wayward Suffragette 1885–1961 Melbourne University Press, 1996
  • 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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