SYLVIA PANKHURST - A Formidable Campaigner By Margaret Brecknell
Above: Sylvia Pankhurst c.1930 Photo Credit: LSE Library
Sylvia Pankhurst was born 140 years ago this month in the Manchester suburb of Old Trafford. Together with her mother, Emmeline, and elder sister, Christabel, she is rightly celebrated today for the pivotal part she played in helping women win the right to vote. 142
Y
et, this only tells part of the story. Sylvia believed passionately in the suffragettes’ cause, but she also campaigned vigorously on a range of other issues. This brought her into conflict with her mother and sister and for much of her adult life she became estranged from her own family. Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst was born on 5th May 1882. Long before he married Emmeline in late 1879 (she was his junior by 24 years), her father
LANCASHIRE & NORTH WEST MAGAZINE
Richard had campaigned actively on improving women’s legal rights. Emmeline had been interested in the topic of women’s suffrage ever since as a child she had started to read her mother’s copies of the Women’s Suffrage Journal. Along with her siblings, therefore, Sylvia grew up in a household where involvement in politics and the suffrage movement was viewed very much as the norm. Sylvia would later recall her barrister father telling her from an www.lancmag.com
