Miss Adela Constantia Mary Pankhurst

Other sources: http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4769024
https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/m05g7x1
Elizabeth Crawford, The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866?1928 (1999); V Coleman, Adela Pankhurst (1996)

Database linked sources: https://www.suffrageresources.org.uk/activity/3214/how-effective-was-the-votes-for-women-campaign-in-bristol

Family information: Youngest daughter of Richard and Emmeline Pankhurst, WSPU founder. Sister to Christabel and Sylvia Pankhurst. Married Australian socialist and widower Tom Walsh in 1917. They had five children and three stepchildren.

Additional Information: Adela was arrested in 1906, along with Hannah Mitchell, and spent a week in prison for taking part in a WSPU demonstration. She worked in Yorkshire after her release to raise awareness and support for the WSPU among textile workers there. Like her sister Sylvia, Adela kept her ties with the Independent Labour Party (ILP) throughout the campaign, whereas her mother Emmeline and sister Christabel broke them. Adela was arrested for a second time at the House of Commons and sentenced to two months in prison. She was unwell after her release, suffering from pneumonia, but nevertheless travelled to Scotland and Wales and then to Bristol to help with campaigning. It was when working in Scotland as an organiser, in 1909, that she was arrested in Glasgow and again in Edinburgh, and imprisoned. She went on hunger strike with others, but was deemed too 'degenerate' and unhealthy to be forcibly fed and so was released. She gave up work for the WSPU in 1912, after organising in Scarborough and Sheffield, partly because of her health but also because she did not like the new extreme militant tactics advocated by her mother and, most forcefully, by her sister Christabel.

Other Suffrage Activities: In 1912, having left the WSPU, Adela stayed at Studley Agricultural College in Worcestershire, where she gained a diploma and became a gardener. In 1914, she emigrated to Australia to work as an organiser for the Women's Political Association in Melbourne, and campaigned against the war through the Women's Peace Army. She soon joined the Communist Party there and was imprisoned for nine months for leading a procession of the Socialist Women's League in 1917. She joined the Australian Communist Party when it formed in 1921 and was on its committee. Later in life, after her husband's death, she worked at a nursing home for children with disabilities.