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Dame 'Christabel Harriette Pankhurst' DBE (September 22, 1880 – February 13, 1958) was a suffragette born in Manchester, England.
Christabel was the daughter of the lawyer Dr. Richard Pankhurst and suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst, and a sister of Sylvia Pankhurst and Adela Pankhurst. Along with her mother Emmeline and others, Christabel co-founded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1903. In 1905, Christabel Pankhurst interrupted a Liberal Party meeting by shouting demands for voting rights for women. She was arrested and along with fellow suffragette Annie Kenney went to prison rather than pay a fine as punishment for their outburst. Their case gained much media interest and the ranks of the WSPU swelled following their trial. Emmeline began to take more militant action for the suffragette cause after her daughter's arrest and was herself imprisoned on many occasions for her principles.
In 1906, Christabel Pankhurst obtained a law degree from the University of Manchester and moved to the London headquarters of the WPSU, where she was appointed its organising secretary. Earning the nickname "Queen of the Mob", Christabel was jailed again in 1907 in Parliament Square and 1909 after the "Rush Trial" at Bow Street. Between 1912 and 1913 she lived in Paris, France to escape imprisonment under the terms of the Prisoner's (Temporary Discharge for Ill-Health) Act better known as the Cat and Mouse Act. The start of World War I compelled Christabel to return to England in 1913, where she was again arrested. Christabel engaged in a hunger strike, ultimately serving only 30 days of a three-year sentence.
She was influential in the WSPUs 'anti-male' phase after the failure of the Conciliation Bills, she wrote a book called ''The Great Scourge and How to End It'' on the subject of sexually transmitted diseases and how sexually equality (votes for women) would help the fight against these diseases. [1]
After some British women were granted the right to vote at the end of World War I, Christabel stood in the 1918 general election as a Women's Party candidate, in alliance with the Lloyd George/Conservative Coalition in the Smethwick constituency. She was narrowly defeated, losing by only 775 votes to the Labour Party candidate John Davison.
Leaving her native England in 1921, she moved to the United States where she eventually became an evangelist with Plymouth Brethren links and became a prominent member of Second Adventist movement. Marshall, Morgan and Scott published her works on subjects related to her prophetic outlook, which took its character from John Nelson Darby's perspectives. Christabel lectured and wrote books on the Second Coming. Christabel returned to Britain in the 1930s. She was appointed a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1936. At the start of the Second World War she again left for the USA where she lived until her death in Los Angeles, California in 1958 at the age of 77, and was buried in the Woodlawn Memorial Cemetery in Santa Monica, California.

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Further reading

See also

External links

Further reading

★ ''Pressing Problems of the Closing Age'' by Christabel Pankhurst (Morgan & Scott Ltd., 1924)

★ ''The World's Unrest: Visions of the Dawn'' by Christabel Pankhurst (Morgan & Scott Ltd., 1926)

★ ''Queen Christabel'' by David Mitchell (MacDonald and Jane's Publisher Ltd., 1977) ISBN 0-354-04152-5

★ ''Sylvia and Christabel Pankhurst'' by Barbara Castle (Penguin Books, 1987) ISBN 978-0-14-008761-1

See also

★ Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom

★ Pankhurst Centre in Manchester

External links

★ http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WpankhurstC.htm

★ Blue Plaque for Suffragette Leaders Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst