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The “black sheep” of the Pankhurst family
108 PANKHURST, Adela. Put Up the Sword. Melbourne: The Women’s Peace Army, 1916 Octavo. Original buff printed wrappers. Spine ends chipped, wrappers a little soiled, book block edges spotted and contents evenly toned, overall a very good copy. notably scarce first edition in book form of this influen- tial pacifist manifesto by the exiled youngest daughter of Emmeline Pankhurst, first published as a pamphlet of the same length the previous year. OCLC locates four copies of the 1916 edition, all in Australia (National Library; State Library of NS Wales; University of Adelaide; Australian Defence Force Academy). The 1915 edition is markedly more common. Adela Constantia Mary Pankhurst Walsh (1885–1961) was the third daughter of Richard and Emmeline Pankhurst. Though her political views were at first aligned with her mother’s and sisters’— at 18 she was the youngest of the early members of the WSPU—Ad- ela’s criticism of her oldest sister Christabel’s increasingly militant tactics while leading the organisation soon led to irreconcilable differences. She was branded “a very black sheep” by Christabel, who is also quoted as saying “one of Adela is too many” in Sylvia’s memoir The Suffragette Movement . Although efforts were at first made to occupy her time elsewhere—a gardening course paid for by her mother, and a governess position attained in Switzerland—her family still viewed her and her socialist opinions as dangerously divisive to the cause. After a final meeting with her mother in Paris in January 1914, Adela agreed to sail for Australia: she never saw England or her family again, though she would eventually reconcile with Emmeline just before her mother’s death in 1928. Exile did not dampen her spirits. “Always impetuous and rest- less, she managed in Australia to offend communists, socialists, trade unionists, patriots, feminists, nationalists, imperialists, and conservatives as she zigzagged from left to right, denigrated as a renegade by the left, an eccentric by the right. Yet, brimming with Pankhurst self-belief and a naïve, Joan of Arc sense of mission, she showed enormous energy and will, as well as flashes of insight and
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a talent for charismatic leadership, as for three decades she strug- gled to have her say on social, economic, and foreign policy, at a time when few women featured in public life in Australia” ( ODNB ). Unlike her mother and sisters, Adela has received comparatively lit- tle attention in British suffragist history. Put Up the Sword is Adela’s popular anti-war polemic, written while she was a leading speaker for the Women’s Peace Army after the start of the First World War. £975 [129451] 109 PANKHURST, Christabel. A Challenge! Miss Pankhurst’s unpublished Article in this week’s ‘Votes for Women’, 8 March 1912. London: The Woman’s Press, 1912 Single-sheet handbill (280 × 200 mm), letterpress recto only. Lightly browned, and a little fragile with some splitting and chipping, but remains very good. rare survival of this leaflet issued by the wspu in the week that Christabel Pankhurst had eluded the police after the win- dow smashing demonstration, escaping to Paris. Votes for Women was consequently censored, and the journal printed just the title “A Challenge ”, followed by a blank space and Christabel’s signature. Her article was, instead, issued by the WSPU in leaflet form. “Gratitude to the women in prison, reverence for their courage and selfless- ness—these are the feelings that stir the hearts of every one of us. A cause must triumph that is fought by such soldiers as these. Our prisoners in Holloway take rank with those heroes and liberators who names are set like jewels in our national history” (opening par- agraph). The article concludes by promising “Repression will make
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