MRS. PANKHURST DEAD

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 381, 15 June 1928, Page 9

MRS. PANKHURST DEAD

SUFFRAGETTE LEADER SEVERAL TIMES IN PRISON MILITANT WORKER FOR CAUSE (United P.A.—By Telegraph — Copyright) (Australian P.A.—United Service) LONDON, Thursday. The death has occurred of Mrs. Pankhurst, th© well-known suffragette leader. Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst was born in Manchester, her maiden name being Goulden. She was educated in England and Paris. In 1879 she married Dr. Richard Marsden Pankhurst, a barrister, and with him helped to found the Women’s Franchise League in 1889. She was a poor law guardian and a member of the school board, Manchester. After her husband’s death she founded the Women’s Social and Political Union. In February, 1908, Mrs. Pankhurst and other women tried to rush the entrance to the House of Commons from a furniture van. She was arrested and sentenced to six weeks’ imprisonment. In October, she was again arrested and it was then that the hunger-strike was first carried out. In connection with the organised breaking of windows in the West End of London on March 1, 1912, Mrs. Pankhurst and others were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, but soon starved themselves free. On October 17, 1912, a split occurred in the movement, but the agitation went on until the war. As the result of women’s work during the war their objective was attained by a Bill passed on February 6, 1918. Later Mrs. Pankhurst and her daughter, Christabel, settled in Canada, where the former in 1923 held an official position as a lecturer on social hygiene. Her health, however, broke down and she spent over a year in the Bermudas. Another daughter is Sylvia Pankhurst.