1-192-437 - © London Museum/Heritage-Images

Christabel Harriette Pankhurst, Organizing Secretary of the Women's Social and Political Union and editor of The Suffragette, c1909. The eldest Pankhurst daughter, Christabel had a first class degree in Law from Owen's College, Victoria University, Manchester, and a prize for international law. However, because she was a woman she was not allowed to practice as a lawyer. She devoted her considerable talent to the WSPU; she was a brilliant and popular speaker who could inspire great loyalty. Frequent parallels were drawn between her and Joan of Arc. She and Annie Kenney started militant tactics in 1905 when they continually interrupted a Liberal meeting at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, asking when the Liberal Party would give women the vote. They were thrown out, arrested, refused to pay a fine to avoid prison and were sentenced to seven days. Christabel went to prison twice more in 1907 and 1908 and finally fled the country, exiling herself in Paris in March 1912 to avoid the conspiracy charges her mother Emmeline faced. She led the WSPU, and edited the Suffragette newspaper from Paris and did not return to England until after the outbreak of the First World War. Her pamphlets and handbills include: What Women Get, and What They Need; The Militant Methods of the WSPU; and Broken Windows.