1-192-438 - © London Museum/Heritage-Images

Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst, Honorary Secretary, organiser, speaker and author, c1909. Sylvia was an accomplished artist and designer who was trained at the Royal College of Art in South Kensington. Her art work and imagery gave the Women's Social and Political Union a coherent visual identity. Sylvia made votes for working-class women a priority and this brought her into conflict with her mother and sister, Christabel. They disapproved of her East London Federation of Suffragettes and expelled her from the WSPU in 1914. She lectured on woman's suffrage in the United States (1911); Scandinavia (1913) and central Europe (1914). She was imprisoned many times for her involvement and endured weeks and months of hunger, thrist and sleep strikes in Holloway Gaol.