ABSTRACT
Adela, the WSPU Organiser for Sheffield, had not been happy in the women’s movement for some time. Although she had not been as fond of her aunt Mary as Sylvia had been, Mary had been a second mother to the younger Pankhurst children and her death, coming so soon after Harry’s, must have ‘intensified’ Adela’s sorrow.1 Furthermore, distrust had grown up between Adela and Christabel who, Sylvia claimed, regarded their younger sister ‘as a very black sheep amongst organisers’ because she was a fervent socialist when the WSPU was supposed to be free from party affiliation.2 Adela felt that the WSPU was losing ground and tried to voice her concerns about the militant policy to Christabel. Some fifty years later, she could still remember clearly Christabel’s reaction. ‘[U]nfortunately she took it amiss – was even persuaded I was about to found a counter-organisation with myself as a leader. This was so far from my intention that the suggestion when it was put to me deprived me of speech!’3
