out by a local doctor, the operation being performed on the dining-room table.
‘Auntie Kate was a trained nurse and so we did alright after that, with lots of ice
cream and jellies.’^56 Perhaps during these busy times as a mother with her
second family, Emmeline reflected on her own daughters, especially Adela who
had given birth to another girl, Christian, early in 1923, and now had a family
of six (seven with the birth of Nancy Ursula the following year). That Adela
had become disillusioned with the Communist Party and left it, and rejoined
the Victorian Socialist Party, as an Honorary Organiser, was a small crumb of
comfort to her mother.^57
In June 1923, Emmeline – now a Canadian citizen – was elected as a Vice
President of the Public Health Association. This new responsibility, together
with her lecturing duties, left little opportunity to slacken the pace of her life.
That summer she undertook an arduous but successful tour amongst the scat-
tered population of northern Ontario. Together with Mrs. R. A. Kennedy,
president of the Ottawa Women’s Club, and Estelle Hewson, secretary of the
Ontario Social Hygiene Council, who acted as chauffeur and general manager,
Emmeline spoke in some thirty towns and travelled nearly three thousand
miles.^58 She had already taken Mary, her favourite adopted daughter, on one of
her speaking tours and now it was Kathleen’s turn, with Auntie Kate by her
side, to accompany Mother to St. Catherines, Ontario. On the back of a post-
card of St. Thomas’s Church, St. Catherines, Kathleen wrote, ‘Sept. 16 1923 I
went to this Church to-day with Mother.’ Mother, Auntie Kate and Kathleen
also spent a few days at Niagara Falls.^59 But none of the children ever under-
stood Mother’s work, nor why she was considered so important. At home,
Kathleen had found a photograph album with pictures in it of Mother and
Christabel in prison clothing. ‘Auntie Kate quickly took the book from us and
we never heard anymore about it.’ Emmeline did tell the children, however,
that their mothers had died just after they were born and that their fathers had
been killed in the war. She also had the girls christened and promised that later
they could have the surname of Pankhurst.^60
During September, Emmeline spoke frequently at the Toronto Exhibition
and throughout the autumn continued to spread the message of social hygiene
to a wide range of groups, including delegates from the women’s institutes who
assembled in October at the Eastern Ontario Convention in Ottawa. Paying
tribute to the institutes – whose motto was ‘For Home and Country’ – as ‘the
greatest and finest women’s organizations in Canada’, she begged for the support
of the farm women in her cause. ‘Help us to educate the people of the
Dominion to the necessity of a single standard of morals – that of the highest.
Teach your children reverence for the marriage vow of men and women – instil
into their minds the belief in purity of body, mind and soul.’^61 The Canadian
people and the press adored her. James Pond, the well-known Lecture Bureau
Manager, claimed that Mrs. Pankhurst was one of the ‘most womanly women’
he had ever known, while Dr. Hastings, Toronto’s medical health officer,
described Emmeline as ‘a motherly soul, whom to know was to love’.^62
LECTURER IN NORTH AMERICA