Emmeline continued to manage her household with the most stringent
economy. It all seemed worthwhile, especially when one day in the spring of
1903, Esther Roper suggested that the clever Christabel should become a
lawyer. Despite the fact that women were not then admitted to the legal profes-
sion, Emmeline was delighted with the idea. Her eldest daughter had an able
mind and would be following in her father’s footsteps; furthermore, a knowledge
of law might be useful in women’s suffrage work. It was decided that Christabel
would be coached for her matriculation at Owens College in order to gain the
qualifications necessary to read for a law degree and, hopefully, subsequent
training as a barrister. Since Sylvia had stayed in Venice long after her scholar-
ship had expired, Emmeline now had to call her back home, partly because of
finance and partly because her help was needed in the shop. That Easter,
Emmeline and Adela travelled to Paris to accompany the reluctant Sylvia back
to Manchester where Emmeline had gone to the expense of hiring for her the
attic over Emerson’s as a studio. Here Sylvia did her painting and designing,
sold some of her work, made window tickets for Emerson’s, and assisted in the
shop. Like Christabel and Adela before her, she did not like shop work either.^1
Women’s suffrage, once again, had become a constant topic of conversation
in the Pankhurst home, but it was a home now without a male head of house-
hold; Emmeline was the main breadwinner and she and her eldest daughters
were the decision-makers. In particular, the charming twenty-two-year-old
Christabel regularly discussed with her mother the way women’s issues were
being eclipsed in the growing labour movement, and also aired such views in
the press. In a letter to the Labour Leaderin March 1903, Christabel pointed out
that at a recent conference, the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) had
made no condemnation of the injustice whereby thousands of workers were
disfranchised, ‘merely because they happen to be women’, nor expressed any
determination to work for the removal of that injustice. The interests of
women, she warned, would not necessarily be safe ‘in the hands of the men’s
Labour Party’.^2 Christabel’s fears were echoed by Isabella Ford, recently elected
to the NAC of the ILP, who privately told the Pankhurst women that the lead-
ership was ‘no more than lukewarm on the subject of votes for women’. Keir
nancy kaufman
(Nancy Kaufman)
#1