Known and loved throughout the East End as ‘Our Sylvia’, Sylvia Pankhurst was a tireless and effective campaigner for social justice of all kinds.
Sylvia Pankhurst’s commitment to improving conditions for ordinary people in the East End has never been forgotten. She organised free mother and baby clinics to address the devastating effects of poverty on child health in the East End. She also set up a ‘Cost Price’ restaurant during the First World War to address dire food shortages, which in 1915 served 400 meals a day and saved many lives. Another key achievement was establishing a Women’s Factory to save the employment of dozens of women whose jobs in tiny failing workshops had vanished in the war.
However, Ms Pankhurst was most famous during the early decades of the 20th century, for her campaigning for Universal Suffrage and Votes or Women, along with her mother Emmeline and sister Christabel in the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). She was particularly active in mobilising women in the East End and in 1913 worked alongside Labour MP George Lansbury to organise a series of rallies and marches throughout the area.
She and George had both been repeatedly arrested and imprisoned for their campaigning, and the East End rallies became a game of cat and mouse with the police. Eastenders, loyal to ‘Our Sylvia’, flocked to these rallies and organised themselves to protect her and outfox the police, flooding into an area and causing confusion, allowing Sylvia to escape. Her luck ran out at the eighth rally at Shoreditch Town Hall in November 1913, where she was finally arrested and imprisoned. She later left the WSPU and established the East London Federation of Suffragettes which included an explicit commitment to socialist ideal.
Image Credit: Getty Images