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Adela Constantia Mary Walsh ( Pankhurst; 19 June 1885 – 23 May 1961) was a British-born suffragette who worked as a political organiser for the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) in Scotland. In 1914 she moved to Australia where she continued her activism and was co-founder of both the Communist Party of Australia and the Australia First Movement.
In June 1906, Pankhurst disrupted a Liberal Party meeting and was sentenced to seven days in prison. Later that year, she was part of a group who entered the House of Commons, wishing to speak with members. Nine women were arrested, including Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Anne Cobden-Sanderson, Charlotte Despard, Teresa Billington-Greig, Mary Gawthorpe, Dora Montefiore. Pankhurst and Jessie Kenney formed The Young Hot Bloods in 1907 who were an inner secret branch of the suffragettes involved in "danger duty".Christensen, McKenzi (2019). " "Baby Suffragettes": Girls in the Women's Suffrage Movement across the Atlantic". The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing. 48 (1): 20. Retrieved 21 March 2025.
Pankhurst was active in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, from 1908 and protested during the visit of Sir Edward Grey, Foreign Secretary for the Liberal government, who was giving a talk at the Scarborough Liberal Association. She worked with Dr Marion Mackenzie to build a local WSPU branch in Scarborough, and gave talks in York organised by the local WSPU branch secretary Annie Coultate.
In November 1909 she joined a protest that interrupted a talk by Winston Churchill at his constituency in Dundee. She was arrested for "breaking the peace" along with Helen Archdale, Catherine Corbett and Maud Joachim. Pankhurst had slapped a policeman who was trying to evict her from the building. Although she went on hunger strike there, she was not force-fed as prison governor and medical supervisor assessed her "heart's action as violent and laboured". Eagle House near Bath in Somerset had become an important refuge for suffragettes who had been released from prison. Mary Blathwayt's parents planted trees there between April 1909 and July 1911 to commemorate the achievements of suffragettes including Pankhurst's mother and sister, Christabel as well as Annie Kenney, Charlotte Despard, Millicent Fawcett and Constance Lytton. The trees were known as "Annie's Arboreatum" after Annie Kenney. There was also a "Pankhurst Pond" within the grounds. Pankhurst was invited to Eagle House in 1909 and 1910. She planted a Cedrus deodara on 3 July 1910. A plaque was made and her photograph was recorded again by Colonel Linley Blathwayt.
Her mother's favorite was Christabel and the two of them took the Women's Social and Political Union as their own organization. They fell out with many of their leading volunteers and supporters and this included Sylvia Pankhurst and Adela Pankhurst. Both of the latter believed in socialism whereas Emmeline and Christabel were pushing for the vote for middle-class women. Sylvia was ejected from the party and she set up her own splinter group in east London. Christabel is reported to have said to Sylvia "I would not care if you were multiplied by a hundred, but one of Adela is too many." Pankhurst was given £20, a ticket to Australia and a letter introducing her to Vida Goldstein. Pankhurst was among the first group of suffragettes to go on hunger strike when in prison. She was being targeted by the police, as a high-profile activist. Pankhurst had been given a Hunger Strike Medal 'for Valour' by WSPU.
In 1917, she spearheaded a protest in Melbourne against rising food prices. She was arrested for her involvement in the protest but released on bail until her trial. During this period of remand, she married her husband Tom Walsh. Reverend Fredrick Sinclaire married the couple on 30 September 1917. Billy Hughes offered to commute her sentence under the condition that she never gave a speech again. Pankhurst refused Hughes' terms and only weeks after being married returned to jail to serve her four-month sentence. A petition was signed by other suffragettes advocating on behalf of her release, but it was ineffective and she served her full sentence. Upon being released in January 1918, the Walsh family moved from Melbourne to Sydney. In Sydney, Adela gave birth to their son and four daughters: Richard (born 1918), Sylvia (born 1920), Christian (born 1921), Ursula (born 1923), and Faith (born and died 1926). Her husband had three daughters from his previous marriage. In 1920, Pankhurst became a founding member of the Communist Party of Australia, from which she was later expelled.
She became disillusioned with communism and founded the anti-communist Australian Women's Guild of Empire in 1927. In 1941 Pankhurst became one of the founding members of the far-right nationalistic, Australia First Movement. She visited Japan in 1939, and was arrested and interned in March 1942 for her advocacy of peace with Japan. She was released in October.
Tom Walsh died in 1943; afterwards, Pankhurst withdrew from public life. In 1960, she converted to Roman Catholicism. She died on 23 May 1961, and was buried according to Catholic rites.
Pankhurst Crescent, in the Canberra suburb of Gilmore, is named in her honour.
Brian Harrison recorded an oral history interview about Adela Pankhurst with her granddaughter, Susan Hogan, as part of the Suffrage Interviews project, titled Oral evidence on the suffragette and suffragist movements: the Brian Harrison interviews. The interview includes details of Pankhurst's family life in Australia and of her later life. The collection also contains an interview about her mother, Emmeline Pankhurst.
Posthumous recognition
Her name and picture (and those of 58 other women's suffrage supporters) are on the plinth of the statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square, London, unveiled in 2018.
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Categories: 1885 Births, 1961 Deaths, Converts To Roman Catholicism, Australian Feminists, Australian People Of Manx Descent, British Feminists, British Emigrants To Australia, Feminism And History, Former Marxists, People Educated At Manchester High School For Girls, British Anti–world War Ii Activists, People From Chorlton-on-medlock, Australian Fascists, Adela, Eagle House Suffragettes, Women's Social And Political Union, Australian Prisoners And Detainees, Communist Party Of Australia Members, Catholic Feminists, Australian Roman Catholics, People Interned During World War Ii, Prisoners And Detainees Of The Commonwealth Of Australia, Australian Nationalists, Australian Women Activists, Australian Women's Rights Activists, Australian Suffragists, 20th-century Australian Women
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