New research! A signature in Baltimore

The handwriting is very shaky: "Votes for Women and may they bring fuller opportunities for development". The rather vague sentiment does not sound like the experienced suffragette orator, while the trembling script, though recognisably her handwriting, stands out from the usually confident pen strokes of the artistic Sylvia Pankhurst. But these are her words, signed E. Sylvia Pankhurst and dated March 28 1911.

Courtesy of Woman Suffrage in Maryland Collection, Special Collections, Enoch Pratt Free Library.

Compare the Baltimore signature with this one written in a book to her East London suffragette comrade Elsie Lagsding. (From https://sotherans.co.uk/products/pankhurst-e-sylvia-author-the-suffragette-the-history-of-the-womens-militant-suffrage-movement-1905-1910-n)

Where was Sylvia Pankhurst on 28 March 1911 and why was her pen shaking?

The message and signature is to be found in the autograph book of a woman called Emma Maddox Funck and is now kept alongside suffrage badges (or pins), sashes, and other campaign materials in the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, Maryland. In the book we find contributions from such figures as Susan B. Anthony, one of the leading American suffragists, and Annie Cobden Sanderson, a British suffragette and daughter of the famous Liberal Richard Cobden.

Emma Maddox Funck (1853-1940). Image from https://documents.alexanderstreet.com/d/1009656489

Emma Maddox Funck was well placed to collect such signatures. She had been campaigning for women's suffrage since the early 1890s and was for sixteen years (from 1904 to 1920) the President of the Maryland Woman Suffrage Association. In that capacity she arranged for Sylvia Pankhurst, touring the United States in 1911, to give a lecture on women's suffrage on 28 March 1911 in the Osler Hall of the Medical and Chirurgical Building, at 1211 Cathedral street in Baltimore.

The Medical and Chirurgical building on Cathedral Street, Baltimore today where Pankhurst spoke on 28 March 1911

Sylvia Pankhurst stayed with Emma Maddox Funck and her husband Dr J. William Funck (a member of the Men's League for Women's Suffrage) at their home on Eutaw Place in Baltimore - about a 15 minute walk away from the Osler Hall.  

Sylvia Pankhurst and Emma Maddox Funck were quite different kinds of suffrage campaigners. Meeting a reporter in the library in Maddox Funck's home, Pankhurst tried to avoid commenting on her host's politics: "I cannot speak of the suffrage work in Maryland or Baltimore". But she was unable to maintain this stance for long. Interestingly, we once again see Pankhurst making more radical arguments in America (away from the increasingly conservative WSPU leadership) than she felt able to in Britain at this time. Asked about the failure of the recent women's suffrage Bill in Maryland, she insisted that only a completely inclusive measure could succeed: 

"The thing for women of Baltimore and of every other city and State to do is to unite in a demand for universal suffrage - women on the same terms with men. Don't have any educational or property qualification." (The Evening Sun, 28 March 1911, p.7).

At the very same time, the WSPU in Britain was championing a Bill that would enfranchise only a small proportion of women because of a restrictive property qualification!

Tactically, Pankhurst was probably closer to another Baltimore suffragist, one Edith Houghton Hooker (later aunt to Hollywood actress Katharine Hepburn), who formed the Just Government League, which employed more extrovert campaign measures such as open-air meetings. (You can see the different Maryland suffragist organisations on this excellent map).

Edith Houghton Hooker (1879-1948)

But though Pankhurst's militancy caused some American suffragists to keep their distance - or even to express open hostility - many others were keen to have her speak at their meetings. Some maintained that circumstances were different in Britain necessitating different tactics, others were attracted by the publicity gained by having a militant suffragette speaker who had been to prison. 

Nevertheless, Pankhurst and Maddox Funck might have discovered experiences in common. Both were artistic (Pankhurst was a trained artist, Maddox Funck a musician) but had chosen to dedicate their energies to fighting for women's rights. Both had sisters who had trained in law and struggled against discrimination (Christabel Pankhurst was prevented from practicing as a lawyer but used her skills to devastating effect when cross examining Cabinet Ministers in her 1908 trial, Etta Haynie Maddox was the first woman to practice law in Maryland and wrote the first women's suffrage Bill to be placed before the state of Maryland in 1910).

Perhaps one clue to Pankhurst's shaky handwriting can be found in her experiences immediately before arriving at Maddox Funck's home the day before the meeting on 27 March 1911. 

Pankhurst's touring schedule was punishing and she was coming to the end of a three month tour. By 27 March, she had given public lectures in 12 different American states, besides Washington DC and others in Canada. On 24 March, three days before arriving in Baltimore, Pankhurst had addressed the state government in Michigan. On 25 March Pankhurst was the guest of honour at a luncheon in Detroit but something was clearly wrong: the press reported that she looked 'wilted and tired . . . as she held out a limp hand to her eager entertainers, confessing to the pangs of hunger and an unconquerable desire for rest.' 

It is easy to assume that she must have been exhausted by all the travelling, but perhaps we should listen to what Pankhurst herself said about how she felt. And Pankhurst was annoyed. When the lunch was over, 'men and women crowded about her, one calling her Boadicea and another Joan of Arc.' Pankhurst was uncomfortable with this "I don't like it a bit to be called those things", she said, explaining that she was "only one of thousands" of women campaigners. She went on, "[a]nother thing that annoys me terribly is to hear about the wonderfully good conditions existing in this country for women". What she had seen, especially in Chicago (as I explained in an earlier post), showed women were suffering intense exploitation and needed political rights as much as British women. No sooner had she explained that, than she was confronting the widespread misreporting of her age in America:

"No, it's not true that I'm only 20 years of age. I'm a good bit over that, and I don't know what makes them say it unless they're rather fond of telling lies." 

All her objections were to being treated as an anomaly: as a martyr, as a representative of peculiar English conditions, as very young (she was in fact 28 years old in March 1911). Such representations undermined her as a political activist and thus her arguments for women's political rights. It was vital she challenged them, but here we gain an insight into how draining that could be. After lunch, Pankhurst was taken to rest by Dr Mary Thompson Stevens (1864-1949), a prominent local campaigner and paediatrician. 

That evening, Pankhurst gave a speech that lasted three hours which was described as 'perhaps the finest plea for woman suffrage ever made in Detroit' (quotations from the Detroit Free Press quoted in Woman's Journal, 8 April 1911, p.107). 

Pankhurst was supposed to spend the following day resting and she was taken to see where the Pewabic Pottery was made - something that would surely have interested her as an artist who had once used as her subject pottery makers in Britain. But whilst there she was persuaded to talk about her prison experiences by those present. That night, she boarded a train to travel over 500 miles to Baltimore.

Upon arrival she experienced the same treatment which she found so frustrating in Detroit. 'Only 20 years old', proclaimed the local Evening Sun newspaper (27 March 1911, p.3). 'Looks More Like Schoolgirl Than Militant Suffragist', announced the Baltimore Sun before elaborating that because she looked like 'a high school girl . . . [i]t will be hard for her audience tonight to believe that throwing stones at windows, "rushing bobbies" and eating fudge are just the same to her' (28 March 1911, p.11). One report of her lecture even began with a particular pet hate: 'Miss Sylvia  Pankhurst, called the Jeanne d'Arc of English militant women suffragists . . .'

The WSPU leadership compared their campaign to Joan of Arc's, but Sylvia Pankhurst was uncomfortable being described in thus way.

Pankhurst remained determined to challenging misrepresentations. The Baltimore Sun reported that in her lecture in the Osler Hall she explained she had not described the police as "beastly bobbies" but as "brutes" (29 March 1911, p.16). This may also have been misreported as the following day Pankhurst visited the offices of the Baltimore Sun where she told them they had 'gotten the wrong idea' about the suffragettes' approach to the police: 'we don't classify them "as beastly bobbies" or brutes' because they held the government, not the police, responsible for violence towards the suffragettes (30 March 1911, p.8).

"Beastly bobbies" or "brutes" or just following government orders? Police violence against suffragettes, Black Friday, 18 November 1910.

The description of the police was perhaps not the Baltimore Sun's only reporting error. A few days after the meeting, a letter was written to the publication objecting to their claim that 75 people had attended Pankhurst's lecture. In fact, the writer claimed, the audience numbered 400! (Baltimore Sun 31 March 1911, p.6).

The lecture on 28 March was emotionally highly charged. For some reason it began nearly half an hour late. Emma Maddox Funck opened the meeting, followed by the Reverend Joshua E. Wills, pastor of the Second Baptist Church. The reverend delivered a fiery speech in which he attributed a recent anti-women's suffrage speaker's proclamations of male superiority to having 'been feted and feasted for two hours' beforehand in a hotel.

But Pankhurst was evidently still not herself; her speech was preceded by '[f]ive minutes' stage business with a pitcher of ice water' (Evening Sun 29 March 1911, p.10). But Pankhurst knew her speech, and she provided 'thrilling descriptions' of imprisonment and police violence. Then, quite uncharacteristically, she broke down in tears.

This was the same day that she wrote that message in a trembling hand. Perhaps it was exhaustion from the tour, perhaps it was the draining experience of fighting for respect and accurate representation in every place she went, or perhaps it was something else altogether. 

We recall that one of the frustrations Pankhurst faced was the assumption that poor conditions for working women were an English phenomenon, unknown in America. Her own research, which she would write about in her manuscript on America (now published as A Suffragette in America) proved how far from the truth this was. 

One event, above all, demonstrated how appalling conditions were for working-class American women. This took place at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory where the employers' callous disregard for the safety of the garment workers led to 146 of them being killed when a fire broke out in the workplace. Most of the dead were women, most of them were from immigrant backgrounds. Pankhurst attended the funeral for the victims and would write powerfully about this in her manuscript on America. Her words show that Pankhurst was haunted by the harrowing details of the fire:

'a fire that was fatal because ordinary means of exit were inadequate, fire escapes too short to reach the factory's monstrous height, and when the girls sprang from the roof, their tender bodies came hurtling down with an impelling force, that tore the sheets held out for them to shreds.' (p.66)

The fire broke out on 25 March 1911. We know that three days later, in Baltimore, Pankhurst was determined not only to speak about wrongs in England, but also in America. After those five minutes spent with the ice water, perhaps as she tried to compose herself, she began her speech: 'she said conditions in America have impressed her not at all.' (Evening Sun, 29 March 1911, p.10). It is inconceivable that - three days after the fire - Pankhurst would not have heard the news. How could the fire not have played on her mind as she spoke about conditions in America?

The fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory, 25 March 1911.

In June 2019, I read Pankhurst's words on the Triangle fire at a book launch for A Suffragette in America in Baltimore. There was an obvious place for the launch: Red Emma's, a renowned radical bookshop with its own bar and restaurant.

'A Suffragette in America' book launch at Red Emma's.

It was an incredible experience to bring Pankhurst's text there amidst volumes on labour history, women's rights, anti-racism, struggles against imperialism - and so many other questions that Pankhurst cared so passionately about. Imagine how I felt, then, when I realised what the building next door was: the Ostler Hall where Pankhurst had spoken in 1911. My hands shook a bit too.

Speaking at Red Emma's.