Christabel Pankhurst and Mary Gawthorpe

Photograph of the Suffragette leaders Christabel Pankhurst and Mary Gawthorpe, Manchester 1909. The image was taken on the occasion of a visit by Christabel Pankhurst to the city to give a speech at the Free Trade Hall on January 19th 1909. In 1908 Mary Gawthorpe was sent to Manchester by the Women's Social and Political Union to implement the Committee decision to organise large meetings in principal cities to build on the support and publicity of Women's Sunday held in London in June. Mary remained as WSPU Chief Organiser for the Lancashire region until ill health forced her to resign her demanding role in 1910. One of Mary's triumphs during her time in Manchester was the organisation of a monster rally at Heaton Park in Manchester on 19th July 1908 that drew over 150,000 people. An effective speaker, Sylvia Pankhurst commented: 'Mary Gawthorpe was a winsome merry creature, with bright hair and laughing hazel eyes, a face fresh and sweet as a flower, the dainty ways of a little bird, and having with all a shrewd tongue and so sparkling a fund of repartee, that she held dumb with astonished admiration, vast crowds of big, slow-thinking workmen and succeeded in winning to good-tempered appreciation the stubbornness opponents.'