Sandra Pankhurst

Sandra Pankhurst (26 May 1953 – 6 July 2021) was an Australian businesswoman. She was adopted as an infant and grew up in West Footscray, Melbourne. Following an abusive childhood, Pankhurst would go on to work in different fields as a sex worker, taxi receptionist, and the first female funeral director in Victoria. Pankhurst was transgender, having transitioned from male to female in the late 1970s. She became well known after founding a cleaning business that cleaned the sites of hoarding and homicide. She died on 6 July 2021.

Early life Pankhurst was born male in 1953. She was adopted through the Catholic church to Bill and Ailsa Downs in West Footscray, Melbourne. Her adoptive parents had one existing child, adopting Pankhurst after losing a son during childbirth and being told they could have no more children. Despite this, the family would go on to have two more children, and after the second was born, Pankhurst was told she had been adopted as a replacement for the son they had lost and her adoption was a mistake. She has described the trauma of her father's alcoholism and physical and emotional abuse from both parents. Pankhurst had a mixed relationship with her adoptive mother Ailsa. She enjoyed cooking, and would attempt to participate in her household chores, and tried to protect her mother from violence at her father’s hands. Then known as Stephen, Pankhurst left her wife Maureen (known as Linda in her biography) and started dancing in St Kilda before turning to prostitution in order to cope financially. During this time, she underwent gender reassignment surgery. She became known as Sandra Vaughan.

Works The life of Pankhurst was documented in The Trauma Cleaner, released in 2017 and written by Sarah Krasnostein, which was critically acclaimed, winning the Douglas Stewart prize for non-fiction at the 2019 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards. A documentary film of her life, Clean, was made over a three year period and debuted in August 2022 at SXSW. The film was described by Variety as "an inspirational doc[umentary] about tidying up life's biggest messes using chemicals and kindness".

Health issues and death

Pankhurst had severe pulmonary disease, suspected to have been acquired from her early years of working as a cleaner without appropriate personal protective equipment. She died in 2021.