CATHERINE (Kitty) Wilkinson is the mother of Britain’s wash-houses. Her biography by Michael Kelly recently came out in a second edition.
Feb 9 2008
by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post
She was born Kitty Seaward in Londonderry in 1786, coming to Liverpool with her family three years later.
After some years working in a Lancashire cotton mill, she returned to Liverpool. In 1812, she married a French seaman, Emanuel Demontee, and was expecting their second child when he drowned at sea.
Soon after that she married Tom Wilkinson, a sweetheart from their days in the mill at Caton, who fell in love with Kitty, after hearing her sing the songs of Liverpool.
The couple rose to prominence during the cholera epidemics, which swept through the port between 1832 and 1840.
Making the crucial link between poor sanitation and the spread of disease, Kitty and Tom had a boiler fitted in the scullery of their home in Denison Street.
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By then Kitty was visiting the homes of the poor, winning admiration for her kindness and concern. People called her “the Saint of the Slums”.
A lady of means bequeathed her a mangle, which made life a little easier. Soon mothers from the neighbourhood were visiting to wash their clothes and linen. To accommodate more people, Kitty turned the cellar into a wash-house. With public support, Kitty then opened Britain’s first public wash-house in Upper Frederick Street.
She died in 1860, aged 73. Rich and poor attended her burial at St James Cemetery, Liverpool.
The most familiar portrait of Kitty shows her dour-faced and wearing a blouse with baggy sleeves reaching down to hands chapped and bruised by toil.
A stained-glass image of her at Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral is based on that portrait.
However, a new sculpture of her by Terry McGunigle shows her as an earthly angel whose simple ideas about hygiene spared thousands of Liverpudlians.
It was commissioned by the Vauxhall History and Heritage Group and will accompany exhibitions of Liverpool’s Wash-house memories, including the one to be held at the Lee Jones Centre.
Source:
Liverpool Daily Post
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