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Thread: Kitty Wilkinson

  1. #16
    Steven
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    I remember my mam putting all the washing in the pram and us lot walking behind her to Kent Gardens. Kitty's wash house was right by there. There was a store room for prams and all the kids played in there. Lovely hot pipes in the winter.
    On the way home we would call into Kavanagh's sweet shop. They had a penny box and you could even chose 4 black jacks for a penny.
    The smell of the washing and the steam in the wash house will always stay with me.
    Kitty was a Saint in my book.


  2. #17
    Re-member Ged's Avatar
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    Some old Liverpool wash-house pics can be found here.

    http://www.20thcenturyimages.co.uk/t...-domestic.html
    www.inacityliving.piczo.com/

    Updated weekly with old and new pics.

  3. #18
    Steven
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    Brilliant Ged. Do you mind if I share that link with some of our lot who now live in the States and Canada?

  4. #19
    Re-member Ged's Avatar
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    I'm sure they'd be made up Steven. It's on the www so why not
    www.inacityliving.piczo.com/

    Updated weekly with old and new pics.

  5. #20
    Re-member Ged's Avatar
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    Default The Kitty Wilkinson statue

    Is now on show in the window of 'News from nowhere' on Bold Street, surrounded by a plethora of Liverpool associated books and dvds, d'ya like that word.






    .
    www.inacityliving.piczo.com/

    Updated weekly with old and new pics.

  6. #21
    PhilipG
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    I love the word 'books'.

  7. #22
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    www.inacityliving.piczo.com/

    Updated weekly with old and new pics.

  8. #23
    Senior Member shirleya's Avatar
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    Default kitty wilkinson and park lane area

    hi all-especially steven
    just wodered steven if you remembered the pubs on park lane if you remember the wash house on frederick street???? Trying to find out more about the block of park lane between dickenson street and ?Forre? street-just before canning street. Looking for info on 97 park lane which was near to lfed healing's pawn brokers. Desperately searching for a pic of the old curiosity vaults from the 40's or even the 1960's as it was still there in 1968. I have been found amazing pics of what iit is like now -no pub but never mind-from the people on this site-but would be overjoyed if anyone could find me a pic of what the pub was like. Do you know anyone who may know or remember-or even have a pic of that block of park lane-97 to 109. ???????
    shirley

  9. #24

    Default Wilkinson Place

    It may be of some interest to people here that a new flagship NHS primary care trust building in Liverpool has been named after Kitty Wilkinson. There was a competition to name the building open to all local NHS staff to name the building, and Kitty Wilkinson was suggested by numerous entrants.

    I believe the building is called Wilkinson Place and it is in Wavertree technology park.


    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    http://www.checkmatebooks.com

  10. #25
    Senior Member Howie's Avatar
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    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.

    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

  11. #26
    John(Zappa)
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    What a woman.A statue of her should be erected in Liverpool as well as Ken Dodd

  12. #27
    Senior Member Howie's Avatar
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    Memories of a world first – the wash-house
    Apr 1 2008
    by Laura Sharpe, Liverpool Daily Post

    MEMORIES of Liverpool’s wash-houses were rekindled yesterday amid tales of cholera, gossip and pawnbrokers.

    Women who visited some of the city’s wash-houses were among historians and authors sharing stories at a memories session at the Lee Jones Centre, on Limekiln Lane.

    The first wash-house for poor people in Liverpool, and Britain, was started by Kitty Wilkinson on Upper Frederick Street.

    Irish-born Kitty, who came to Liverpool as a child, pioneered the communal wash-houses during the 1832 Cholera epidemic.

    Known as the “Saint of the Slums”, she and her husband Tom had a boiler fitted in the scullery of their home in Denison Street to create the first wash-house.

    Maria Francis, 83, from Bootle, remembers swinging on a lamp- post outside a wash-house in Dingle as a child.

    Mrs Francis said: “My sister and I used to hang around outside swinging on the lamp-post waiting for someone to give us a penny to watch their washing.

    “We used to sit on the piles of washing so they didn’t lose their place in the queue.

    “There were 13 children in our house and our mum used to go the wash-house for a bit of time on her own and have a good gossip with the other women.”

    The wash-house idea took off around the country in the 1840s, with Liverpool being used as an exemplar of how they should be run.

    Author Mike Kelly, who wrote The Life and Times of Kitty Wilkinson, said: “People lived in small, cramped houses with little or no running water.

    “In 1828, they built courts houses where eight houses shared two toilets, with no running water and one pipe that lasted for 15 minutes. No wonder cholera was rife. History cites a doctor as discovering cholera was waterborne, but it was Kitty who found that many years earlier.”

    Kitty died in 1860, aged 73. Rich and poor attended her burial at St James Cemetery, Liverpool.

    Source: Liverpool Daily Post

  13. #28
    Re-member Ged's Avatar
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    www.inacityliving.piczo.com/

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  14. #29
    PhilipG
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    Default From "A Tram Ride to Dingle".

    With the author's permission.


  15. #30
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    Glad you got his permission Philip

    Here's the latest Scottie press showing the statue in News from Nowhere - it's doing a tour of Liverpool at the mo.

    http://www.scottiepress.org/main.htm

    You can read the papers on line, the page numbers are at the bottom for each issue too.

    (sorry direct link to the page in the last issue not working but you can get to it via the home page above)
    .
    www.inacityliving.piczo.com/

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