Kitty Wilkinson

Catherine Wilkinson (1786-1860) was an Irish migrant who became known as the *Saint of the Slaves *.

In 1832 during a cholera epidemic she had the only boiler in her neighbourhood so she invited those with infected clothes or linen to use her boiler at the cost of a 1 penny a week. She saved many lives as a result. This became the first public washhouse in Liverpool.
She showed them how to use a chloride of lime to get them clean. Boiling killed the cholers bacteria.
Kitty pushed for the establishment of public baths where the poor could bathe, 10 years later, with the support of the District Provident Society and William Rathbone, plus public funds, the first combined washhouse and public baths in the U.K. was opened on Upper Fredrick Street in Liverpool . In 1846 she was appointed superintendent of the public baths .

She died in 1846 aged 73 having already been recognised for her Indefatigable and self denying during her lifetime by the mayor of Liverpool that year.

KItty was born Catherine Seaward in County Londonderry, Ireland.
Aged 9 she was coming with her family to Mersey. The ship ran aground and her father and her younger sister drowned.
Aged 12 she went to work at a cotton mill in Caton, Lancashire as an indentured apprentice.
Aged 20 she left the mill and returned to live with her mother in Liverpool. They both worked in domestic service.

While living with her mother she married Emanuel Demontee and had two children. Demontee drowned and they returned to domestic services. She was gifted with a mangle and set herself up as a laundress.
In 1823 married Tom Wilkinson, a warehouse porter. They continued to rent a house in Denison Street.

In 2012 marble statue unveiled in St. George’s Hall.
May 2017 students voted one of the rooms in Liverpool Guild building to be changed to Kitty Wikinson room
2018 a lnon-profit washhouse In Everton was name Kitty’s Laundrette

Two biographies are available 1910 and 2000 The Life of KItty Wilkinson