Kitty Wilkinson& Agnes Jones, Liverpool Pioneers

Kitty Wilkinson was born in Derry in 1786 and at the age of 9 she sailed for Liverpool with her family. Her father and younger sister were drowned in Liverpool Bay before they were able to land, and life for Kitty and her mother must have been incredibly harsh. When cholera broke out in 1832 she used her boiler to wash her neighbours' clothes, and went on to run the first public wash house and baths in the country. Agnes Jones, by contrast, was born into a well-to-do family and in 1832 they moved to County Donegal. Agnes subsequently trained as a nurse at the Nightingale School of Nursing in London and then moved to Liverpool to become the first nurse to work in a workhouse. She died of typhus fever aged just 35.

Both are commemorated in this stained glass window in Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral.