In the shadow of the mills of Chorlton-on-Medlock, Lily Maxwell cooked up a plan to vote

'If any woman should possess the vote, it is precisely one as she'

Good morning members — today’s story is about Lily Maxwell, who became the first woman to vote in England, decades before votes were officially granted to women.

She wasn’t an aristocrat or the wife of an MP — she was a former domestic servant who ran a tea and china shop in Chorlton-on-Medlock, a neighbourhood in the city centre that is now largely forgotten — once densely packed with mills, and now densely packed with universities.

Our writer Rebecca Batley has gone looking in the records to find out who Lily was, and what kind of life existed in the streets and mills around her shop.