Lilian 'Lily' Parr was born in St Helens, Lancashire, England, later becoming one of the greatest and most influential footballers of the 20th century.
Lilian 'Lily' Parr was born on 26 April 1905 in St Helens, Lancashire, England, into a large working-class family. She grew up in an industrial town where football was a common pastime, and she showed an early talent and passion for the sport despite the era's rigid gender expectations that discouraged women from athletic pursuits.
Standing over six feet tall by adulthood, Parr possessed a powerful physique and a ferocious left-footed shot that would later become legendary. Her working-class upbringing in Lancashire placed her at the heart of the region that would soon become the epicentre of women's football in Britain, particularly through munitions factory teams formed during the First World War.
Her birth in 1905 preceded by just over a decade the explosion of women's football that occurred during and after WWI, when women entered the workforce in factories and formed works teams to raise morale and funds for war charities. Parr would go on to become the most famous player of this era, scoring an estimated 900 to 1,000 goals over a career spanning more than three decades, and her legacy would eventually see her honoured as a pioneering LGBTQ+ icon and footballing trailblazer.