Gertrude Powicke

Gertrude Powicke (19 December 1887 – 20 December 1919) was a teacher and relief worker. She was one of the first women graduates of Manchester University. She was a suffrage campaigner and worked with the Friends War Victims Relief Committee (FWVRC) in France during the First World War.

Life Gertrude Mary Powicke was born on 19 December 1887 in Hatherlow, near Stockport, UK. She was educated in Milton Mount College in Gravesend, Kent. She then worked as a teacher at the Manchester High School for Girls. in Bar-le-Duc, France. She travelled with the FWVRC to Poland in 1919 to treat a typhus outbreak and contracted the disease herself during a hospital tour. Her death was not officially recognised by the British government or the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Powicke is buried in Warsaw's Evangelical-Reformed cemetery and she also has an inscription on the Powicke family grave in Hatherlow churchyard. She is also one of the four local women for whom Suffragette Square in Stockport was named by Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council on International Women's Day in 2018 (the others being Elizabeth Raffald, Elsie Plant and Hannah Winbolt).