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1891

Residence of Fatima Elizabeth Cates (1865-1900)

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YBirt

This was the residence of Fatima Elizabeth Cates (1865-1900), as listed in the 1891 Census, among the first women to convert to Islam in Lancashire, converting at the hands of Abdullah Quilliam in 1887. She was the first woman and the second convert that Quilliam made after he began his call to Islam that same year. She lived at 2 Marmaduke St. with her husband Hubert Henry Cates (1857-95), a marine chief engineer by profession, who converted in 1890, and with her younger half-sister, Clara, who converted in 1891 at the age of 17. They also took in two lodgers who were Indian Muslims studying law. Clara later married one of them, Syed Abdul-Haleem in around 1892. He was a member of the Liverpool Muslim Institute as well as Honorary Secretary to the London Anjuman-i-Islam or Islamic Association. Clara and Syed Abdul-Haleem later moved to Calcutta where they had three children.

Despite his later conversion Islam, Fatima's marriage to Hubert was highly troubled. From 1889 onwards, the first year year of their marriage, Hubert verbally and physically abused Fatima, when he returned home after being away at sea for work. As a way to protect herself, she moved to a larger residence and took in lodgers and her sister, but to no avail. At this residence in 1891, he attacked Fatima on more than one occasion and at one point held a knife to her throat and threatened to slash her neck. Finally after another murderous attack when he struck Fatima on the head and injured her, she managed to escape with the help of Clara and report him to the police. Cates pleaded guilty to aggravated assault and a judicial separation was granted to Fatima, but her petition for divorce was not granted. They remained separated until his death in January 1895 at sea.

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H. Mahmood and Y. Birt, Our Fatima of Liverpool (Oldham: Beacon Books, 2023).

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