 The couple fell in love and the following year Gore-Booth gave up a life of privilege to move in with Roper in a terraced house in Rusholme, Manchester.Esther later wrote of their meeting in Italy “For months illness kept us in the south, and we spent the days walking and talking on the hillside by the sea.Each was attracted to the work and thoughts of the other, and we soon became friends and companions for life.”

In the late 1800s and early 1900s Esther and Eva helped to organize groups of female flower-sellers, circus performers, barmaids and coal pit-brow workers as their right to work was threatened by moral crusades and new legislation.