Football’s Pioneers: Lily Parr
When the National Football Museum introduced its English Football Hall of Fame in 2002, along with 22 players and six managers, all male, there was a lone woman – Lily Parr.
Parr was born in St Helens in 1905 where she learnt to play football in games with her brothers. At 5ft 10ins tall, Lily was said to have a 'fearless streak' and 'robust frame'. As a teenager, her first games were with her local side, St Helens Ladies.
But in 1919 Lily was recruited by one of the most well-known teams of the day, Dick, Kerr’s Ladies in Preston, where she was paid 10 shillings a game in expenses and given a job in the firm's factory. Gaining a reputation for having a hard shot, the 14-year-old winger scored 43 goals in her first season. This was the start of a phenomenal 900 goal career that lasted until 1951.
During the First World War, there was a growth in interest in women's football. Dick, Kerr and Company was a factory where women worked making munitions but in peace time returned to its usual business of manufacturing trams. In 1917 the factory started its own team of female munition workers that played matches to raise money for charities supporting wounded soldiers. These games were popular with football fans as the war disrupted the men's game. Dick, Kerr’s Ladies became one of the most successful teams whose popularity continued into the post-war years when Parr joined the club.
Dick, Kerr’s Ladies was the first female team to play wearing shorts. Their usual strip consisted of black and white striped jerseys with a union flag on the left breast, blue shorts and striped hats worn to cover their hair. 'Big, fast and powerful', Parr was said to 'take corner kicks better than most men' and she scored 'many goals with a left foot cross drive which nearly breaks the net', according to her profile in a programme of 1923. A team-mate described her as 'having a kick like a mule'.
Women's football continued to draw large crowds and on Boxing Day 1920, Dick, Kerr’s Ladies played against Lily's former team St Helens, watched by 53,000 spectators. Parr's first international game came in 1920 when her team represented England against France in a tournament which ended with Dick, Kerr’s Ladies winning 2-0 at Deepdale in front of 25,000 spectators. A tour of France followed and then, in 1922, the United States.
There were 150 women's football clubs by 1921 when on 5 December the FA decided to ban females from playing on its members' grounds. As a consequence the women's game declined but Lily Parr and other female players continued to play on non-FA pitches.
Dick, Kerr’s Ladies became Preston Ladies in 1926. Parr became a psychiatric nurse at Whittington Hospital but continued to play for Preston, finally ending her long playing career in 1951. Lily died in 1978 and is buried in St Helens.