Ann Walker, the forgotten woman beside Anne Lister

Her family was not of noble origin, but the last generations had accumulated a fortune and had entered Halifax's upper society through a series of strategic marriages that made Ann part of an extensive political family with very rigid opinions.

Fate decreed that Ann's parents would die when she was barely a teenager. She was a shy and insecure girl who found comfort only in religion, and suddenly inherited a great deal of money. She inherited more when her younger brother married and died during his honeymoon. Ann and her older sister, Elizabeth, were left alone in a small army of uncles and cousins who were very interested in keeping fortune hunters away from the two young women, to prevent the Walker family's enormous fortune from leaving the family. Elizabeth nevertheless managed to marry a captain with whom she moved to Scotland.

Ann remained alone. Unable to overcome the losses she had suffered and severely tested by her unstable psychological condition, she clung to religion with all her strength. Her strong religious obsession caused her serious problems in publicly accepting her desire for Anne Lister. When Anne began asking her to make a serious commitment, Ann repeatedly accepted and then refused, falling into a spiral of restlessness, anxiety and insomnia, convinced that God would punish her with eternal damnation for her misdeeds. Even after finally agreeing to become her wife and move into her home, Ann did not make cohabitation easy, as she sometimes spent entire days in bed, apathetic and irritable.

The church in which she was buried was demolished a long time ago, and today there is only a stone marking the place of her eternal rest amid the grass of Halifax. Like many women who loved other women, Ann Walker has almost fallen into oblivion.

Despite her almost pathological shyness, she changed the terms of her will, going against the wishes of the relatives who had watched over and controlled her for years. Overcoming her fear of death and of travelling alone, she escorted her wife's remains for months, from Russia to England, to bury her beside her beloved Lister family.