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Mary Burns

Mary Burns (29 September 1821-7 January 1863) was a working-class Irish woman and the lifelong partner of Friedrich Engels.

Biography[]

Mary Burns was born in Ireland and raised in Salford, where she worked at a factory owned by Friedrich Engels Sr.. She met the younger Friedrich Engels during his first stay in Manchester in 1843, and she fell in love with the younger Engels due to his opposition to his father's capitalist activities. Burns guided Engels through the region and helped him research his Condition of the Working Class in England, and she and Engels opposed the "bourgeois institution" of marriage and instead remained life partners until Burns' death in 1863. Her sister Lizzie Burns later married Engels.

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