Many turbulent lives came to rest in Abney Park Cemetery. This film portrays twelve women who left their mark on Victorian England and reshaped our world.

Drawing from the 113 profiles in the book Women from Hackney's History, the film includes the first female balloonist, the nursing pioneer for whom the Welsh health service is named and a poet who withstood barbaric quackery. It tells the rags to riches stories of music hall stars - and the men who reduced them back to rags. We hear from the former prostitute who scandalised polite society, exposed its hypocrisy, changed the consent laws and was rewarded with a prison sentence. Women of Abney gives voice to two women who are buried, overshadowed by their husbands, under Abney's largest and best known memorials. The huge and international impact of the Booth family relies on the refusal of its women to be constrained by traditional roles. The splendour of the Bostock lion and the glamour of the circus obscures a history of abuse and its survival.