Nuns -Scary,Powerful & Irish.

CDfm

An important feature of Irish Life were Nuns - education,charity & hospitals.

They were in the Crimea battling with Florence Nightengale -who stole their ideas. (Miz Nightengale was capable of original ideas and was a wiz at statistics & invented pictograms).

Why did the Mercy nuns volunteer to nurse in the Crimean War? Primarily, according to surviving diaries, it was carried out as part of their mission to aid the less fortunate of society – especially given the high number of Irish soldiers in the British Army during the 19th century. The Mercy sisters had had experience of home nursing in the houses of the poor since the first European cholera epidemic in 1832.
Gradually this work expanded and, by the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854, the sisters had gained much valuable domiciliary nursing expertise and had laid plans to open hospitals in Dublin and Cork. The Crimean War allowed these women to apply the nursing skills they had acquired and to gain public recognition for their nursing care. Although much of the work was necessarily surgical, nevertheless there was a very high incidence of infectious disease, such as cholera and typhus, with which the nuns were already very familiar. A second consideration was political – to showcase the benefits of Catholicism. Despite the removal of the last vestiges of the Penal Laws with Catholic Emancipation, nevertheless a suspicion remained in the establishment mind about the motives of the Catholic hierarchy. The Catholic Bishop of Southwark, London urged the Mercy sisters in Bermondsey to volunteer and also contacted the Irish hierarchy, who in turn encouraged Irish convents of Mercy to participate in the endeavour. One dissenting voice was that of the Bishop of Galway who refused permission to travel for four nuns who had volunteered from the convents at Galway and Westport and they were forced to remain in Ireland
The first contingent of volunteers was made up of Nightingale herself, some paid nurses, some Anglican sisters and two groups of Catholic nuns – one group from the Convent of Mercy at Bermondsey. Meanwhile, the second contingent had departed from London, including Mother Bridgeman’s group which comprised eleven nuns from Irish Convents, 3 from Liverpool and 1 from Chelsea. (See list above). The Irish nuns met up at St Catherine’s where there was a delay of 3 weeks while various administrative problems were sorted out. They then travelled together to London and were joined by the sisters from Liverpool and Chelsea.
All the nuns kept a diary of their time away but only three survive – those written by Mother M. Francis Bridgeman of Kinsale, Sister M. Aloysius Doyle of Carlow and Sister M. Joseph Croke of Charleville. Mother Bridgeman’s party of 15 sisters left London on 2nd December 1854 with 9 ‘ladies’ and 23 paid nurses under the superintendence of Mary Stanley. They travelled via Paris and Marseilles, where they boarded a ship bound for Turkey. When they arrived at Constantinople a message was sent to Scutari but Nightingale replied that the War Office had made a mistake and she had neither work nor accommodation for more nurses and nuns. Something of a stand-off ensued, with the ladies and nurses staying in accommodation belonging to the British Ambassador and the nuns staying with French Sisters of Charity, in their convent nearby. Eventually Moore negotiated a compromise between Nightingale and Bridgeman where Nightingale agreed to accept five nuns to work at the Barrack Hospital, Scutari, on the understanding that Bridgeman was free to withdraw them at any time

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~irlcar2/Sisters_of_Mercy_1.htm

These guys were sucessful and acquired power and influence unrivalled by the Knights Templar.

So how come we know so little about them ?

CDfm

Now a few hundred years earlier being a nun was quite fashionable for an
educated lady.







When Henry disolved the Monasteries the convents went to. The Edict ordered nuns to quit the kingdom or marry .

Nice one Henry !!!!

CDfm

Now ,it seemed that unlike monasteries convents managed to survive -well at least this bunch

AN EXTRACT
Home
FROM THE HISTORY
OF
THE POOR SISTERS OF ST. CLARE
The Sisters of St. Clare trace their history from the present day back to the earliest days of St. Clare in Assisi. We do not know when they first came to Ireland but The Four Masters record the death of Finola, daughter of Felim O' Connor, Abbess of Kilcreevanty near Tuam, about the year 1301. They also record the death of Finola, daughter of Conor na Srona O' Brian, widow of Aodh Roe O' Donnell, who “had been twenty two years in the habit of St. Francis” when she was buried in the Franciscan Monastery in Donegal founded by her husband in 1474. Other records in the Bodleian Library in Oxford dating from 1385 indicate that there were three monasteries of St. Clare in Ireland. A map from 1650 provides some evidence of a foundation in Galway in the early 1600's. It is believed that these nuns were dispersed and banished when Cromwell’s forces captured Galway.
The links from the present convents of the Sisters of St. Clare in Ireland back to Assisi are:-

St. Clare's Convent, Newry was founded in 1830 by sisters from Harold's Cross, Glasthule, (Dunlaoire) and North William Street.
Harold's Cross was founded in 1804 from Dorset Street.
Dorset Street was founded in 1750 from North King Street.
North King Street was founded in 1715 from Channel Row, Dublin.
Channel Row was founded in 1712 from Galway
Galway was established in 1642 from Bethlehem (Athlone).
Bethlehem (Athlone) was founded in 1631 from Merchants Quay/Cooke St. Dublin
Cooke Street Dublin was founded from Nieuport in 1629
Nieuport was founded from Dunkirk in 1627
Dunkirk was founded in 1625 from Gravelines
Gravelines was founded in 1609 from St. Omer
St. Omer was founded in 1581 from Veere
Veere was founded from Antwerp in 1455
Antwerp was founded from Trier in 1453
Trier was founded from Gnadental in 1289
Gnadental was founded from Alsback in 1289
Alsback was founded from Kienshein in 1283
Kienshein was founded from Assisi in 1271

On Christmas Day 1620 a young Wexford girl Sr. Martha Marianna Cheevers made her profession in Gravelines in the Low Countries. She was the first Irish girl to be professed in the Order of St. Clare since the Reformation. Others followed her and in 1625 five nuns left to open a convent in Dunkirk. All were young, the Abbess - Sr. Eleanor Dillon was only 24, the youngest Sr. Mary Peter Dowdall from Dublin was only 19. With their limited funds they found it hard to live in Dunkirk and within two years had moved to Nieuport where costs were lower. They were joined by two more Irish girls who were to be known in religion as Sr. Mary Power and Sr. Brigid Anthony Eustace. At this time the Irish Franciscan fathers suggested that, as there was a lull in the persecutions in Ireland the sisters should return and open a convent. It was a huge challenge as no convent had been allowed to exist in Ireland for almost 100 years but they decided to return in 1629 and established their first convent in Cooke Street behind Merchants Quay.
They were not long in Dublin when twelve postulants sought admission. Two years after their arrival the authorities became aware of the existence of the sisters and they were given one month to leave the city. They refused to go back to Nieuport or to their homes. Instead they travelled to Athlone where the Abbess’s brother Sir Luke Dillon gave them lodging. Within a year they were settled in a “poor house built for their habitation in a solitary neck of land without any inhabitants, near a great lake called Lough Ree… not daring any more to set themselves in any great town, city or popular place and founded there a convent called Bethlehem”. As it was situated five miles from Athlone it was off the beaten track and the sisters were left in peace for some time to follow their Rule.
The community increased in number and it was decided to open a convent in Drogheda. However when war broke out the sisters were forced to flee to Waterford but had to leave there too. There is no accurate record of what happened to these sisters. The Bethlehem convent was also destroyed in the war but a few sisters managed to escape and found a convent in Galway in 1642. However, when Cromwell's troops attacked the Monasteries some of the community fled to the continent while some remained with their families. Their convent in Galway passed into the possession of a planter named James Morgan. When Cromwell died in 1658 and was succeeded by Charles 11 in 1660, Catholics gradually returned to the city. Two sisters rented their convent back, gathered together the scattered nuns and resumed their life of prayer. Their first novice was Sr. Margaret Clare Kirwan who was received in 1672 and forty years later she led the return of the sisters to Dublin. Before that however there was another dispersal following the Williamite rebellion in 1688. Once again the sisters were forced to flee and live with relatives and friends. When the Treaty of Limerick was signed in 1690 the sisters again returned to Galway renting a large house in Market Street where they kept boarders to conceal their identity. It remained a convent until 1825 although the community had to flee on four more occasions – 1n 1689, 1712, 1717, and again in 1731. In less than a century the Order was suppressed six times and the sisters driven from their convents. Yet in 1698 four novices were professed and at the suppression of 1712 there were fifty nuns in the Galway community.
While undergoing persecution in Galway the sisters accepted an invitation from Dr. Nary, Parish Priest of St. Michans in Dublin to make a foundation in his parish. Six sisters, including Sr. Margaret Clare Kirwan, arrived in Dublin on 7th June 1712. At first the sisters lived in a house in Beresford Street. Then they moved to a convent in Channel Row now North Brunswick Street. The Irish Street Name Plate Raedh na Canalac is still to be seen on the corner of North Brunswick Street today. This convent had been built by the Irish Benedictines in 1685 but they too had been driven out. It now became the home of the Poor Sisters of St. Clare. Within three months of their arrival the convent was raided by the authorities and some sisters arrested but when the situation eased they again returned to the convent and four novices were professed during this time.
Believing that they would be safer if they moved to a new location the sisters left Channel Row to go a short distance to North King Street. They took girls as boarders in an effort to avoid detection. Once again in 1718 the house was raided and the sisters arrested. However, as the judge decided they were not living in a convent but running a lodging house, they were released. In order to remain together as a community, they laid aside their habit and dressed in secular clothes. They were known as “Mrs” not “Sister”. They gave up choir ceremonies and anything which might reveal to the authorities that they were nuns. Eventually the penal laws were relaxed a little and the sisters established a very successful school in North King Street. They founded several other communities but with one exception, Dorset Street these did not survive.
In 1750 some of the sisters moved from North King Street as they were unhappy with aspects of their convent life. They petitioned the Pope and were given permission to establish a new convent in Dorset Street Dublin under the direct authority of the Archbishop of Dublin. (Before this they had been under the authority of the Franciscan Provincial.) In Dorset Street the sisters continued to run a boarding school for girls but were still not permitted to wear a religious habit. “We wore a black stuff gown with long sleeves, a cloak, apron, and outside handkerchief of the same material, a mop cap completed the dress”
By the year 1803 the poverty which had caused the closure of the other convents founded from North King Street now threatened the sisters in Dorset Street.
Almost the whole of Europe was now involved in war so prices went up, the value of securities fell and the sisters realised that soon they would not be able to pay the rent on their convent home. It appeared that all they could do was disband and share the common fund so that each could have a modest dowry to enable her to join another religious order.
However in 1803, Dr. Troy the Archbishop of Dublin called to the convent with a suggestion that the sisters take over an orphanage for girls which was then located in Hendrick Street, (near Queen Street, Dublin.) The daughter of one of their benefactors, Miss Maria O' Brien, was responsible for this orphanage but was anxious to hand it over to nuns. The sisters saw this as an answer to their prayers. The girls were in need of a home and the Archbishop petitioned Rome to modify those aspects of the Rule which would be incompatible with the care of orphan girls. This permission was granted in May 1804 by Pope Pius VII. To the three vows of Poverty, Chastity, Obedience, the sisters then added a fourth vow the care of female orphans and children. With the help of friends, premises were found at what were then numbers 19 and 20 Harold’s Cross Road. On 8th October 1804 three sisters moved there followed on 19th October by the Abbess and eleven sisters.

Harold's Cross Convent, Dublin

On 2nd July 1806 the newly built orphanage was occupied by the first group of children. Later a convent and chapel were built and in 1817 the sisters resumed wearing a religious habit which they had been forced to lay aside almost one hundred years before.

Harold's Cross Garden, Dublin

The move to Harold’s Cross represented a significant change for the Sisters of St. Clare. Since their arrival in 1629 they had followed the purely contemplative Rule of St. Clare. However at times they could not observe enclosure or have a grill so instead they ran schools and cared for young girls. These changes were understood to be temporary and as persecutions lessened they were free to return to the totally enclosed lifestyle. The changes resulting from the move to Harold's Cross led to some permanent alterations in the Rule of Enclosure which evolved further following Vatican II.

St. Clare's Convent, Newry Click here to see video of Newry

In 1829, at the time when Catholic Emancipation became a reality in Ireland, the sisters were invited to open a convent in Newry, Northern Ireland. This was the first convent in that part of Ireland since the Reformation. Unlike Harold's Cross this foundation did not require the sisters to care for orphans but at the request of the Bishop of Dromore they established schools first in Newry and later in different parts of Ireland,

Cavan and Kenmare in 1861, Ballyjamesduff and Keady in 1872.

In 1882 sisters from the convents in Keady and Newry volunteered for a mission in Australia. These were all autonomous Monasteries but in 1944, under the leadership of the Abbess of Newry, Mother Agnes O' Brien the convents in Keady, Cavan, Ballyjamesduff and Newry amalgamated while still remaining within the Second Order. Later the convents in Kenmare and Harold's Cross also amalgamated with the earlier group.

http://www.sistersofstclare.ie/History.htm

CDfm

Lots of Irish clergy went to Nantes in France and here is an article describing events with Irish nuns in the decade 1650 to 1659.

http://eprints.nuim.ie/371/1/Irish_Nuns__Nantes.pdf

This was Cromwells time .

So it does seem that the nuns were able to keep their organisations in place.

CDfm

The now infamous Nano Nagle set up the Presantation Nuns pre 1800 in the middle of the Penal Laws

The backdrop to the life and work of Nano Nagle was Ireland in the Penal times of the 18th century. Profitable lands were ruthlessly confiscated. Nano`s family was one of the few Catholic families who managed to escape confiscation of their lands. Nano was sent to be educated in France due to the substantial wealth of the Nagles. Having finished her education Nano returned to Ireland. Now living in Dublin with her sister and widowed mother she witnessed the serious disorders born of the penal regime. Nano and her sister Ann did what they could for the poor but after returning to Cork she became increasingly aware of the enormity of the problem of Ireland`s destitute population. At this stage she decided to enter the religious life in France.


Nano`s time in France was short as she was tormented by the memories of the poor people of Ireland so Nano returned home to Cork where she rented a little mud cabin in Cove Lane, Cork City. It had two earthen-floored rooms, a garret and thatched roof. Here she began her first school with thirty girls whom her maid gathered from the streets and lanes in the vicinity. Nine months later two hundred children were packed into two or more cabin school. By 1769 there was seven school, five for girls,two for boys. By 1776 Nano realised the need for more organised control and staffing of her schools. She needed to ensure continuity.



Nano decided to invite religious in France to come to Ireland. After much trouble she secured a promise from the Ursulines in Paris that they would train girls whom Nano would send them for the new foundation. In 1771 four Irish novices took possession of the convent built for them by Nano. Things did not turn out as Nano had expected. The Ursulines were bound by the rule of enclosure which meant that they could not travel to schools outside their enclosure. In the end Nano decided to establish her own Sisterhood. On Christmas Eve, 1775 Nano and Three companions began their religious life under the title of the " Sisters of the Charitable Instruction of the Sacred Heart of Jesus". On the 24th June 1776, all four received the religious habit. All this her health was a grave concern to everyone. On April 21st 1784 she was seized with a severe hemorrhage and died on April 26th.


In 1791 the Sisters were given, at their own request, a new title, "Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary".

http://homepage.eircom.net/~pssw/pages/history.html

What interests me though is their expansion and how big they got in the Nun business.

The sisters of the Presentation went on to found many convents in Ireland. In 1883 a group of sisters left their convent in Galway to make the first foundation in the New World at St. John`s, Newfoundland. The first foundation in the United States was made at San Francisco in 1854. Now there is a widespread distribution of Presentation Convents, not only in Ireland and the U.S.A. but throughout the world.

joolsveer

CDfm wrote: »

The now infamous Nano Nagle set up the Presantation Nuns pre 1800 in the middle of the Penal Laws

Why do you say infamous?

CDfm

joolsveer wrote: »

Why do you say infamous?

I am trying to build up some excitement

"The Presentation nuns are mostly thought of as a teaching order. But in 1784, Nagle wrote that one of the order's missions was to take care of the prostitutes in her city of Cork, Ireland

.

http://articles.sfgate.com/1997-11-16/news/28557790_1

premierlass

CDfm wrote: »

"The Presentation nuns are mostly thought of as a teaching order. But in 1784, Nagle wrote that one of the order's missions was to take care of the prostitutes in her city of Cork, Ireland

http://articles.sfgate.com/1997-11-16/news/28557790_1

That's a part of the story I never heard in school (and we heard it a lot being taught by Presentation nuns).

CDfm

Yup - there is lots we do not know about nuns and their origans and how they were very important to the catholics churches survival in Ireland .

The 19th Century saw them tackle lots of areas in Ireland, childcare ,education, health care and prisons etc.

Along with the good they did -there also is some bad.

A lot of the 18th Century work involved prostitution which was a huge issue as the country was garrisonned.

It gets huge coverage elsewhere.


http://www.iftn.ie/news/?act1=record&only=1&aid=73&rid=4281159&tpl=archnews&force=1














07 Mar 2011

A&S Home » American Studies » News Irish Catholic Nuns and the Origins of the Welfare System, 1830-1920

by American Studies Department | December 7, 2006
Maureen Fitzgerald has had published her study of the Irish Catholic Sisters and their contributions to charitable care in New York City.
The Sisters' work was tremendously successful in founding charitable organizations in New York City from the famine through the early 20th century. Fitzgerald, Associate Professor in American Studies, argues that it was these nuns' championing of the rights of the poor--especially poor women--that resulted in an explosion of state-supported services and programs.
Unlike Protestant reformers who argued that aid should be meager and provisional (based on means-testing) to avert widespread dependence, Irish-Catholic nuns argued instead that the poor should be aided as an act of compassion. Positioning the nuns' activism as resistance to the cultural hegemony of Protestantism, Fitzgerald contends that Catholic nuns offered strong and unequivocal moral leadership in condemning those who punished the poor for their poverty and unmarried women for sexual transgression. She discusses the communities of women to which the nuns belonged, the class-based hierarchies within the convents, the political power wielded by these female leaders in the city at large, and how, in conjunction with an Irish-Catholic political machine, they expanded public charities in the city on an unprecedented scale.
The volume is part of the series "Women in American History," edited by Anne Firor Scott, Susan Armitage, Susan K. Cahn, and Deborah Gray White.

Description

Mary Peckham Magray argues that the Irish Catholic cultural revolution in the nineteenth century was effected not only by male elites, as previous scholarship has claimed, but also by the most overlooked and underestimated women in Ireland: the nuns. Once thought to be merely passive servants of the male clerical hierarchy, women's religious orders were in fact at the very center of the creation of a devout Catholic culture in Ireland. Often well-educated, articulate, and evangelical, nuns were much more social and ambitious than traditional stereotypical views have held. They used their wealth and their authority to effect changes in both the religious practices and daily activity of the larger Irish Catholic population, and by doing so, Magray argues, deserve a far larger place in the Irish historical record than they have previously been accorded.

Magray's innovative work challenges some of the most widely held assumptions of social history in nineteenth-century Ireland. It will be of interest to scholars and students of Irish history, religious history, women's studies, and sociology. Reviews

"In this gem of a book, Mary Peckham Magray presents an impassioned, well-argued case for the role of Catholic women's orders in the Irish devotional revolution of the 19th century....Magray's book will appeal to students of Irish Catholicism, women's religious orders, and missionary movements in relation to colonialism."--Journal of Ritual Studies
"This book constitutes an outstanding intervention in the history of both Irish Catholicism and Irish women."--Kevin Whelan, Notre Dame University, Dublin Center
"A tour de force of social and cultural history. Mary Peckham Magray's The Transforming Power of the Nuns offers exciting new evidence for what scholars of Catholic women religious have come to realize--that nuns played a pivotal role in the devotional and educational revolutions of nineteenth-century Ireland. The reverberations of their impressive achievement were also felt wherever Irish people migrated after the Great Famine. Historians of women and religion in Ireland and the United States, as well as in England , Canada, and Australia, will now want to examine even further the lives and work of these influential Catholic women."--Suellen Hoy, University of Notre Dame.
"Mary Peckham Magray challenges much of the conventional wisdom about Irish female religious in the nineteenth century....This study contends that the cultural revolution in Catholic Ireland was spearheaded by the work of women religious who had been steadily ingratiating themselves into the everyday lives of the Catholic masses in Ireland in the late 18th century through their social welfare, health care, and educational activities. This study demonstrates that these women were social activists who vociferously and successfully resisted the efforts of the male hierarchy to take their independence from them."--Janet Nolan, Loyola University, Chicago




http://www.us.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/ReligionTheology/HistoryofChristianity/?view=usa&ci=9780195112993

Ireland's Magdalen Laundries and the Nation's Architecture of Containment



Smith's introduction sets the stage for his story with an analysis of the 1931 Carrigan Report, which established "an official state attitude toward 'sexual immorality' and the subsequent legislation in authorizing the nation's containment culture" (2). He objectively explores the close relationship between the Catholic Church and the new Irish state in creating a moral climate that punished women for sexual transgressions. The men involved in an illicit tryst or a rape, however, did not suffer the same indignations as the female victims. The author is critical of the Report and the role of the church and state in fostering a culture in which the Magdalen laundries could exist. The next section of the book, "The Magdalen Asylum and History: Mining the Archive," looks at development of the laundries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In post-famine Ireland, the laundries served as a vehicle to rehabilitate "fallen women" and to ease their way back into society, but in the twentieth century, these asylums became "more punitive in nature and certainly more secretive" (42) and departed from their original purpose. They now provided the state with an apparatus to deal with problem women and children, which the author calls "the nation's architecture of containment." Both church and state were responsible for this shift in the mission of the Magdalen laundries.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb050/is_3_77/ai_n29476055/

P. Breathnach

This bit is particularly interesting:

In post-famine Ireland, the laundries served as a vehicle to rehabilitate "fallen women" and to ease their way back into society, but in the twentieth century, these asylums became "more punitive in nature and certainly more secretive"

Can anybody explain what caused the change? Did it mirror general changes in social attitudes?

CDfm

Militarism and poverty created it.

It grew during and after the famine.

Victorian England was about self improvement but really the causes seemed to be veneral disease at epic levels causing 30 to 40% of soldiers not being fit enough for battle.

Another factor was a shortage of girls who wanted to work as domestic servants .

So - it was affecting upper class comfort and the empire.

http://www.viswiki.com/en/Victorian_era
Prostitution
See also: Victorian morality and Women in the Victorian era
Beginning in the late 1840s, major news organizations, clergymen, and single women became increasingly concerned about prostitution, which came to be known as "The Great Social Evil". Although estimates of the number of prostitutes in London by the 1850s vary widely (in his landmark study, Prostitution, William Acton reported that the police estimated there were 8,600 in London alone in 1857), it is enough to say that the number of women working the streets became increasingly difficult to ignore. When the United Kingdom Census 1851 publicly revealed a 4% demographic imbalance in favour of women (i.e., 4% more women than men), the problem of prostitution began to shift from a moral/religious cause to a socio-economic one. The 1851 census showed that the population of Great Britain was roughly 18 million; this meant that roughly 750,000 women would remain unmarried simply because there were not enough men. These women came to be referred to as "superfluous women" or "redundant women", and many essays were published discussing what, precisely, ought to be done with them.
While the Magdalene Asylums had been "reforming" prostitutes since the mid-18th century, the years between 1848 and 1870 saw a veritable explosion in the number of institutions working to "reclaim" these "fallen women" from the streets and retrain them for entry into respectable society — usually for work as domestic servants. The theme of prostitution and the "fallen woman" (an umbrella term used to describe any women who had sexual intercourse out of wedlock) became a staple feature of mid-Victorian literature and politics. In the writings of Henry Mayhew, Charles Booth, and others, prostitution began to be seen as a social problem.
When Parliament passed the first of the Contagious Diseases Acts in 1864 (which allowed the local constabulary to force any woman suspected of venereal disease to submit to its inspection), Josephine Butler's crusade to repeal the CD Acts yoked the anti-prostitution cause with the emergent feminist movement. Butler attacked the long-established double standard of sexual morality.

http://canonlaw.wikispot.org/WomenStudies

Victorian England and Dublin were sophisticated with a great emphasis on improvement

http://waitingforsunset.wordpress.com/2008/12/04/1837-1901/

I am trying to find figures for actual levels of prostitution.

Veneral disease such a syphilis which is now treatable was a real public health issue.

The gritty glamour and agony of Ireland's first Leeson Street lady



Sunday April 03 2005

LARISSA NOLAN
IRELAND'S first brothel madam was a member of the aristocracy who was led into a life of prostitution after years of domestic abuse.The secret and often tragic life of 18th-Century prostitute Margaret Leeson - alias Pimping Peg - is unlocked in a radio series this week by history post-graduate student Lisa-Marie Griffith.
Ms Griffith explains how Margaret was the first woman to provide a house in Dublin where upper-class men could go and pay for sex.
She accommodated a mixture of characters throughout her career - from lawyers to bank governors, down to conmen and petty villains.
After 30 years in the business, she decided to reform and became penniless, ending up in prison, and she was forced to write her memoirs in a bid to raise some cash.
She died at the age of 70, predictably enough from venereal disease, broken and alone.
Margaret Leeson's life began in 1727, in Killough, Co Westmeath, the daughter of a wealthy Catholic landowner who was related to the Earl of Cavan.
But her idyllic rural childhood was shattered when her mother and eldest brother died and Margaret's father passed control of his estates to his cruel son Christopher.
Christopher took complete control of Margaret, frequently beating her to the point that she once attempted to elope to escape his violence.
On one occasion, he beat her so badly with a horsewhip that she vomited blood and was confined to bed for three months. Margaret eventually escaped to Dublin, where she met a man called Dardis who turned her on to a life of prostitution.
Dardis proposed to her, but they did not have the money to wed, so she let him sleep with her as often as he wished - and so Margaret was introduced to a succession of men who were willing to pay her for sex.
Enter two characters, only known as Mr Lawless and Mr Leeson, a wealthy English merchant from whom she took her assumed name.
Mr Leeson fell for Margaret's charms and put her up in a house in Ranelagh, Dublin; but while Leeson was away she would sneak in her other lover, Mr Lawless.
Leeson finally found out and, on discovering her infidelity, left her penniless.
Lawson went on to become her longest client and partner and they lived together for five years, having five children together.
But as ever, tragedy struck; their money eventually ran out, the children died oneby one and Lawless left for America, leaving Margaret heartbroken.
She returned to a life of prostitution and found that many wealthy men were willing to entertain her and pay her way.
She soon regained her position in high society and bought a house in Dublin's old Pitt Street, which became her most luxurious brothel, fitted out with every comfort and boasting prostitutes hand-picked by Margaret herself.
It became a well-known establishment amongst well-bred men and her clients included a lord lieutenant who insisted on sleeping only with Margaret, swearing he would pay his fortune if only his wife was as good in bed as she was.
But things were not so jolly for so long and Margaret fell into a depression and attempted suicide - an act that led her to give up the game completely.
She built a retirement home in Blackrock and hoped to retire on her IOUs, a plan that backfired when none of the owing clients paid up.
After being arrested by an ex-client for a debt of £15, she was thrown into jail, where she decided to write her memoirs to earn some much-needed money.
Three volumes of The Memoirs of Mrs Leeson, Madam, were published in 1794, and she vowed to name and shame all her clients in the fourth volume.
But before that time came, she was attacked and viciously gang-raped and contracted a venereal disease, which became advanced.
She died at the age of 70 and was buried in St James's churchyard.
Her story - Pimping Peg; Profit and Penance - will be told as part of Anna Livia's 'Delving Into Dublin's Past' series on Tuesday at 4pm.

Another was Darkey Kelly

Was Darkey Kelly Ireland's First Serial Killer?


For generations Darkey Kelly was knows in Dublin’s folk memory as the woman who was burned at the stake for witchcraft after she accused the Sheriff of Dublin, Luttrell, of fathering her baby. However, new research has revealed that she could have been Ireland’s first serial killer and the story of witchcraft is completely false.
 

Darkey Kelly was executed for the murder of at least five men. Their bodies were found in a brothel she owned in Dublin.
 
It had been thought that she was executed for witchcraft in 1746 but new research has shown that she was executed in public on January 7, 1761. This week marks the 250thh anniversary of her public burning at the stake. She was partially hanged and then publicly burnt alive on Baggot Street, in Dublin city center.
 

The producer of “No Smoke Without Hellfire” a community radio show on Dublin’s South 93.9 FM plans to tell the story on his show today. He told the Evening Herald newspaper that he and fellow research Phil O’Grady had made these new discoveries having read contemporary newspapers in the National Archives.
 
He said “This series debunks the tale, passed on down the centuries, that Simon Luttrell, known as Lord Carhampton, was the principle cause of her execution."
 



Location of Darkey's Execution

The old story goes that Darkey Kelly (whose name was Dorcas Kelly) ran the Maiden Tower brothel, in Copper Alley, off Fishamble Street. She became pregnant with the child of Dublin’s Sheriff Simon Luttrell, a member of the Hellfire Club. She demanded financial support from him.
 
Until now the story told was that he had responded by accusing her of witchcraft and killed her baby in a satanic ritual. The body was never found. Darkey was then burnt at the stake.
 


Contemporary newspapers revealed that Dorcas Kelly was accused of killing shoemaker John Dowling. Investigators then found the bodies of five men hidden in the vaults of her brothel. After her execution prostitutes rioted on Copper Alley.
 
McLoughlin said “Women in 18th-century Ireland were second class citizens and the execution of prisoners reflected that blatant sexism.
 
"Men found guilty of murder were just hanged, whereas women were throttled first, then burnt alive.

http://www.skdb.info/2011/01/was-darkey-kelly-irelands-first-serial.html

CDfm

Here is an excellent article by Maria Luddy on 19th Century Ireland.

Quakers & presbyterians also wanted reform.

http://pdfserve.informaworld.com/60194__751274521.pdf

jonniebgood1

CDfm wrote: »

While the Magdalene Asylums had been "reforming" prostitutes since the mid-18th century, the years between 1848 and 1870 saw a veritable explosion in the number of institutions working to "reclaim" these "fallen women" from the streets and retrain them for entry into respectable society

The early magdalene asylums allowed women to come and leave when they wished, sounds a bit like the rehab clinics of nowadays. I know its very much a live topic at the moment rather than history but the comments at the end of this article are very interesting http://www.historytimes.com/fresh-perspectives-in-history/british-and-irish-history/138-magdalene-laundries-still-no-justice-in-the-world

Rebecca Lea McCarthy has a book about the origins of the Magdalenes that traces the route back to poor laws and factory laws. She explains that the English Magdalenes encouraged the women to "realise her economic potential" while the Irish ones "felt it was impossible to allow such a woman back into society without the expectation that she would fail again".

P. Breathnach wrote: »

Can anybody explain what caused the change? Did it mirror general changes in social attitudes?

Rebecca Lea McCarthy also has one possible suggestion as to why the Magdalenes in Ireland changed their attitudes to being more punitive in punishment. A statement from a mother superior of Donnybrook asylum says "the peaceful magdalene inmates were the ones who had been in the laundry for a very long time, suggesting that time, physical space and labour were the only saviours for these women". So perhaps the punitive ways developed from the nuns judgement of how the women reacted to them, the longer they kept them the more subdued they were.

CDfm

Organisations get their own dynamics.

The founders will have believed that women who wanted to get out of the lifestyle and were volunteers were the ones to target.

I imagine they were replaced by "professional" nuns who grew the organisation like any business .

Nano Nagle was charismatic and got followers -her sucessors may have taken the view that press ganging the women in gave them better numbers.

They actually went global and were competitive- directly taking on and out manoevering Florence Nightengale.

Look at this.

Nightingale deliberately drove a wedge between the two sets of Mercy nuns. Bridgeman did not trust Nightingale and took care to ally herself with Inspector-General Sir John Hall, Principal Medical Officer of the Crimean Force, who also disliked Nightingale.
By October 1855 admissions at Koulali had dropped off, as new hospitals had been opened in the Crimea itself, and the hospital was about to be transferred to Sardinian control. Bridgeman used this opportunity to distance herself and her group both geographically and professionally from Nightingale. In a private arrangement with Sir John Hall, Bridgeman brought her entire group of 10 sisters and 2 lay sisters to Balaclava on 7th October 1855, to take over a hospital previously under Nightingale’s superintendence but which she had been manoeuvred into relinquishing earlier that month, after the ladies who had been in charge transferred [on their own initiative] to other hospitals.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=72249069&postcount=13

This was 1855 and these ladies were achieving things.

They brought these skills and contacts and influence back to Ireland with them.

Nhead

CDfm here are some stats for the number of prostitutes in England and Wales

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contagious_Diseases_Acts

CDfm

Here is a fantastic article by a Nicola Yeats -its a pdf so you will need to click on the link

Migration and Nursing in Ireland: An Internationalist History

http://www.dcu.ie/imrstr/volume_5_issue_1/Vol_5_Issue_1_d.pdf

This analysis of the history of Irish nursing from the early nineteenth
century to the mid twentieth century draws particular attention to the significance of
female religious migration as a previously neglected chapter in the history of the
international nurse migration in the Irish context, and it highlights the existence of the
‘global nursing care chain’ (Yeates, 2004, 2006, 2009) that linked Ireland to the
international economy and to the development of nursing services at home and
abroad.

CDfm

Nhead wrote: »

CDfm here are some stats for the number of prostitutes in England and Wales

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contagious_Diseases_Acts

What was a Lock House Infirmary ???

CDfm

Here is an interesting summary in pdf form Nuns in Irish Education in the 19th Century.

Just look at it from the perspective of an emerging middle class

Throughout the nineteenth century, the number of women involved in the
congregation varied. Women were able to become teachers without being a nun, as a
result of the convent schools, so the need for nuns was reduced. In 1861, Catholic and
Protestant female teachers combined totaled 8900. That same year, there were only 2909
nuns. However, among Catholic women, nuns were most prominent by the start of the
20th century. There were 8887 nuns and 8500 female Catholic teachers in 1911, showing
the continuous growth in education that was to come.

http://dspace.mic.ul.ie/bitstream/10395/984/2/Chrissy%20Records.PDF

Nuns in Irish Education in the 19th Century
Chrissy Records
History of Irish Education

Thats a fantastic stat on the development of Irish Middle Class and irrespective of what you think of nuns post famine they give you a feel for the expansion of education in Ireland.

CDfm

Now while all this was going on the nuns were also active overseas.

The Battle of Shiloh was a major battle in the American Civil War in 1862 and Sister Anthony reorganised medical care and won praise from President Lincoln and General Grant.

http://americanhistory.about.com/od/civilwarbattles/p/cwbattle_shiloh.htm

Sister Anthony O'Connell


Sr. Anthony was born in Limerick, Ireland as Mary Ellen O’Connell in 1814. After her family moved to Massachusetts, Mary fulfilled her dream becoming a Sister of Charity. Two years later she was sent to open an orphanage in Cincinnati, OH. That completed, she aided in the opening of St. John’s Hotel for invalids. Starting her work at Camp Dennison 15 miles North of Cincinnati, Sr. Anthony and her sister spent the rest of the war tending to the sick and wounded soldiers from Cincinnati to Shiloh to Nashville, even working on hospital ships helping the surgeons. After the war, Sr. Anthony continued working with the poor and the ill in Cincinnati. Good Samaritan hospital was given to the Sisters of Charity for their good work and Sr. Anthony was put in charge. She retired from active work in 1880 and died peacefully in 1897


http://www.freewebs.com/civilwarladies/whoweare.htm

Interesting how these nuns seemed to seek out the military and appear with a solution to their medical problems.

One of the reasons was that Irish men were serving in the military and they were part of their mission but it helped to befriend men of influence to achieve their objectives.

Her predessors in Dublin were active in prison visits (and Irish Catholic priests did the same in France where they visited Irish convicts both catholic & protestant during the reign of terror)

Kilmainham Jail wasnt always remembered for its 1916 connection. In 1821 two young women were publically hanged for murder.

Here is a gory account

It was not unusual for a woman to be hanged in 19th century Ireland. Last women hanged in Kilmainham Jail in Dublin

76
Bridget Ennis was twenty one years old and Bridget Butterly nineteen years old when they were both imprisoned in Kilmainham Jail in Dublin. They had been convicted of the murder of a young lady, Miss Thompson who lived in the house that Bridget Butterly had been a servant in. Each woman was sentenced to be hanged in public for the crime. It was not unusual for a woman to be hanged in 19th century Ireland.They were angry and scared as they were due to be hanged in public in a few weeks time. The Governor of Kilmainham, a Protestant, was worried about about the two and asked the Sisters of Charity in Stanhope Strret Convent, Stoneybatter would they send someone to talk to the womenThis was the second convent to be set up by the Sisters of Charity. It had opened in 1819. It was April 1821 and the girls were to be hanged in May. Mother Aikenhead, the head and founder of the Order and Sister Catherine went to Kilmainham Jail to see what they could do.TheThe two girls did not want to talk to the nuns and were rude and aggressive.But they were still visited every day in their cells and eventually the girls softened to the nuns and began to speak to them. Mother Aikenhead and Sister Catherine made it clear that they were not there to judge them, and very soon the girls accepted their help. They talked for hours and prayed, preparing themselves for the execution

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055944797&page=5

CDfm

Being Irish in 1850 was not fun.

And if you look at it Ireland as we know it begins in 1850 and this is what it was.

Beginning in 1845 and lasting for six years, the potato famine killed over a million men, women and children in Ireland and caused another million to flee the country.
Ireland in the mid-1800s was an agricultural nation, populated by eight million persons who were among the poorest people in the Western World. Only about a quarter of the population could read and write. Life expectancy was short, just 40 years for men. The Irish married quite young, girls at 16, boys at 17 or 18, and tended to have large families, although infant mortality was also quite high.
A British survey in 1835 found half of the rural families in Ireland living in single-room, windowless mud cabins that didn't have chimneys. The people lived in small communal clusters, known as clachans, spread out among the beautiful countryside. Up to a dozen persons lived inside a cabin, sleeping in straw on the bare ground, sharing the place with the family's pig and chickens. In some cases, mud cabin occupants were actually the dispossessed descendants of Irish estate owners. It was not uncommon for a beggar in Ireland to mention that he was in fact the descendant of an ancient Irish king.
Most of the Irish countryside was owned by an English and Anglo-Irish hereditary ruling class. Many were absentee landlords that set foot on their properties once or twice a year, if at all. Mainly Protestant, they held titles to enormous tracts of land long ago confiscated from native Irish Catholics by British conquerors such as Oliver Cromwell. The landlords often utilized local agents to actually manage their estates while living lavishly in London or in Europe off the rents paid by Catholics for land their ancestors had once owned.
Throughout Ireland, Protestants known as middlemen rented large amounts of land on the various estates then sub-divided the land into smaller holdings which they rented to poor Catholic farmers. The middleman system began in the 1700s and became a major source of misery as they kept sub-dividing estates into smaller and smaller parcels while increasing the rent every year in a practice known as rack-renting.
The average tenant farmer lived at a subsistence level on less than ten acres. These Catholic farmers were usually considered tenants-at-will and could be evicted on short notice at the whim of the landlord, his agent, or middleman. By law, any improvements they made, such as building a stone house, became the property of the landlord. Thus there was never any incentive to upgrade their living conditions.
The tenant farmers often allowed landless laborers, known as cottiers, to live on their farms. The cottiers performed daily chores and helped bring in the annual harvest as payment of rent. In return, they were allowed to build a small cabin and keep their own potato garden to feed their families. Other landless laborers rented small fertilized potato plots from farmers as conacre, with a portion of their potato harvest given up as payment of rent. Poor Irish laborers, more than anyone, became totally dependent on the potato for their existence. They also lived in a state of permanent insecurity with the possibility always looming they might be thrown off their plot.
The most fertile farmland was found in the north and east of Ireland. The more heavily populated south and west featured large wet areas (bog) and rocky soil. Mountains and bogs cover about a third of Ireland. By the mid-1800s, the density of Irish living on cultivated land was about 700 people per square mile, among the highest rate in Europe.


http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/famine/introduction.htm

So when we are looking at Ireland and the nuns in 1850 we are looking at the poorest and most impoverished peasants in Europe with 50% of them living in mudhuts.

Here is a link to more indepth economic analysis on Why Ireland Starved

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=ogbAojxV69UC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&ots=UHzDErNm7I&sig=qlqreSS87cQiwJE4mFfiXjWCfds#v=onepage&q&f=false

CDfm

Now if you read the links you see a chain between workhouses and the nuns and indeed how the absence of a welfare system

Life in the Workhouse, 1839-45

Admission to the local Workhouse was based on very strict criteria. Priority went to the old and/or infirm, and destitute children who were unable to support themselves. The Guardians were also given discretion to admit the destitute poor.
People entered the Workhouse for a variety of reasons - unemployment and the famine were the main reasons for admittance in the 19th Century, however the Workhouse also provided a safe-haven for unmarried pregnant girls, married women whose husbands had deserted them, and Orphaned Children whose relatives were too old or too poor to care for them.

http://www.irishfamilyresearch.co.uk/EssentialResource8.htm

Here is a link on how the nuns took over the running of the workhouses . Now you need to arrow it back to page 103 to read the piece






http://books.google.ie/books?id=xWcKhCgbz0QC&pg=PA108&lpg=PA108&dq=workhouses+and+nuns&source=bl&ots=Zk0fiN8D7d&sig=chsveiVDAxuJ3cVrksKlhl-9Iq0&hl=en&ei=DNX7TYvpOYWwhQeb4pCSAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&sqi=2&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=workhouses%20and%20nuns&f=false

A very Irish sort of hell

April 5 2003


Mary Norris lived in one of the barbaric Magdalene laundries, a place for "immoral" Irish girls, and now the subject of a film. She tells Angela Lambert reality was "a thousand times worse" than the film.
"Those places were the Irish gulags for women. When you went inside their doors you left behind your dignity, identity and humanity. We were locked up, had no outside contacts and got no wages, although we worked 10 hours a day, six days a week, 52 weeks a year. What else is that but slavery? And to think that they were doing all this in the name of a loving God! I used to tell God I hated him."



http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/04/04/1048962932185.html

New workhouses of the nun from hell

Sister Connie of Chicago runs an iron regime for the homeless. British anti-welfarists are impressed
POLLY TOYNBEE

Wednesday, 22 March 1995







American liberals see her as the nun from hell: Sister Connie Driscoll advocates the disembowelling of the welfare system, and she looks the part. She is short, thick set, with cropped grey hair and a black patch over one eye: a pirate among traditional do-gooders.
She was brought over to London this week by the right-wing Institute of Economic Affairs for a conference on dismantling the welfare state. They could hardly have found a better advocate for their cause. She believes welfare hand-outs create an underclass of poverty, sap initiative and fuel dependence and indigence. She would cut every cent of it and throw the poor upon the mercy of the parish. She would leave it to charities, churches and communities to care for them in whatever way they saw fit. The state would contribute nothing.
She was the original author of a scheme introduced last year in Wisconsin whereby mothers under 18 are denied any welfare money. They are forced to live at home with their families and if they have none, they are fostered out to live with other families. She claims the birth rate among young mothers is already dropping.


http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/new-workhouses-of-the-nun-from-hell-1612259.html

CDfm

This article here gives a summary of the Catholic Church and Social Policy in Ireland

http://www.socialjustice.ie/sites/default/files/file/chapter6.pdf

Now one of the factors was that the irish state did not have the resourses to fund the activities.

CDfm

Here is a book review that traces the same in the USA

Carol K. Coburn, Martha Smith. Spirited Lives: How Nuns Shaped Catholic Culture and American Life, 1836-1920. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1999. xii + 327 pp. $55.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8078-4774-9.
Reviewed by Heidi MacDonald (Department of History, University of Lethbridge, Canada)
Published on H-Catholic (August, 2003)

This book is a much-needed addition to the historiographies of women in the United States as well as Catholicism in the United States. While there have been many valuable studies of individual congregations of women religious in the last two decades, this is the first to take a broader view of how, as the title says, nuns shaped Catholic culture and American life. While the authors focus on one large and fascinating congregation, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet (CSJS), they place this congregation firmly in the context of the larger society and Church. As the CSJS were engaged in a variety of work, including education and health care, their work illustrates the tremendous impact that women religious have had on the development of the United States and the strength of the Catholic Church in that country. Coburn and Smith report that by 1920, 90,000 American women religious, belonging to 300 different congregations, served in 50 women's colleges, 500 hospitals, and 6,000 parochial schools attended by 1.7 million school children (p. 2). Amazingly, however, some university women's history courses make little, if any, reference to nuns. This book makes it unacceptable for any responsible teacher in any American women's history course to exclude nuns anymore.
The first two chapters of Spirited Lives examine the early years of the CSJS in the United States. Founded in LePuy, France around 1650, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet were part of a trend in establishing active congregations of women religious during and after the Catholic Reformation. The Congregation's early-nineteenth-century move to the United States was also part of a much wider movement to bring European congregations to America. The CSJS came to St. Louis, Missouri in 1836, at the invitation of Bishop Joseph Rosati, to open a school for deaf children. In response to fierce anti-Catholicism as well as human and financial resource needs, the Congregation quickly adapted to American culture and established a specifically American foundation with its own constitutions. Within a decade they opened two new schools in St. Louis, an ethnically diverse parochial school and a school for "colored" children, as well as a home for boys. By the late 1850s, they served in almost every region of the country, providing a variety of educational, health care, and other social services.
During this early period, the Congregation struggled with the politics of the church, both within the Congregation and in the form of clerical interference. Coburn and Smith do a superb feminist analysis of the issues of power in which the CSJS were embroiled, particularly regarding the division of the CSJS into diocesan communities. Bishops who invited the CSJS to their dioceses preferred that they break away from the larger community of the CSJS and thus come under a diocesan bishop's control, rather than continue under papal authority and the structure of the original St. Louis CSJS. Bishops were well aware of the potential strength of a large, cohesive group of women religious and fought to crush it. In the authors' words:
"The CSJS were not alone in this dilemma, nor was their battle with male hierarchy unusual. This divide-and-conquer tactic occurred again and again in dioceses throughout the United States. That is why papal approbation was so important to the CSJS and other women's congregations. It was their only defense against local bishops who felt the need to control and constantly interfere with the internal affairs of women religious [...]. Additionally, many Catholic sisterhoods felt the submission to male authority in Rome, thousands of miles away, was far preferable to subjugation to a local bishop who could closely monitor and control every aspect of community life" (p. 61).
The remaining chapters of Spirited Lives are thematic rather than chronological. The third chapter explains what drew women to the convent, who entered, and how the convent "formed" them both in religious life and in occupational professions. The authors discuss how some aspects of convent culture contributed to a lack of appreciation for nuns' work in Catholic and secular society, while other aspects of the culture allowed the women far greater autonomy and influence than lay women could have experienced during the same period. Chapter Four explains how the sisters, as part of the larger society, founded new communities in the west, helping Catholics from a variety of ethnic backgrounds build rural and urban communities. Partly because of a scarcity of priests, the sisters, "trained the children, helped the poor, nursed the sick, and buried the dead" (p. 99), much like they do today, I might add.
The final three chapters discuss the four main endeavors of the CSJS: teaching in parochial schools, teaching in secondary and post secondary institutions, health care, and social services. The CSJS taught in a wide variety of public, private, and specialized schools, but the majority of sisters worked in the parochial school system. In fact, their inexpensive, sometimes unpaid, labor made the parochial school system possible, the impact of which, on American society, is perhaps incalculable. As Coburn and Smith note, rather somewhat modestly in my view, the sister-teachers' work "provided an important lynchpin for American Catholic culture and identity for generations of children" (p. 157). Despite sisters' extraordinary contributions, they endured a great deal of criticism, never seeming able to satisfy either secular or church authorities. Although they were constantly under threat of clerical interference in their schools, the sisters were able to assert some control, usually in the form of threatening to withdraw their services from a particular school or diocese. Coburn and Smith do a particularly good job in this chapter of describing the gendered justifications for the sisters' meager salaries. Most notably, they argue that male religious often received double the salary of female religious, despite male religious also being under a vow of poverty (p. 144). Historians of education will also find the description of sister-teacher training very interesting. As always, the authors' comments on the CSJS's experience are connected to the broader experience of women religious in America.
In the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, the CSJS were also heavily involved in founding and administering secondary academies in which young Catholic women would be prepared for life. The development of the curricula in these academies, including the hidden curriculum of behavior and attitude, is presented very nicely in Chapter Six. Coburn and Smith describe convincingly the influence of these schools on Catholic culture and American life. The proliferation of academies in the mid-nineteenth century allowed Catholic girls to attend secondary schools in larger numbers than their male counterparts and perhaps their female non-Catholic counterparts. Catherine Beecher, for example, commented that Protestant young women should be given the educational opportunities that Catholic young women had (p. 163). Academies operated by nuns accepted non-Catholic girls too, however, particularly before the twentieth century. As in the private educational institutions they operated, nuns were completely responsible for the financial operation of academies. Obtaining qualifications for sister-instructors in the academies and colleges was a great drain on a congregation's financial resources as it cost thousands of dollars to support a sister studying for a Ph.D. Coburn and Smith also explain how exhausting it was for a sister to obtain such training, not only because it had to be accomplished while maintaining the requirements of religious life, but also because some behavior was contrary to the usual understanding of religious life, including competition and singularity (p. 187). While it was a tremendous struggle for the CSJS to staff and pay for women's academies and colleges, the sisters tended to appreciate the greater autonomy they had in these institutions compared to "parish, health care, or social service institutions [where they] had to deal more directly with the whims of parishioners, local pastors, bishops, and male boards" (p. 175).
The final chapter of Spirited Lives concerns sisters' work in health care and social services. While the authors concede that the CSJS were unusual in being involved in three different fields--education, health care and social services--the Congregation was most heavily involved in education, and the book reflects this emphasis. In fact, the two topics of the final chapter, health care and social services, seem too disparate to be included in the same chapter. Whereas sisters ran the vast majority of Catholic hospitals in the United States, and were quite well-trained and respected for this work, their work in orphanages and other social services was usually unpaid and assigned to the least educated sisters. Although Coburn and Smith offer some very astute analysis on the separate endeavors of health care and social services, only about a dozen pages are devoted specifically to each, and then a final section of six pages deals with financing and networking with the laity. In my view, separate chapters on health care and social services would have been preferable. As it is, given the vast majority of the book focuses on nuns' work in education, the final chapter seems like an unbalanced addition. The historiography on nuns in health care and social services is very slim compared to that of nuns in education. Thus I think Coburn and Smith have missed an opportunity to contribute more to those less developed areas of research.
Overall, this is a well-written, well-researched, and much-needed book. It is equally strong in the two facets of American society it combines, the history of women religious and feminism. This smart pairing of religious and feminist insight is made possible by the smart pairing of authors. Coburn and Smith note their "unlikely collaboration" in the preface: "Separated by religion, ethnicity, professional background, life experience, and age, a fifth-generation German Lutheran, American historian began a professional collaboration with a fourth-generation Irish Catholic, European historian, who has spent her entire adult life in a religious community" (p. ix). The result of the collaboration, Spirited Lives is sound scholarly work that recasts notions of "How Nuns Shaped Catholic Culture and American Life." Historians of both women and of Catholicism must read it.
Copyright (c) 2003 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For other uses contact the Reviews editorial staff: hbooks@mail.h-net.msu.edu.

P. Breathnach

CDfm wrote: »

This article here gives a summary of the Catholic Church and Social Policy in Ireland

http://www.socialjustice.ie/sites/default/files/file/chapter6.pdf

Now one of the factors was that the irish state did not have the resourses to fund the activities.

That's a fascinating read.

I see in it the seeds of an answer to the question I raised earlier about how the same orders that did such positive work in the nineteenth century also did some terrible things in the twentieth century. Essentially, their approach was pragmatic rather than philosophically-based, and that would allow a drift towards doing things the wrong way.

I have a suspicion that the internal processes of the orders might also have contributed to the problem. If an order ran schools in the small towns of Ireland and also ran Magdalen laundries, it might be that they assigned their more intelligent and humane members to educating the children of the farmers and shopkeepers, and sent their more "difficult" members to deal with fallen women and with orphans and unwanted children.

CDfm

Being a Nun had a lot of status to it.

My mothers aunt who was a Civil Servant joined the nuns and as I understand it did so for professional reasons and went off to the Congo or some such place where she was the boss .

Here is an article on a family who took the religious route by the historian Catriona Clear

http://www.duchasnasionna.eu/other_clare/vol_19.pdf

jonniebgood1

CDfm wrote: »

Here is an article on a family who took the religious route by the historian Catriona Clear

http://www.duchasnasionna.eu/other_clare/vol_19.pdf

Very interesting link. Teresa Murphy was a farmers daughter as the article puts it a 'substantial farmer'. I am perhaps leading on from the current discussion in the thread on the oppression of women but was it possible or common for nuns to come from the poorest working classes. i.e. would it have been possible for a girl from a slum area to become a nun???

CDfm

jonniebgood1 wrote: »

Very interesting link. Teresa Murphy was a farmers daughter as the article puts it a 'substantial farmer'. I am perhaps leading on from the current discussion in the thread on the oppression of women but was it possible or common for nuns to come from the poorest working classes. i.e. would it have been possible for a girl from a slum area to become a nun???

My understanding is that anyone could become a nun and there may have been some hierarchy in the convent.

But every social unit has a hierarchy and you may need to define working class -like would the daughter of tenant farmers become nuns.

A view of mid 20th century Ireland, in 1933 you had 450,000 holdings in Ireland but it is now 117,000 with only 5% of farms exceeding 150 acres

< u>[FONT=Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, serif]Agriculture[/FONT]
[FONT=Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, serif]Ireland in the early 20th century was a poor country. The levels of poverty in many isolated rural areas were exceptional by western standards. In 1930, the total population was just under three million. The great majority of the people were living in the countryside, or in country towns and villages. Dublin, the capital city, had a maximum population of about half a million people.[/FONT]
[FONT=Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, serif]In 1930, the majority of Ireland's population occupied small agricultural holdings. Over a period of about 40 years, from the end of the First World War (1918), there was a general movement towards a consolidation in farm size. By the mid 1950s, 45% of farms were in the range of 30 to 100 acres. The total area occupied by both tillage and pasture in the 26 c ounties, in 1930, amounted to about 11 million acres. [/FONT]

[FONT=Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, serif]
[/FONT]

[FONT=Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, serif]Pasture was dominant, while the cultivation of grain continued to fall as it had since the Great Famine of the 1840s. Just over a million acres of grain crops were grown in 1921, this had fallen to just over 750,000 acres by 1931. In January 1930, the Honorary Secretary of the Irish Grain Growers Association appealed to Irish farmers to maintain at least the 1929 acreage of grain crops. The American economy had collapsed in 1929 and was succeeded by a worldwide depression. Irish farmers had received a poor return for their 192 9 crop. Indeed, in many cases, they had found it difficult to secure a market for it. [/FONT]

[FONT=Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, serif]The number of cattle declined in the country from 4.4 million in 1921 to just over 4 million in 1931. Milch cows accounted for three quarters of these. The number of horses also declined slightly during this decade. However, at the same time, pigs and poultry experienced a sharp increase in numbers. The number of poultry rose by almost six million between 1921 and 1931. [/FONT]
[FONT=Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, serif]Between 1926 and 1936 the total number of men and women employed in agriculture fell from just over 644,000 to just over 605,000. This trend later accelerated, partly due to increased emigration during the Second World War (the Emergency). Wages were low for a farm labourer; earnings could amount to less than 15 shillings a week. [/FONT]
[FONT=Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, serif]

During the war years, the area of land under tillage rose dramatically. In 1939 the total area of tillage (including grain, root and green crops and flax) amounted to 1.5 million acres. This had increased five years later to 2.6 million. Wheat production rose dramatically but this did not prevent the introduction of bread-rationing in 1942. Tea, sugar and butter were also rationed. Meat remained plentiful. Private motoring almost completely ceased in 1943 and gas and electricity supplies were drastically cut. The export of live cattle and meat products continued to form the basis of the export trade between Ireland to Britain. The summer of 1946 was one of the wettest on record and the wheat harvest was meagre. Bread rationing was, once more, introduced. In addition, there followed a particularly hard winter, fuel supplies were scarce and in early 1947 transport and industry almost ground to a halt. [/FONT]


[FONT=Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, serif]Home and Family Life

Within rural Ireland there was a pattern of late marriages and a very high birth-rate within marriage. The rate of emigration, especially for single women, remained high during the 1930s and 1940s, with England the main destination. There was also a movement into urban centres from rural areas. By the 1940s it appears that a general discontent with their conditions was becoming evident among the rural population. [/FONT]

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[/FONT]

[FONT=Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, serif]On the family farm, the woman of the house was usually responsible for the care of the small livestock, the poultry, pigs and calves. She would also attend to the vegetable garden and to the growing of fruit. Usually there was no running water or electricity, sanitation was poor and there were few modern conveniences. Few women worked outside of the home and they usually lost their jobs on marriage. For instance, women teachers, who qualified after the 1st January 1933, were obliged to retire when they married. From the early 1940s on, sympathy was growing for the woman in the home and the difficult conditions under which she had to labour. [/FONT]

[FONT=Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, serif]Tentative suggestions had been made, following the First World War, for harnessing Ireland's abundant water supply for the generation of electricity. In 1925 construction had commenced on the main power station at Ardnacrusha, near Limerick. This was completed late in 1929. In 1927 the Electricity Supply Board was established. In the early years, electricity was provided mainly to the towns and villages, by 1943 about 95% of urban populations had a supply. However, only about 50% of the population as a whole were connected to the network. [/FONT]
[FONT=Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, serif]Obviously the inst allation of electricity and the provision of a water supply on tap were to have a dramatic effect on the domestic scene. Comparisons, like the following, were drawn between the lives of urban and rural women.[/FONT]

[FONT=Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, serif]'Nowadays town houses are built for convenience and labour saving, for comfort and economy in the running of them. The townswoman has a supply of running water, a neat range that will not burn much fuel and will supply hot water to wash-basin and bath in the bathroom and to the wash-up sink in the kitchen or scullery. She has hot and cold water, good sanitation, electric light, a plug for her electric iron, cupboard space and plenty of shelves. All this makes heaven for the town home-maker. And all this goes for the plain workman's wife as well as for the doctor's wife in Merrion Square.[/FONT]
[FONT=Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, serif]The country woman then must drag in the cold water from outside the house. For every basin of hot water she wants, she must lift a heavy kettle on and off the fire. On washing-day, washtubs must be filled and emptied time and again; what it costs in labour to keep her churn and milk vessels clean![/FONT]
[FONT=Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, serif]The open fire-place in the country house looks grand and when we think of the lovely cakes that come out of the pot-oven, it makes us quite sentimental - but the truth is that half the heat goes up the chimney with the draught and the old pot-oven is unwieldy and clumsy and out of date. [/FONT]
[FONT=Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, serif]Now when night falls, the townswoman, presses a button and at once there is a light and cheerful glow about her. The countrywoman, like the Wise Virgin in the gospel, has had to clean and tend and fill her lamp before lighting it or else she has to depend on her halfpenny dip. Millions have been spent on the Shannon scheme but it is n ot the countrywoman who has the benefit of it.'
[/FONT][FONT=Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, serif] (Muintir na Tíre Official Handbook, 1941). [/FONT]

[FONT=Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, serif]The rosy picture of urban living, as depicted above, was often very far from the truth. Dublin contained some of the worst slums in Europe, with many people living in squalid tenements, without even the most basic of facilities. [/FONT]
[FONT=Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, serif]In terms of health, heart disease, tuberculosis and cancer were the big killers. The first Irish Hospitals Sweepstakes was organized in 1930 and proved a huge success. After 1933 the Hospitals Trust Board administered the funds realised from the sweepstakes to hospitals. The sweepstakes were based on the main annual horse races. Non-contributory pensions for widows were introduced in 1936. Children's allowances were introduced in 1944. They were generally paid to the father for the third and every subsequent child.[/FONT]

[FONT=Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, serif]In 1926 the School Attendance Act made school attendance compulsory on all school days for children between the ages of six and fourteen. The primary school programme consisted of attendance for five or six hours, five days a week for a minimum of 190 days a year. The subjects studied included, Irish, English, Arithmetic, History, Geography and Music. Girls also received instruction in needlework. In the late 1920s, the Department of Education had introduced the Primary School Certificate examination. This examination was voluntary until 1943 when, despite strong opposition, it became compulsory for all children who had reached sixth class. Only a small percentage of children proceeded into post-primary education. As late as 1957 only 10,000 students sat the Leaving Certificate, which marked the end of a pupil's secondary education[/FONT]

http://www.muckross-house.ie/library_files/ireland_in_the_30s.htm

Religious orders were considered a profession

‘Imperium in Imperio': Irish Episcopal Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century*

1. Colin Barr

+ Author Affiliations

1. Ave Maria University, Naples, Florida

1. Professor Colin Barr, Department of History, Ave Maria University, 1025 Commons Circle, Naples, Florida FL 34119-1376. USA.

Abstract

The heavily Irish character of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, United Kingdom, and much of the former British Empire is evident. This was not, however, the necessary consequence of large-scale Irish emigration in the nineteenth-century. Rather, it was the result of a carefully-planned campaign to install Irish bishops in the several national hierarchies, a campaign which began in earnest in the United States from 1830, before effecting the Maritime provinces of British North America, the Cape of Good Hope, Australia, and New Zealand. Only Scotland was able – temporarily – to repel the Irish. This phenomenon was directed by Paul Cullen, in his successive roles as rector of the Irish College, Rome, archbishop of Armagh, and, from 1852, archbishop of Dublin. Cullen was able to use his influence at Rome to manipulate and control information regarding English-language conflicts. This allowed him to secure the appointment as bishops of a substantial number of his relatives, former students, and diocesan priests around the world. In every case save the Cape of Good Hope, this occurred in the face of determined opposition on the part of a pre-existing national hierarchy: French and German in the United States, Scots in Maritime Canada (and Scotland), English Benedictines in Australia, French Marists in New Zealand. Excepting Scotland, Cullen's bishops largely supplanted their predecessors. More than merely ethnically Irish, these bishops and many of their successors shared a distinctive Hiberno-Roman devotional and disciplinary model of Catholicism that became normative in the areas to which they were sent.

• © The Author [2008]. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

Economy of farms at the time

http://www.tara.tcd.ie/bitstream/2262/4878/1/jssisiVolXV79_96.pdf

CDfm

Here is an interesting link to Gerard Fealy book


In it he refers to nurse/nun training regime of apprenticeship which remained largely unchanged for 115 years.

http://books.google.ie/books?id=cgKsBW5tXHsC&pg=PA15&lpg=PA15&dq=power+nuns+ireland&source=bl&ots=PxXMtNqlAq&sig=8lSHBgRabnkNC3zQ3KK2FFph2U4&hl=en&ei=A3P-TfCxGoOa8QOK5_mpCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CEQQ6AEwBjgo#v=onepage&q=power%20nuns%20ireland&f=false

What was innovative in 1850 was old hat in 1970.

So you have the development of a powerful elite who exercised complete authority over their area.