‘Who Could Put a Material Value on this?’:

In September 1943, Mother Mary Angelica Atchison wrote to the Rev. Mother Provincial, Mary Paul O’Connor, with a plan for an entirely new area of ministry for the Society of the Holy Child Jesus. The Chief Medical Officer for Schools in Dublin, described by M.M. Angelica as ‘a reliable, capable woman’ proposed that the SHCJ open a hostel for girls who ‘come up to Dublin in great numbers from the country’ to work in the Civil Service. It is testament to the desire for the SHCJ to develop a closer relationship with Ireland that the first advantage to the SHCJ identified by M.M. Angelica is the opportunity for the Society to ‘not merely live in Ireland but be working for Ireland’. She goes on to state that this ministry for young working-class women would ‘help to break down the idea of “rich snobbish nuns” whose main interest is the education of the rich’.[1]

Image below: An SHCJ Sister holding the pet tortoise and three Harcourt Street residents with the cats, circa
1945.

The kind of care and support that the SHCJ would provide is characterized by M.M. Angelica as ‘supervision but also liberty’. Since the girls were, after two years cramming ‘left to fend forthemselves’ in Dublin, providing educational facilities lacking in other hostels and ‘the incentive to study’ would prevent them from being lost in the ‘blind alley’ of low paid positions as writing assistants and allow these young women to live out their potential.[2] As Catriona McPhail wrote at the close of Harcourt Street in the Province News of Winter 1996, ‘her comments reveal the connection between the establishment of the hostel and the Society’s long-held and far-sighted views on the role and education and of women’.[3]

Despite the need that seemed clear to the Chief Medical Officer and the suitability of sisters M.M. Alphonsus and M.M. Hildegarde for the roles required, M.M. Angelica was tentative about the next steps. All depended on the approval of the Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid. M.M. Angelica was concerned of the harm that might be done to her plans for this new apostolate should the Archbishop hear of it secondhand. She warned M.M. Paul that ‘N.B. DUBLIN IS A HOTBED OF GOSSIP AND THINGS GET ROUND IN THE VERY AIR!’[4]

However, the Archbishop warmly welcomed the SHCJ. A report on the SHCJ in Ireland from 1951
states that McQuaid expressed his desire to support the SHCJ:

[He] told the Superior at Harcourt Street that now he would be able to help us as
he had long wanted to do but that he was powerless until we were in the
Archdiocese. Later he said that we could have anything we liked – boarding
school, national school – and concluded “could any Bishop in Europe do more for
you?”

These were not empty words. As the report comments, just three years after Harcourt Street was established, McQuaid supported the establishment of the SHCJ’s new school at Killiney.

Just 10 months after M.M. Angelica presented the case for a hostel to M.M. Paul, she was accompanied by Mother Mary Hildegarde and Mother Mary Boniface to No. 70 Harcourt Street. Since wartime meant no car was available, they were taken to the station at Gormanston by their pony Billy who ‘had been called out of his peaceful retirement to do his best with a little governess car.’ Meegan, the sister’s ‘excellent peacetime chauffeur’ drove Billy and the small trap despite his aversion to ‘mangy’ animals while Holly, the Stamullen sisters’ cowman, brought items the sisters could not fit in the governess car on his bicycle.

The annalist also recalls how after the sisters had attended mass at University Church, Dr O’Brien the priest-in-charge, called on the Harcourt Street Convent and asked “Is either of you a native of Meath?”. When he heard the reply “no father, one is German and one is English” he exclaimed “well that’s funny! And you have come together to found a house in Dublin!” From that first meeting, ‘he became a kind friend to us.’
The day after Harcourt Street’s first St Teresa’s Feast, an opening ceremony and tea was attended by old girls, friends of the sisters and the Archbishop himself who blessed the buildings. The first residents of the hostel arrived soon afterwards. 70 Harcourt Street proved popular and since it was ‘overflowing with residents’, a waiting list had to be drawn up. 

M.M. Angelica’s choice of M.M. Alphonsus to take care of the young women starting work in Dublin proved a wise one as she ‘promptly took them all to her motherly heart’. Despite their busy lives and the ‘difficulty of getting the cast together’ due to ‘their varied avocations’ a Nativity play was performed by the residents at Christmas. The annalist comments ‘it certainly helped to establish a ‘espirit de corps’ and to promote
happy relations between girls and nuns’.

Image below: Sisters walking to the 70 Harcourt Street Chapel, circa 1950.

In July 1949, the new chapel – able to accommodate the sisters, residents and visitors – was blessed by Dr O’Brien. Over the preceding weeks, the chapel had been a hive of activity with painters, plasterers, floor layers and the sisters themselves hurrying to ensure the chapel was ready in time during ‘unbelievably hot’ late June weather. The foreman Paddy and his workmen looked ‘flurried and anxious but determined not to give in’.

All their efforts ensured the Chapel was ready on 2nd July and after the opening ceremony, blessing, procession and mass had taken place, Sisters St John, St Peter and St Columba served lunch - ‘a beautiful and dainty affair’ - upon a table decorated by M. M. Hildegarde with flowers and maidenhair ferns from Killiney. The letter from the Harcourt Street community concludes that after the Archbishop’s blessing, ‘on this Our Lady’s beautiful Feast, he left us, happy in the thought that She would have us always under her special and most loving protection’.[5]

Alongside the community letters and annals, responses to a questionnaire by a young girl who was a resident of the hostel gives a glowing report of ‘the delightful sensation of individual liberty’ fostered there and its role as a ‘home from home’. This individual perspective may not give us a purely objective sense of what life was like in the hostel. Nonetheless, it is interesting to note what stood out to her as its most important merits. She describes how a respect for individuality was encouraged:

In the Hostel we meet many different types of personalities and characters and
inevitably grow accustomed to seeing different points of view which helps to
broaden the mind.

The resident also pays tribute to the kindness shown by the sisters and how this has shaped her own attitude to life:

The many inconveniences to which they [the sisters] have put themselves in
order to smooth out my daily life has given new insight into the happiness of
service […] Living under such conditions and surrounded by such sympathy and
understanding I have been inspired time and time again to face the daily tasks of
life with renewed courage and confidence. Who could put a material value on
this?[6]

Image below: Members of the Harcourt Street Community with Residents of the hostel, circa 1970.

From such a response, it appears that - at least in this resident’s case -Harcourt Street had become the place envisioned in 1943 by the Medical Officer for Schools and M.M. Angelica. It went on to support young women beginning their careers or studying until 1996 when, as Sr Mary Lalor observed ‘times have changed; society has changed, Dublin has changed; the girls coming up from the country have changed’ and the kind of accommodation provided by the Harcourt Street hostel was no longer required. As has happened throughout the existence of the SHCJ, the Sisters had met the wants of a particular age and when this period passed, the Society adapted and moved on. Yet, the encouragement and support provided to countless young women over 52 years is no less a priceless gift for that.

Stable Lane was formed from the ‘new building’ constructed in 1982 to 1983 while No.69 and 70 Harcourt Street were sold. From 1997 onwards, this new SHCJ convent would also provide accommodation to visitors, but while doing so the sisters also engaged in a great range of apostolates. In 1998, the annals record that Eileen Sweeney, alongside her roles as a Librarian and as Community Liturgist, was a member of Comhlamh, the Irish South African Association, the AfricanEuropean Faith and Justice Network and the Institute of Feminism and Religion while Mary Dempsey is recorded as a member of the charity Alone working with elderly people in Ireland and was also involved with care of abused wives and children. Patricia Holden was the Liturgist at All Hallows College. Later annals state that Carmen MacCarthy, Margaret Mulkern and Margaret Mary Donnelly took Holy Communion to those who could not attend Mass. These commitments were continued faithfully for decades. Mary Dempsey was nominated for an ‘UnSung Heroes’ Award for her work with Alone in 2009.

This is only to name some of the important work and social issues that the Community living within or attached to the Stable Lane Convent were involved in. Alongside this external apostolate, the annals are also testament to the sisters who were unable to be ‘out and about’, but did not end their apostolic work. The annalist writes ‘there is an atmosphere of prayerfulness and concern for people that communicates itself in all relationships’.[7]

As the SHCJ’s Convent at Stable Lane closes, an important chapter in the Society’s history has come to an end. It is sad and difficult to contemplate such a great part of SHCJ life passing. Still, there is comfort in the memory of generations of SHCJ sisters in Harcourt Street and Stable Lane and the positive and meaningful changes they made to the lives of the people of Dublin and beyond.

Image below: Sisters gathered for a celebration at Stable Lane circa 1990.