London Papers

This document signed by Cardinal Vaughan, Archbishop of Westminster, gives permission for the Benediction of the Holy Sacrament in the chapel of Cavendish Square. From it we learn saints' feasts and events that were important to the Society and the school, including the feasts St Patrick, St Aloysius, St Edward and St Teresa, the two latter feasts relating to foundation of the SHCJ. It also lists key school events such as the meetings of the Sodality of the Children of Mary and prize giving days. 

This early register of the SHCJ's teacher training college at Cavendish Square tells us about both the nuns and lay women who were trained at the college by giving details such as their date of entry and previous education. It is a potentially helpful document for family historians and tells us the numbers of student teachers trained by the Society during the 1900s.

This interesting document not only gives an account of the development of Cavendish Square School from 1853 - when it was located in Queen's Square - to the late 1940s, but also states the 'aims and methods' of SHCJ education in a post-war world. The rest of the paper defines how the SHCJ would currently apply their long held maxim to 'meet the wants of the age' by considering needs of London’s children who were traumatised by war and surrounded by profound changes in society. The sister who wrote this document - possibly prepared for a newsletter or a meeting of school governors and parents - defines what the SHCJ saw as their 'most important task [...] the education of happy stable persons because so many obstacles to this normal state seem to face our children.'

This is a page from an account of Cavendish Square School by Sr Wilfrid (baptised Catherine) Mulgrew. After a time in Preston just after her first profession as an SHCJ sister in 1896, Cavendish Square was the second school where Sr Wilfrid taught. In her memoir she recalls the original layout of the school with its dark yet 'dignified and serene' interiors. She also remembers the people living in the convent and working in the school: sisters such as the 'formidable' superior Mother Aloysia Ryan, lay staff such as music teacher Mrs Hewson whose 'peculiar methods' were a 'remarkable success' and the cook Martha Delenos who was in awe of the children's 'tremendous' appetites. Sr Wilfrid pays tribute to the industrious pupil teachers who – prior to the pupil-teacher training system being phased out in the 1910s - worked all day as class mistresses at Cavendish Square and in the evening were taught themselves as pupils by the nuns: ‘rather a hard position’. Sr Wilfrid praises them as 'wonderful girls putting up with all kinds of difficulties so cheerfully'.