Some years ago, while attending Mass at the Carmelite Church in Clarendon Street, Dublin, I noticed a plaque on the wall showing the names of the first thirteen Mercy Sisters who were buried in the crypt there between 1831 and 1840. There were two McAuleys on the list and immediately my curiosity was aroused.
Who were these Mercy women?
- All were young
- Nine were Dubliners
- Three were converts
- Two were Novices
- One was a Postulant
- One was a widow and mother
Nineteen year old Caroline Murphy, a native of Killarney, was the first victim of rapid consumption. Excessive austerities undermined her frail constitution and she died while still a Postulant in 1831.
The two Novices were Aloysius Thorpe who died from typhus and twenty year old Anne O’Grady who had great love for the poor. She over exerted herself when Catherine was in George’s Hill, was received on her deathbed and died of lingering consumption.
Catherine’s two nieces Mary Teresa and Ann Agnes McAuley were merely twenty two and eighteen years when they died of tuberculosis. Two Marmions – Agnes and Francis belonged to a remarkable family in St. Andrew’s parish.
Two others had “clerical links” with Catherine. Mechtilde Gaffney, who professed her vows on her deathbed, was a sister of Fr. Myles Gaffney, Catherine’s loyal friend and advisor. Rose Lube was a sister of Catherine’s confessor, Fr. Andrew Lube. She developed rapid consumption and died at the age of 26, three weeks after her profession.
One of Catherine’s companions in George’s Hill was Elizabeth Harley. Catherine had hoped that she’d be of great assistance in establishing the Institute but developed rapid consumption shortly after her profession and died a few months later, aged twenty four.
Ellen Corrigan, an orphan from Co Offaly, had lived with Catherine in Coolock since she was a child. She moved to Baggot Street with her and was called Sr. Veronica. Two weeks after her profession in 1837 she died of typhus at the age of twenty.
Like Catherine’s two nieces, Mary Jones/Sr. Gertrude, was also a convert. She was a native of north Wales and was received into the church in London. She died in Booterstown in 1839.
Mary McCann, from Ennis, was married to a doctor who attended the sick in the House of Mercy. Her ten year old daughter Kate died of whooping cough while in the Loreto Boarding School in Rathfarnham. Mary joined the Baggot Street community and was named Sr. de Chantal. Funds made available through her inheritance were used to purchase the house at Sussex Place, Kingstown. Two years after her Profession, she died there of typhus at the age of thirty seven.
In 1839 Catherine, writing to Frances Ward, expressed her hope “to have them all home before another year” but this never happened. However, another plaque in the garden cemetery in Mercy International Centre, Baggot Street commemorates their short lives. May they all rest in peace.
Bernadette Maria Knopek rsm
Southern Province
