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Mother Mary Aikenhead

1787–1858

 

No account of the great and influential Irish would be complete if it did not include an Irish nun somewhere on its list.  There are many misconceptions about the life of a nun, but as the life of Mary Aikenhead, the founder in 1815 of the now world-wide order of the Irish Sisters of Charity, amply demonstrates, a religious life did not prevent a woman from having a full career or exercising immense influence on the world beyond the convent walls.

      Mary Aikenhead was born in Cork on 19th January 1787.  She was the daughter of a Church of Ireland physician, David Aikenhead, and his wife Mary Stackpole, who was a Catholic.  Mary was initially brought up in the Anglican tradition, but her father became a Catholic shortly before his death, and she, too, was received into the Catholic Church on 2nd June 1802.

      She had an early ambition to serve the poor, and looked to find some order that was actively engaged in community charitable work.  When she became a nun, she was selected (somewhat against her will, it is said) by Dr Daniel Murray, archbishop of Dublin, to form just such a religious community, which they did with the permission of the Roman authorities.

      Mary Aikenhead and one of her colleagues then spent three years at the Michlegate Bar Convent in York for the novitiate.  She took the name Sister Mary Augustine, though according to the custom that prevailed in the British Isles, she was always known as Mrs Aikenhead.  (This custom dated back to penal times, when communities of nuns claimed merely to be ladies living in common.)

      The Religious Sisters of Charity, as the order was called, were inspired by the original French sisters founded by St Vincent de Paul in Paris.  Their rule was modelled on that of the Jesuits.  The first vows were taken on 1st September 1815, and Mary Aikenhead was appointed superior general.  They began their work when the two nuns returned to an orphanage on North William Street in Dublin, which was to be their new home.  They took the usual vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, to which was added a fourth vow - to serve the poor.

      They cared for the orphans, established a day school, and went out into the community to visit families in their homes.  Their numbers rose, and more institutions were added to the original.  They taught in the parish school, in free schools, and opened a Magdalen refuge for girls who were expecting babies outside marriage.

      Sixteen years of unrelenting work took their toll, and in 1831 Mary Aikenhead's health gave way, leaving her an invalid for the rest of her life.  But her mental energy remained.  This is perhaps the real significance of religious orders for women, that they provided what was in effect a professional role for them in areas of management and social action which would otherwise have been closed to them in those days.  Moreover, they attained what the women's movement of today espouses: a sense of community, sisterhood, and shared purpose far removed from the narrow confines of the domestic scene.

      In 1832 Ireland was visited by cholera, during which time Mary Aikenhead directed her sisters' heroic labours.  In 1834 the congregation received its papal approval.  It was also the year when she opened St Vincent's Hospital in Dublin, which was the first Catholic hospital in Ireland.  Removed to a new site at Elm Park, it still exists.  She pioneered the staffing and managing of hospitals by religious women, trained in modern nursing.  In time, convalescent homes, homes for the blind, deaf, and crippled, old people's homes, mothers' clinics, hostels and recreation centres were set up, all in addition to the original schools.

      The Irish nuns spread to England and Scotland.  In 1838 the Irish Sisters of Charity became the first nuns to go to work in Australia, with which Ireland had many connections.  (In Australia they are now called the Daughters of Mary Aikenhead.)  Later still, they went to the United States, where they are well established in Los Angeles, and to Zambia and Nigeria.

      In the middle of the nineteenth century, when much was made of the efforts of Florence Nightingale during the Crimean War, said by many to be the first modern war, the Irish Sisters of Charity also worked in the Scutari hospitals, but with far less personalized fanfare than the British 'Lady with the Lamp'.

      During the last twenty-seven years of her life, Mary Aikenhead had to direct these world-wide operations from her bed, for she had been crippled by an incurable spinal condition.  She died in Dublin on 22nd July 1858.  Aside from her great skills as an organizer, many had been impressed with her deep spiritual qualities and her sense of mission as a gift from God.  In 1921 the cause for her beatification was issued in Rome.  This process, always a long affair with the Catholic Church, makes progress.  Her name may yet be added to the small roster of modern Irish saints.

      In Ireland, it used to be said that if one wanted the country to be properly run, it should be given into the charge of a reverend mother and a Christian Brother.  At a time when management skills in many areas of public life and social action were lacking, Mary Aikenhead proved the truth behind the old joke.