i
TO LABOUR SERIOUSLY:
CATHOLIC SISTERS AND SOCIAL WELFARE
IN LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY SYDNEY
LESLEY PATRICIA HUGHES
BA (Hons), CertHEd (NSW); BSocStud, MSW (With Merit)(Syd)
A thesis submitted in fulfilment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
School of Social Work,
University of New South Wales ii
‘The end of this Congregation is not only to attend, aided by the divine grace, to the salvation and perfection of their own souls, but also with the same to labour seriously in works of spiritual and corporal mercy for the salvation and consolation of their neighbours.’
Rules and Constitutions of the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity, canonically erected in Dublin, Approved by the Holy See. A.D.1833. (English version) 1912, p.19. Rome. iii
Abstract
This thesis examines the social welfare work of four Catholic
Sisterhoods in Sydney in the late nineteenth century. The work of
Catholic women religious is largely missing from Australian women’s history and the history of social welfare and social work in Australia.
The present investigation seeks to add to knowledge of women’s agency in Australian society and to extend the knowledge of Australian social work history.
The aim of the thesis is to understand what the Sisters were attempting to do in their work with the poor of Sydney and how they went about it. The emphasis is on understanding the Sisters’ work from their own perspective, particularly the values which underpinned their work and the resources and constraints which affected it. A qualitative, inductive approach is used in which the data are drawn mainly from the
Sisterhoods’ narratives and other historical documents. The thesis does not aim to test particular theoretical propositions, but rather to contribute to a number of ‘unfolding stories’ about the history of Australian social work, about women’s work in the public realm, and about the development of the caring professions iv
The thesis argues that the social welfare work of four Sydney
Sisterhoods had a number of characteristics which made it unusual for the time, and which constituted it as ‘proto-professional’. These included the codification of the prescribed stance towards the poor, of methods of work, and a high level of expertise in administration and management. The Sisters’ approach pre-figured later social work in a number of respects including an inclusive and accepting stance, respect for the dignity of the individual, and a concern to develop individuals’ capacities and self-esteem. The professionalism of the Sisters’ work is shown to be related to features which were integral to Catholic women’s religious institutes and to their role and status in the Catholic Church of the day.
The Sisters’ social welfare work did not ‘evolve’ into secular, professional social work however. It is contended that reasons for this were related to developments in Australian society, the situation of the local Catholic Church and restrictions on membership of the
Sisterhoods. The thesis has significance for bodies of knowledge on
‘woman’s sphere’ charity in the late nineteenth century, the history of social work in Australia, and theory on the professionalisation of caring occupations. v
Acknowledgements
Many people have assisted me over the duration of this project.
Thanks are due to my supervisors in the School of Social Work at the
University of New South Wales - Dr Rosemary Berreen, Associate
Professor Damian Grace, Professor Richard Hugman and Dr Richard
Roberts - for their generosity, guidance and critical advice.
I am also grateful to the four groups of women religious whose
‘foremothers’ are the subject of this study: the Sisters of Charity, the
Sisters of the Good Samaritan, the Sisters of Mercy, North Sydney and the Sisters of St Joseph. Much gratitude is owed to their archivists – Sr
Genevieve Campbell and Mrs Guilaine Buckley at the Sisters of Charity
Archives; the late Sr Ursula Trower, Sr Marie Gerard McGlynn, Sr Maree
Stanley and Sr Lia Van Haren at the Good Samaritan Archives; Sr
Margaret Barry of the North Sydney Sisters of Mercy Archives; Sr
Kathleen Burford at the Mary MacKillop Archives and Srs Benedetta and
Philomena at the Sisters of St Joseph Archives, North Sydney. Their interest and help, given on numerous occasions, was indispensable. I must also acknowledge the assistance of the staff and volunteers at the
Sydney Catholic Archdiocesan Archives.
vi
I have benefited from the ongoing interest and encouragement of many people, including staff of the former Institute of Religious Studies at Strathfield and at the Australian Catholic University’s Project in
Women’s History, Theology and Spirituality - particularly Sr Carmel
Leavey op, Sr Rosa MacGinley pbvm, and Sr Sophie McGrath rsm. In the early days of the project Sr Rosalie O’Neill rsj and Sr Elizabeth
Hellwig op, archivist of the Dominican Sisters at Strathfield also assisted me generously. Sr Moira O’Sullivan rsc, Sr Marilyn Kelleher sgs, Sr
Phillippa Jones op and Sr Mary Ryan rsm have also been friends of this project, as have members of the Australian Catholic Historical Society, particularly Elizabeth Johnston and John Luttrell.
The support of all the above people, together with their various contributions to scholarship on the history of women religious, is greatly appreciated. I must also thank my social work friends and colleagues at
UNSW and elsewhere whose support helped me to persevere.
Lastly, I could not have completed the project without my husband
Peter Boorman, who was always there, and my sons Daniel and Tom.
This thesis is dedicated to the memory of my dear friend and colleague, Dr Marie Wilkinson, my great grandmother Kate Dooley and my grandmothers Madge Hooton and Kitty McGrath. vii
Abbreviations
£ pound/s A Archives AB Account Book ACD Australasian Catholic Directory Ad. R. Admissions Register An. Annals AR Annual Report B Biographies C Constitution/s CB Cashbook CD Sydney Catholic Directory CMR Customs and Minor Regulations CP Catholic Press DT The Sydney Daily Telegraph FESM ‘Foundation and Establishment of the Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy, Monte Sant’ Angelo Norrth Sydney FIMCM Familiar Instructions of Rev. Mother Catherine McAuley FJ The Sydney Freeman's Journal Fr Reverend Father (a priest) GS Sisters of the Good Samaritan of the Order of St Benedict HR Holy Rule IPC Inspector of Public Charities LC J Journal of the Legislative Council of NSW M. Mary M. M. Mother Mary viii
MMDH Memoirs of Mother Dorothea Hanly, sgs MMH Mater Misericordiae Servants’ Home and Training School MMSH&TS Mater Misericordiae Servants’ Home and Training School MR Register of members MSA Monte Sant’Angelo PSC Pitt Street Convent POS Protestant Orphan School R Rule/s RC Rules and Constitutions RCCPCI Royal Commission into the Condition of the Poorer Classes in Ireland RCOS Roman Catholic Orphan School RCPC Royal Commission into Public Charities, N.S.W. 1873-4 RCPC E Minutes of Evidence of the RCPC 1873/4 Ref. Refuge SAA Sydney Archdiocesan Archives SC Sisters of Charity SCRB State Children’s Relief Board SCRD State Children’s Relief Department SGS Sisters of the Good Samaritan of the Order of St Benedict SM Sisters of Mercy SMG A Guide for the Religious called Sisters of Mercy SPC St Patrick’s Convent Sr Sister SSJ Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart SVH St Vincent’s Hospital V&PLA Votes and Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly of New South Wales ix
Measurements and Conversions
One pound (£1) 20 shillings (20/-)
One guinea One pound, one shilling (£ 1/1/-)
One shilling 12 pence (12d)
One pound (£1) two dollars at the time of conversion to decimal currency (1966)
1 foot 30.5 centimetres
1 yard 0.914 metres
1 mile 1.61 kilometres
1 lb. 454 grams
1 gallon 4.55 litres
x
LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: Dates of the Sydney foundations of the four Sisterhoods 2
Table 2: Episcopal Office-Holders, Archdiocese of Sydney 129
Table 3: Institutional charities of the four Sisterhoods in the Archdiocese of Sydney in 1873 329
Table 4: Institutional charities of the four Sisterhoods in the Archdiocese of Sydney in 1900 330
xi
CONTENTS
Pages
Abstract iii
Acknowledgements v
Abbreviations vii
Measurements and Conversions ix
List of Tables x
Chapter 1: Introduction Introduction 1 ‘Social Welfare’, ‘charity’ and ‘philanthropy’ 6 ‘Nuns’ and ‘Sisters’ 8 Methodology 9 Contribution of this thesis 10
Chapter 2: Charity, Social Work and Religion in the Nineteenth Century
Introduction 14 Omission of the Sisters’ work from welfare history 15 Australian women’s history 20 Social work history 22 Characteristics of charity in nineteenth century New South Wales 27 The legacy of nineteenth century British Poor Law principles 35 xii
Government and ‘voluntary’ charity in New South Wales 37 Poverty and charity in Ireland 43 Religion and charity 55 Religious differences and the development of welfare states 61 Conclusion 62
Chapter 3: ‘Separate Spheres’: Women, Religion and Professional Work
Introduction 66 ‘Woman’s sphere’ charity 69 Women, professions and the expansion of the ‘woman’s sphere’ 73 Masculine power and authority 78 Women’s charity in nineteenth century Sydney 79 Literature on Catholic women religious 84 Women and professionalisation 92 Relationships between women charity workers and the poor 95 Conclusion 101
Chapter 4: ‘We hear nothing from the good Sisters themselves’: Methodology
Introduction 107 ‘New history’ and interpretive social science approaches 109 Developing empathy or ‘historical mindedness’ 113 Methodological issues 117 xiii
External sources 121 The period of interest 122 Selection of Sisterhoods to study 124 Conclusion 126
Chapter 5: The Sisters’ Work in Context: The Case of the House of Mercy
Introduction 130 Investigating the Sisters’ relationships with masculine authority 133 The ‘House of Mercy’ concept 137 The need for a ‘House of Mercy’ in Sydney 138 Situation of the early Mercy community in Sydney 141 The Sisters’ acquisition of property 143 The Sisters’ human resources 146 Government policy changes in education 148 Mother Ignatius’ relationships with Churchmen 153 Planning for the House of Mercy 155 Mother Ignatius persists 160 Masculine support for the Sisters’ work 163 Conclusion 164
Chapter 6: ‘In them they regarded the person of our Divine Master’: The Sisters’ Attitudes Towards the Poor
Introduction 168 Methodological note 171 Sisters’ narratives and attitudes to the poor 173 xiv
The Sisterhoods’ official stance towards the poor 178 Catholicism and attitudes to the poor 182 The Roman Catholic Orphan School 186 Irishness and the Sisters’ attitude to the poor 192 Analysis of the Sisters’ cultural backgrounds 195 Sectarianism and the perception of need 201 Relationship between spiritual and corporal need 207 The spiritual needs of non-Catholics 209 Conclusion 213
Chapter 7: ‘When supplies ran very short and the purse was empty’: The Sisters’ Knowledge of the Needs of the Poor
Introduction 216 Social class backgrounds of the Sisters 219 Payment of dowries 224 Occupations of the Sisters’ fathers 231 The Sisters’ acquaintance with the poor 235 Hardship in the convents 243 Conclusion 258
Chapter 8: ‘The devoted and efficient service of the Poor’: The Sisters’ Methods of Work
Introduction 260 Prescribed methods of work with the poor 262 The Sisters’ general demeanour towards the poor 265 Institutional charity 268 xv
‘Kind but firm’: The Sisters’ approach to discipline 270 Training and education of the poor 279 The Sisters’ methods at the Catholic Orphan School, Parramatta 283 Disciplinary regimes in institutions for penitent women: An anomaly? 290 The Sisters as organised charity workers 301 Preparatory work 305 Duties after returning from visitation work 309 Rules of decorous conduct 311 Conclusion 313
Chapter 9: ‘Though away from the world the sisters knew something of management and financing’: The Sisters as Managers
Introduction 316 Evidence of the Sisters’ managerial achievements 322 Domestic management 326 Scale and complexity of charitable works 328 Property acquisition and management 334 Extent of the Sisters’ role in management 336 Management of the Roman Catholic Orphan School, Parramatta 340 Raising finance 343 First-hand knowledge and management 350 Structural forces 352 Economics 353 Irish culture, women and business 355 The Sisterhoods and the Church 356 xvi
The Sisterhoods as structured women’s organisations 358 Duties of office-bearers 361 Women’s communities 366 Conclusion 374
Chapter 10: Conclusion
Introduction 379 Thesis summary 380 Why the Sisters’ approach was not a foundation for professional social work 383 Significance for Australian social work history 388 Female leadership in Australian social work 391 Significance for contemporary social work 392 Contribution to theory on women and Professionalisation 353 Conclusion 397
Appendices Appendix 1 Editions of the Freeman’s Journal included in data collection 398
Appendix 2 Birthplace of first Sisters in charge of charitable institutions 400
Bibliography 402 1
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
‘We do not understand ourselves because we do not know yet what we have been and hence what we may be becoming’ (Laslett 1977: 5).
Introduction
This thesis examines the charitable work of Catholic Sisters1 in
Sydney in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The work of this group of women is largely missing from the history of Australian social work and social welfare and from other branches of Australian history.
The present study can be broadly understood as a contribution to understanding different approaches to working with the poor in the nineteenth century, and as an attempt to see the Sisters as women of their time, place and culture seriously engaged in meaningful ‘caring’ work beyond the confines of family. In this latter respect the thesis also contributes to an understanding of women and professional work in
Australia. The thesis therefore is an exploration of part of the relatively uncharted diversity of the antecedents of Australian social work.
1 Four groups of Sisters were included. These were the Sisters of Charity who arrived in Sydney in 1838, the Sisters of the Good Samaritan, founded in Sydney in 1857; the Sisters of Mercy who arrived in Sydney From England in 1865, and the Sisters of St Joseph whose Sydney foundation was made in 1880. See Table 1, over. The criteria by which these groups were selected are discussed in Chapter 4. 2
Table 1
Dates of the Sydney Foundations of the Four Sisterhoods
1838 Sisters of Charity (founded in Cork, Ireland in 1815)
1857 Sisters of the Good Samaritan of the Order of St Benedict (founded in Sydney in 1857)
1865 Sisters of Mercy (founded in Dublin, Ireland in 1831)
1880 Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart (founded in Penola, Sth Australia in 1866)
The accepted history of social work in Australia is much shorter and simpler than its counterparts in Britain or the U.S.A. Australian social work is generally regarded as having commenced at the end of the
1920s (for example Lawrence 1965, 1976; Parker 1979; Martin 1983,
1985, 1987; Crawford and Leitmann 2001). Those working with the poor in nineteenth century Australia have not been regarded as having any connection with later social work because of the perceived lack of professionalism of the former (Lawrence 1965). In contrast, historians of social work in the United Kingdom have been more amenable to regarding the efforts of those engaged in various forms of direct, 3
philanthropic work in the nineteenth century as falling within the domain of social work (Woodroofe 1962; Walton 1975; Wilson 1977; Parry and
Parry 1979; Satyamurti 1979; Woollacott 1998). Amongst these, several traditions of assistance have been identified and recognised as having a role in the development of social work. Writers on social work in the
United Kingdom are thus able to comment upon and make suggestions for current and future social work by referring to aspects of its past (for example Forsythe 1995; Bowpitt 1998; Hugman 2001).
In the USA, recent works such as that of Anderson (2000) indicate a preparedness to question the accepted version of the history of social work in that country, and to allow the work of Catholic women religious to have a place. Other works have placed the charitable work of the
Catholic Sisterhoods in the USA firmly in the broader context of the historical development of social welfare there (Oates 1995; Brown and
McKeown 1996). Another caring profession whose history is also being subjected to a similar re-evaluation is nursing, with the role of religion and ‘vowed’ religious women2 now being shown to have been extremely significant in the development of the profession on three continents
(Baly 1987; Dingwall, Rafferty and Webster 1988; Marshall and Wall
1999; Nelson 2001).
2 The term ‘vowed women’ is taken from Nelson (2001: 3). It includes Catholic women religious and Protestant Sisters and deaconesses. 4
Because Australian social work has been depicted as being unrelated to nineteenth century charity and social reform movements the heritage of the profession in Australia is limited (Marchant 1985;
McMahon 2001, 2002). Australian social work is therefore disadvantaged in that its restricted past constrains a critique of the present and inspiration for the future. The reluctance of historians of
Australian social work to see it as linked with the nineteenth century is not to say that there is no knowledge of earlier work with and for the poor in Australia, but that such work is regarded as belonging to welfare history, (and thus relevant to the development of social policy) but not directly to professional social work practice. This is possibly due to biases in the writing of welfare history which resulted in a concentration on ventures which were taken over by the state, such as income maintenance, and which became the foundations of the welfare system which came to flourish in the second half of the twentieth century (cf
Prochaska 1988: xiii-xiv). In Australia, women were not involved in those areas of policy and provision at Commonwealth level which became the mainstays of the welfare state and which therefore have been a focus of writing on welfare history (Roe 1988). Forms of charity which were not direct antecedents of state income maintenance, and which remained in the 'voluntary' sector have not received the same attention from historians. These included direct practice or personal social service work, referred to as ‘social work’ in the British social work 5
history literature. Thus women’s roles in the nineteenth century antecedents of Australian social work have not been highly visible.
There are in fact very few studies of women’s charitable work in late nineteenth century New South Wales. Moreover, not only are women’s undertakings missing from social work history and mainstream social welfare history they do not figure prominently in studies by historians of
Australian women. The works of Godden (1982, 1983, 1986, 1987);
Swain (1998, 1999) and Press (2000) are notable exceptions.
There is potentially great value for the social work profession in undertaking the project of revising and extending the history of social work in this country. For example, in drawing on the British history,
Forsythe sees the late twentieth century interest in developing and promoting anti-discriminatory social work practice as resonating with certain strands in nineteenth century religious-based charity work
(Forsythe 1995). Similarly, Hugman sees an understanding of the religious bases of social work values as offering a possible way forward in the development of universal ethical principles for social work
(Hugman 2001). It seems therefore potentially useful for the social work profession in Australia to be more knowledgeable, both about the diversity of nineteenth century work with the poor, particularly in efforts motivated by ‘Christian charity’, and the experiences of earlier groups of women in undertaking such work in a serious and systematic way. 6
The invisibility of Catholic Sisters’ charitable work in Australian history also means that, as the Sisters were the Church’s main charity workers across the period, there can be no adequate analysis of the
Catholic contribution to the development of Australian social welfare. A similar point may be made in relation to the possible role of Irish cultural influence. As O’Farrell points out, the Irish contribution to Australian social history has been largeley unexplored (O’Farrell 1986, 1988).
Moreover, because the Sisters were the largest organised group of women involved in charitable work in New South Wales in this period the project of understanding women’s agency in Australian history also suffers because their work has been hidden. The findings of this present investigation may contribute to these projects although their overall aims are beyond the scope of this study, whose main purpose is to gain a greater understanding of the Sisters’ experience of undertaking charitable work in the specific social context of late nineteenth century
Sydney.
‘Social welfare’, ‘charity’ and ‘philanthropy’
The study of the antecedents of our current social welfare arrangements is generally referred to as ‘social welfare history’.
However, use of the term ‘social welfare’ is, strictly speaking, anachronistic when speaking about the nineteenth century. 'Charity' and 7
‘philanthropy’ are more appropriate terms. In works on general social welfare history, ‘charity’ is the term most commonly used (for example
Dickey 1980, 1987a, 1987b), whereas in scholarship pertaining to women in the nineteenth century, ‘philanthropy’ is favoured (for example
Prochaska 1980; Godden 1983, 1986; Luddy 1995). There is some debate as to the extent of difference between the two terms. Godden claimed that ‘philanthropy’ covered a wider domain and was more influenced by women than was ‘charity’ (Godden 1983: 374). Kennedy asserted a regional and chronological nuance, with ‘charity’ applying to work with the poor in Melbourne in the 1870s and 80s, whereas
‘philanthropy’ described work in Sydney in a slightly earlier era. He maintained however that there was very little actual difference between the two (Kennedy 1982: 3). Prochaska concurred that there was no distinction and asserted that in nineteenth century Britain the two were synonymous (Prochaska 1990: 360, Note 9). The position adopted in this study is that ‘charity’ and ‘philanthropy’ are understood to be synonymous, with both terms being used interchangeably together with
‘social welfare’. Another necessary clarification is that in this thesis
‘charity’, ‘philanthropy’ and ‘social welfare’ refer to assistance provided to Europeans, that is, to arrangements developed after the arrival of
European settlers and which were for their benefit. None of the activities discussed in the present study were specifically directed at indigenous
Australians. 8
‘Nuns’ and ‘Sisters’
A further clarification is to do with the terms used to describe the women about whom the study is concerned. Whilst ‘nuns’ is the term which enjoys most common usage, it is not canonically correct. ‘Nuns’ applies only to women who took solemn vows and observed enclosure.
Moreover, ‘nuns’ were members of religious ‘orders’. All the groups in this study took ‘simple vows’ and were ‘unenclosed’, engaging in work outside their convents. Communities of women who were not enclosed and who took ‘simple vows’ are correctly termed ‘Sisters’ and the organisations they joined were not strictly speaking religious orders
(MacGinley 1994, 1996a, 2001). Sisterhoods were a later development than religious orders and their status and regulation by the Church hierarchy evolved over a long period of time. The pace of development of the status, roles and lines of obedience and authority of the
Sisterhoods was a factor in a number of the authority conflicts that some of their number experienced. Both ‘nuns’ and ‘Sisters’ are covered by the term ‘women religious’. Similarly, ‘orders’ and ‘Sisterhoods’ are both members of the broader category ‘women’s religious institutes’.
The terms used here are ‘Sisters’ and ‘Sisterhoods’ as well as the broader categories ‘women religious’ and ‘religious institutes’. Here,
‘Sisters’ is used rather than ‘sisters’ to avoid confusion with references to biological siblings. 9
Methodology
The thesis primarily takes a qualitative, inductive approach which has emphasised uncovering and interpreting the Sisters’ subjective experience, in the context of various dimensions of their societal location. This qualitative methodology contrasts with quantitative approaches of a positivist paradigm which seek to establish ‘universal truths’. The focus of this thesis is on developing an understanding of the
Sisters’ work from their point of view and from an appreciation of their material context, therefore a qualitative approach was adopted.
Moreover, the nature of the business of responding to social needs would indicate that a qualitative approach is necessary, because of the role of values and beliefs in determining the attitudes taken towards those in need.
In writing social welfare history there is a dual necessity of attending to the values of those who undertook charitable work as well as to the constraints which shaped the courses of action available to them (Dickey 1987b: 83). The present investigation therefore proceeded by looking to the Sisters’ official statements of intention and prescribed methods, as well as their narrative accounts of their experience. The exploration of the constraints which affected the choices which the Sisters made also used these narratives, in conjunction with other documents of the Sisters, as well as material from 10
other sources. This is in line with the principle of triangulation in qualitative research (Denzin and Lincoln 2001: 3ff.; Bryman 2001: 274,
454-456), in which several methods are used, in order to gain ‘an in- depth understanding of the phenomenon in question’ (Denzin and
Lincoln 2001:5). In this study, sources external to the Sisters’ archives which provided evidence pertaining to the implementation of their espoused approaches also were used when available. Given the hagiographical nature of many convent narratives (cf Smyth 1997;
Burley 1999), it was thought that a greater depth of understanding of the
Sisters’ work could be obtained by such triangulation. No claims about the applicability of the thesis to the work of other groups of women religious will be made. This is compatible with a qualitative approach.
The general methodological approach taken is compatible with
‘new history’ which seeks an alternative to ‘top persons’ history’ (Burke
1991; Sharpe 1991) and a post-modernist social science approach
(Denzin and Lincoln 2001; Plummer 2001). These approaches are discussed in Chapter 4.
Contribution of this thesis
It will be argued that the work of the four groups of Sisters constituted a form of prototype social work. The analysis of archival and 11
other documentary sources in this thesis will show that the Sisters’ charitable work was shaped by structural features of their social context as well as by their attitudes to the poor, a specific notion of charity, and their lives as members of a particular type of women’s religious organisation. The thesis reveals that the Sisters’ work was characterised by several features. The most distinctive feature was the
Sisters’ combination of direct work with the poor and extensive autonomous involvement in the management and financing of their charitable work. The Sisters are shown to have espoused a compassionate and inclusive stance towards the poor and to have been well-acquainted with their lives. In the former they are shown to have differed from government policy, which prioritised the elimination of pauperism. The Sisters’ work appears to differ from the picture of lay women’s charity painted by Godden (1983) in terms of the Sisters’ greater acquaintance with the poor, the extent of their responsibility and expertise in finance and administration and the combination of the latter with direct personal social service.
The Sisters’ expertise in the ‘masculine’ area of management and finance is shown to have resulted partly from necessity and partly because unlike other middle class charitable women, the Sisters were members of established religious-based organisations officially recognised by the Church. It is argued that the professional dimensions 12
of the religious institutes facilitated the Sisters’ development and exercise of skills beyond the usual bounds of ‘the woman’s sphere’. The social and economic position of the Sisters within a Catholic community and Church which was struggling to establish itself in a society hostile to
Irish Catholicism increased the pressures on the Sisters to be good financial managers and thereby shaped the work they undertook.
Contrary to Lawrence’s depiction of those involved in pre-1920s social welfare as being part-time amateurs (Lawrence 1965: ix) the
Sisters in Sydney are revealed to have been more than ‘full time’ and to have been possibly better-informed about poverty and responses to it than most of their contemporaries who worked with the poor. Moreover the Sisters will be shown to have operated from principles enshrined in their institutes’ rules which included prescriptions for practice similar to the core principles of later ‘professional social work’ (such as respect for the individual and a non-judgmental attitude) and approaches evident in late twentieth century formulations for anti-oppressive practice (for example Dominelli 1998) .
This analysis of the social welfare work of the Sisters in late nineteenth century Sydney also indicates the value for any analysis of occupational development or professionalisation of including all the structural dimensions of the particular social context, such as religion, 13
and imperialism, as well as those already acknowledged to be significant such as gender and social class (Hearn 1982; Hugman 1991; Witz
1992). The Sisters were Irish Catholic3 ‘vowed women’ operating within a male-dominated Church which was itself attempting to establish its legitimacy and status in a secularising society dominated by English,
Protestant males. Therein lie the seeds of the distinctive character of the Sisters’ work, as well as the reasons why this work did not form the foundations of later professional social work. Despite the latter point, the Sisters’ social welfare work should be included as part of the history of social work in Australia because it was an early instance of women’s organised work with the poor which prefigured many elements of later social work. Knowledge of the Sydney Sisters’ work could be used to critque current social welfare practices and develop new approaches to the implementation of the charter of social work.
3 That is, as demonstrated in Chapter 6, most were of Irish descent.
14
CHAPTER 2
CHARITY, SOCIAL WORK AND RELIGION IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Introduction
This chapter considers literature on the history of social work, on nineteenth century poverty and charity, and on the role of religion in responses to the poor. The insights provided by this literature, together with the following chapter’s consideration of historical studies of women’s religious-inspired work (including work with the poor and missionary work), and scholarship on the development of professions, contribute to a framework for the interpretation of the documentary data on the charitable work of the Sisters in Sydney. It must be noted, however, as stated in Chapter 1, that the Sisters' work is largely missing from Australian welfare history, and, as with all nineteenth century
Australian charity, is not part of the history of social work in this country.
Reasons for this will be canvassed prior to discussing what the existing literature does reveal firstly about the way Australian welfare history has been conceptualised, and secondly about the historical context of the
Sisters' work. The latter includes the predominant characteristics of nineteenth century charity, including the legacy of the British poor laws and beliefs about the causes of poverty. The Irish experience of poverty 15
and charity is also canvassed as are changes in religion, which were pertinent to poverty and charity. In relation to conceptualisations of responses to poverty in Australia the literature reveals that social control interpretations have predominated in the past two and a half decades, as has a tendency to assume that this stance was fairly uniform amongst the charitable. Some historians have suggested that there was a differing approach to the poor amongst a minority of providers of charity, but this has not been vigorously pursued in scholarship.
Omission of the Sisters’ work from welfare history
General works on Australian welfare history have not in the main included, let alone focused on, Catholic activities - whether undertaken by laypeople, or by male or female religious (for example Peyser 1939a,
1939b; Dickey 1966b, 1980, 1987a; Garton 1990). These accounts often ignore, treat very summarily or are in error about the extent and nature of the activities of the Sisters. Some have looked at specific types of provision or defined periods, such as Ramsland (1974,1982,
1986) on child welfare. In doing so, these works have not given the relevant activities of women religious due consideration. Ramsland, for example, hails the work of a number of the ragged schools in the nineteenth century as an innovation in working with poor children and their families without acknowledging the very similar work done by the 16
Sisters of St Joseph in the same era (Ramsland 1982, 1986). Thus some of the most influential accounts of developments in Australian welfare give little or no indication either that the contribution of the social welfare work of the Sisters was substantial or of the particular character of their work. Other, perhaps less well known works have included - though not necessarily highlighted or examined in depth - the work of the Sisters. An example is Horsburgh's work on the care of children by the churches (Horsburgh 1982).
In Australia as elsewhere, welfare historians have studied 'those trends which illuminate present issues as defined by the state’
(Prochaska, 1988: xiii-xiv). This has resulted in an overemphasis on those services which were taken over by the state and which became the foundations of the welfare system which came to flourish in the second half of the twentieth century. In Australia, those provisions for
'poor relief' which became 'income maintenance' have been a major, defining focus for the study of welfare history. Other forms of charity which were not direct antecedents of state income maintenance and which remained in the 'voluntary' sector have not received the same attention from historians.
The omission of the Sisters’ work also results partly from a masculinist bias and partly from the fact that written history has often 17
been ruling class or 'establishment' history. A masculinist bias in the historiography of welfare results in women's charitable activities being less well-known than those of their male counterparts. As Prochaska said of British welfare history, women’s role in charity has not been promoted ‘by the emphasis on the relationship between philanthropic bodies and the state' (Prochaska, 1988:xiv). This contrasts with research focusing on the development of the social work profession and on women and social work (Walton 1975; Wilson 1977; Parry and Parry
1979). Roe has commented similarly on women's 'invisibility' in writing and thinking about social welfare in Australia. She perceived a number of substantive reasons in the actual history, as well as 'selective amnesia' in writing about it (Roe 1988:3,4). The former related to the division of welfare responsibilities between the Commonwealth and the states at Federation and the fact that women had little political influence.
Women were not involved in those areas of policy and provision at Commonwealth level which became the mainstays of the Australian welfare state and which therefore have been a focus of writing on
Australian welfare history. Not being ‘taken over’ by the state also meant that there was not a body of parliamentary and government records available for study. As Roe said: 'The real problem is to bring together feminist historiography and welfare history' (Roe 1988:4).
Bridging this gap was one of the main motivations for the only major 18
study of women and philanthropy in late nineteenth century New South
Wales undertaken to date (Godden 1982, 1983, 1986), which is discussed in Chapter 3. It must be acknowledged however, that the philanthropic activities of women in the nineteenth century have been rather more visible in general historical works on Australian charity and welfare published over the past decade and a half (see for example
O'Brien 1988; Garton, 1990; Swain 1998, 1999; McMahon et al 2000).
The establishment bias in history is another reason why Catholic ventures, including those of the Sisters, have often been omitted or marginalised. The neglect of Catholic charitable ventures is significant and though not excusable, is understandable. It is easy from an early twenty-first century vantage point to overlook the divided nature of society in New South Wales in the nineteenth century. Catholics (who were nearly entirely of Irish descent) were a sizeable minority, census figures showing them to have been between 25% and 30% of the population of New South Wales over this period (O’Farrell 1977b: 436;
McConville 1979: 55; Kingston 1993: 86). Moreover, Catholics were both generally feared 4 and despised by the upper classes and the non-
Catholic majority of the population, and certainly much maligned in the
4 Fear of Catholics was related to their potential for political insurgence, as in contemporary Ireland. This had been manifested in the uprising at Vinegar Hill to the west of Sydney earlier in the nineteenth century and in the 1868 assassination attempt on Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, in Sydney by a deranged alleged Fenian (Hogan 1987: 91, 105; O’Farrell 1988: 92, 103). One indication of the extent of anti-Catholic 19
popular press (Hogan 1987; O’Farrell 1988; Kingston 1993: 124ff.). The notion that Catholics were inferior and made no positive social contribution was, it seems, long-lived. The point is made by O’Farrell that:
Until the 1950s it was the policy of the major Australian libraries not to preserve newspapers and other materials of Irish Catholic relevance, on the assumption that these persons were of no historical consequence. (O’Farrell 1986: 224f.)
Not only were the Sisters rendered less visible because of their gender but, being members of an ethnic and religious minority they were at the least not highly regarded, and at the worst regarded as 'evil' by many in anti-Catholic Sydney society (Hogan 1987). The disregard of the Sisters’ role in Australian welfare history may be seen as part of a wider non-acknowledgement of the Irish contribution to Australian social history (O’Farrell 1988: 11). Thus, blinkers associated with gender as well as religion and cultural background have worked against investigation of the role of Catholic women religious in Australian social work and welfare history. It might be expected that historians of
Australian women have been more interested in the charitable work of this numerically significant group of women.
feeling is the fact that by the end of 1868 the Orange movement in NSW had doubled its membership from the number prior to the attempted assassination (O’Farrell 1988: 103). 20
Australian women’s history
The wave of interest in Australian women’s history in the 1970s and 80s in the main ignored the Sisterhoods, although there was some interest in women’s philanthropy and women and religion, which sometimes included Catholic women religious (Willis 1977; Windschuttle
1980; Godden 1982, 1983, 1986, 1987; Kennedy 1985). Since 1990 women’s historians have given a little more attention to women and religion-inspired work (for example West 1994, 1997; Burley 1994,
1998, 1999; Haggis 1998; Swain 1999,1998; O’Brien 2000a; Press
2000). The main historical study of the charitable work of socially active
Catholic sisterhoods in Sydney remains that of Godden (1982, 1983,
1986, 1987). Her work and that of others on women, religion and philanthropy is detailed in Chapter 3. However, a good deal of the
Australian scholarship on the work of Sisters over the past decade or so has been done by women religious themselves, often as part of post- graduate studies.5 Also, valuable work has been done recently by lay scholars such as Killerby (1996), Burley (1997, 1998, 1999) and Walsh
(2001).
5 McGrath 1988; Tranter 1991,1992, 1996; McLay and Tormey 1992; McLay 1992, 1994, 1996; O’Sullivan 1992, 1995; Foale 1994, 2002; Player 1994; Ryan 1996a; MacGinley 1996a; Zimmerman 1999a, 2000a. 21
Suggested reasons why women’s historians have not studied
Catholic women religious include the possibility that, like lay women philanthropists of the time, the Sisters did not seek (and were seldom given) public acknowledgment of, and acclaim for, their activities. Thus they did not alert others to their work and there are fewer accounts of it available for study. This was in keeping with the characteristics of those who operated within 'the woman's sphere' (Godden 1983).6 Burley also noted the difficulties which researchers have had in accessing material in convent archives (Burley 1999: 275).
It has also been conjectured that the lack of interest in the
Catholic Sisterhoods during the renaissance in women’s history in
Australia in the 1970s and 80s was due to the societal place of religion at that time. The reduced significance of religion in the second half of the twentieth century is said to have obscured the important role of religion in the previous century (Bowpitt 1998; Haggis 1998; Holton,
MacKinnon and Allen 1998; Burley 1999; Hugman 2001). Burley notes that in the late twentieth century organised religion was associated with
6 The ‘woman’s sphere’ concept is discussed in Chapter 3. 22
repression and oppression, rather than the feminist agenda of liberation
(Burley 1999:275). The more pressing claims for inclusion by historians at that time were class and gender (Burley 1998: 69). Moreover, it has been suggested that the worldview of historians was less religious than had been in previous times. It is asserted that it is difficult for modern scholars whose values and thinking have not been shaped by religion to understand those whose understanding of the world was dependent on religious belief (Holton, Mackinnon and Allen 1998: 165). One consequence is that religion and its study have become marginalised
(Holton, Mackinnon and Allen 1998: 164) or at least compartmentalised
(O’Brien 2000a: 238), this separation being particularly disadvantageous for women’s history (O’Brien 2000a: 238). It has been suggested that similar processes have operated in relation to acknowledgement of the religious dimension in twentieth century social work (Hugman 2001).
Social work history
As indicated in Chapter 1, the history of social work in Britain differs from that in Australia in several respects. First, the British history extends well back into the nineteenth century (Walton 1975; Wilson
1977; Parry and Parry 1979; Satyamurti 1979), whereas Australian social work has been seen as beginning in the late 1920s (Lawrence
1965, 1976). Earlier work with the poor and socially disadvantaged in 23
Australia7 has been dismissed as irrelevant because it was ‘ill-informed, usually part-time or spare-time’ (Lawrence 1965: ix). Secondly, in
Britain the profession acknowledges that social work had antecedents in various types of nineteenth century charity and reform movements, which would not be classified as ‘professional’ by today’s standards.
This is evident in statements which refer to various nineteenth century philanthropical and charitable activities as to being ‘social work’, such as moral welfare work (Walton 1975: 53), the work of the YWCA
(Woollacott 1998 passim), the Charity Organisation Society (COS)
(Wilson 1977: 49f.), the Settlement movement (Walton 1975: 56; Parry and Parry 1979), and also poor law administration (Walton 1975: 37).
This early ‘social work’ was undertaken with different groups of the population, developed in different circumstances and was informed by varying attitudes towards the causes of poverty and social problems, as well as utilizing diverse approaches and methods of assistance (Walton
1975: 24ff; Parry and Parry 1979; Forsythe 1995: 15; Bowpitt 1998).
Some of the diversity in the antecedents of British social work has been related to religion. This then is a third difference between
Australian and British social work history; that is, the role of religion has been recognised in Britain, but not in Australia. Differences in
7 And prior to Federation in 1901, in the separate colonies which became the states.
24
theological emphases as well as changes in interpretation over time have been shown to have played a role in the development of twentieth century professional social work in Britian (Parry and Parry 1979;
Bowpitt 1998). Nineteenth century responses to the poor in Britain were strongly influenced by religion, and religious differences have been cited as part of the reason for variations in stance (Parry and Parry 1979, 24-
26; Forsyth 1995; Bowpitt 1998). For example, the more generous attitude and broader conceptualisation of the Settlement movement has been related to the liberal Anglicanism of its founder, Samuel Barnett.
His approach contrasted with the narrower approach shown by those of a more evangelical Christian background, as evidenced in the work of
Octavia Hill’s housing society and the Charity Organisation Society
(Parry and Parry 1979: 24-6; Bowpitt 1998: 687ff.). Bowpitt saw a theological shift in liberal Anglicanism in the early twentieth century as allowing an accommodation with the secularist ‘scientific charity’ of the
COS, thus facilitating the development of the modern social work profession (Bowpitt 1998: 688). Woollacott (1998) has discussed how
YWCA social work evolved from evangelical foundations to incorporate a secularised professionalism (Woollacott 1998: 90ff).
The significance of recognising that the development of professional social work was a process of ‘secularization of responses to social need’ relates to the fact that social work is a value-based 25
profession (Hugman 2001: 5). Thus it is important to know about religious influences which emphasised ‘compassion and sacrifice and purposeful attempts to include the outcast rather than further demean him or her with excluding and segregative practices’ (Forsythe 1995:
15). Australian social work history is missing such knowledge.
In contrast to the longer and more diverse British social work history, historians of Australian social work largely have ignored activities which preceded the officially recognised ‘birth’ of the profession. This is taken to have occurred with the advent of professional training in universities and the formation of professional associations from the late 1920s. No histories of social work in Australia begin before the 1920s (Lawrence 1965, 1976; Parker 1979; Martin
1983, 1985, 1986, 1987; Marchant 1985; Crawford and Leitmann 2001).
Because Australian social work was ‘born’ in a later, more secular era and its ‘parents’ were the already formed, already secularised British and American social work, its association with Christian charity has been obscured (Hugman 2001: 3ff.). The lack of Australian interest in exploring a possible connection with nineteenth century charity work may have been related to a concern to establish and consolidate social work’s status as a modern profession. This latter objective would not have been well-served by associating social work with activities which, 26
not being based on ‘scientific’ knowledge and ‘expert’ skills, could be labelled as ‘amateur’ and therefore not ‘professional’.
For those interested in exploring nineteenth century antecedents of social work in Australia, or in teasing out the role of religion in alternative approaches to working with and for the poor, the paucity of detailed knowledge of the role of religion in nineteenth century charity work presents a challenge. Dickey has provided an overview of welfare history across all the states (Dickey 1980, 1987a) as well as covering
South Australia in greater detail (Dickey 1986). Kennedy’s (1982) history of social welfare in Victoria, though criticised for taking a too rigid social control interpretation (Dickey 1987b), does give a basis for further investigation, and the possibility of other accounts of the participants and events detailed. For New South Wales there have been few studies of
Church-based charity, and these have appeared in specialised religious publications rather than in the academic mainstream, for example
Horsburgh’s work on the churches’ care of destitute children (Horsburgh
1982), and his and Dickey’s wider ranging considerations of social work, the churches and Christianity (Dickey 1985b; Horsburgh 1985). 27
Characteristics of charity in nineteenth century New South Wales
As various historians have noted, accounts of the social history of
Australia written before the last few decades of the twentieth century often did not mention poverty except in relation to the Great Depression of the 1930s (Stannage 1994; Garton 1994). Those historians who did acknowledge that people were poor before that time seemed to take the view that this was rare. Therefore, the experience of poverty and responses to it were regarded as insignificant elements in Australian social history. There was thus little reason for historians to look closely and critically at poverty and charity. This denial, ignorance and downplaying of the existence of poverty by some twentieth century historians in fact echoed the stance which prevailed in the nineteenth century (Garton 1994). As discussed below, other historians have grappled with issues associated with poverty (for example Dickey
1966b, 1980,1987a,1996; Kennedy 1982a, 1982b; O’Brien 1988; Watts
1988; Berreen 1989, 1994; Garton 1990, 1994; Stannage 1994).
The dominant nineteenth century belief about Australian society, which some earlier uncritical historians perpetuated, was that unlike the
‘old’ world which had endemic poverty, city slums, rampant disease and high death rates, Australia was a land of riches, its people free of poverty. It has been claimed (for example by Dickey 1987b; Garton 28
1994) that a consequence of this myth of prosperity was that Australians who claimed to be destitute and who applied for assistance were judged to be largely responsible for their own plight. This was because in a land of opportunity in which everyone could survive if they worked hard and lived prudently, there could be no other reason for poverty (Dickey
1987b; Garton 1994; Berreen 1994). On the other hand, those whose poverty was obviously caused by some misfortune not of their own making, such as disability, illness or, for women and children, the death or desertion of a male breadwinner, were regarded as not being responsible for their plight. These ‘deserving poor’ were, however, seen as being in danger of becoming dependent on assistance, and thus
‘pauperised’, by indiscriminate generosity. This was considered to be a danger to society and therefore to be avoided at all costs. Thus, the view that prevailed in the nineteenth century and which uncritical histories helped perpetuate was that there was little poverty in Australia, that the poor were generally responsible for their own plight, and that charitable responses to the poor should be such that self-sufficiency was vigorously encouraged.
Research on poverty and charity undertaken in the last two and a half decades has questioned the historical depiction of poverty as an insignificant problem and of responses to it as unproblematic. Whilst not concluding that poverty in Australia was as bad as in Europe, this more 29
recent scholarship revealed that Australia was certainly not a land of plenty for all. Evidence that poverty was quite prevalent has been provided in abundance, for example by Kelly (1978); Kennedy (1982b);
Fitzgerald (1987); Dickey (1987a); O’Brien (1988); Watts (1988);
Berreen (1989, 1994); Garton (1990) and Mayne (1992). Case studies such as those in the works of Garton (1990), O’Brien (1988) and Dickey
(1980, 1987a) provide vivid insights into the misery of the day to day lives of many Sydney residents of whom women and children constituted a major grouping (O’Brien 1988; Roe 1988; Harris 1992).
Some critical histories of poverty and charity in Australia relied heavily on a relatively crude class-based analysis, depicting the poor as victims of oppression and social control exercised by the upper classes, including philanthropists (see for example Kennedy 1982b). Other historians took the view that too rigid an analysis pushed the poor into a totally passive role, denying them any agency in their own lives (Dickey
1987b; Garton 1994). Those taking a broader view of the lives of the poor include Dickey (1980, 1987a, 1987b); O’Brien (1988); Berreen
(1989) and Garton (1990, 1994). Their work throws into relief the efforts of the poor to influence the way they were treated, as well as the harshness of their lives, and the parsimony and punitiveness with which the ‘charitable’ often responded to them.
30
There has not been, however, a corresponding illustration of diversity on the side of the providers of charity. Whilst the crude social control interpretation has been modified in favour of showing the poor not to have been totally passive victims, analyses which incorporated a
Marxist, feminist or Foucauldian-surveillance perspective8, have produced depictions of the providers of charity which are fairly homogeneous. The charitable have been painted generally as persons of superior social class endeavouring to influence the conduct of the poor to be more in line with the former’s own morally-based norms. This depiction is at odds with critical studies of contemporary social work.
Research and scholarship on both social policy and social work practice has resulted in an understanding that both caring and controlling functions are in some instances intrinsically and inevitably interwoven, for example in child and family welfare work (Satyamurti
1979). It seems however that this multi-dimensional interpretation is less likely to be extended to analyses of past efforts to work with the poor and marginalised. Late twentieth century historical studies of responses to poverty which took a critical stance (often as a reaction to
‘whig’ histories of the development of the welfare state) often found the
8 ‘Foucauldian surveillance perspective’ does not mean that this was an ideal espoused by Foucault, but rather was his analysis of social arrangements (Foucault 1997: 113ff.). 31
main dynamic to be social control of the poor by the bourgeoisie and/or the state.
This tendency to see the poor of earlier periods only as victims, and to depict those who responded to their plight mainly as oppressors is quite robust. It persists despite the general surge in popularity of post-modernist approaches and interpretations in contemporary social theory and research, as well as the revelations of some historical studies which have shown the error of such simplistic, dualistic portrayals of the past. Gordon’s (1989) landmark analysis of records of
North American family welfare agencies showed in detail the various ways families shaped the service they received. Cohen’s (1992) study of five centuries of women’s asylums concluded that whilst there was an intention to influence women’s conduct to conform to norms held by the social elites, there was also a genuine intention to thereby assist women to survive in their societal context. The maintenance of dualistic conceptualisations by historians of Australian social welfare may have been reinforced by a general tendency to disbelieve the rhetoric of providers of social assistance. If benevolent intentions have been expressed, disparity between statements and actions is often assumed.
This may be related to a well-founded late twentieth century scepticism of politicians and policy makers. The likelihood of this disbelief of 32
beneficient statements of intention seems to be increased when gender or religion is part of the picture, as was often the case in the nineteenth century (for example Godden 1983, 1987; Mark 1996).
Unlike British social work history in which diversity of stance and method is evident, Australian charity workers appear to be largely one- dimensional in comparison. However, as indicated earlier in this thesis several historians have alluded to differences including Dickey (1987b:
82); O’Brien (1988); Garton (1994: 28); Stannage (1994: 155). Whilst most providers of ‘voluntary’ charity were motivated by religion and shared a concern for the spiritual well-being of the poor, differences were detected, as O’Brien noted:
It is necessary, however, to distinguish between the charities at different levels of the hierarchy. Personnel of the Salvation Army, the St Vincent de Paul Society and the Sydney Rescue Work Society, for example, were much closer to the poor in many ways than the traditional Lady Bountiful who was found on the Queen’s Jubilee Fund Committtee. They shared living conditions. Ardill lived with his family at the Home of Hope at Newtown: he never drew his full wages and expected almost the same devotion to duty from his staff… Both Ardill and the Salvationists were living in communities close in concept to religious communities within the Catholic Church. (O’Brien: 1988: 1999)
The greater generosity of spirit of Ardill is also noted by Dickey (1987b:
108 -110). The Benevolent Society of New South Wales was another organization which gave applicants the benefit of the doubt over 33
many decades, with some office bearers and officials admitting that they sometimes gave relief to ‘the undeserving’ in order to prevent cases of dire distress. ‘ We never turn anyone away except imposters.
We sin on the right side rather than send people away to starve.’ (RCPC
1898 Second Report p.12, Q. 207; see also p.18 Q. 381-2, p. 36 Q. 872;
Garton 1990: 54; Rathbone 1994: 69). This practice had been criticised in a report to the government in the 1850s (Cummins 1971: 9).’
Stannage found a different approach by Catholics, which he related to their Irish background and understanding that individual failure was not the main cause of poverty (Stannage 1994: 155). It is worth noting that others have detected a difference, in a later era, in Catholic approaches to the poor in New South Wales. Gleeson found that in the
Great Depression of the 1930s the St Vincent de Paul Society was less judgmental and less proselytising than other charities of the period
(Gleeson 1996: 79).
It is interesting that there is no literature discussing any variation within the charity provided by the Anglicans in Sydney which is comparable to that noted by Bowpitt (1998) as being of significance for the development of British social work. There were from the early 1890s onwards in Sydney several groups of Anglican women who were 34
dedicated to religious work, including charitable work with the poor.
These included a community of Sisters of the Church from England, as well as evangelical deaconesses (Ball 2000; Campbell 2002). It is possible that the Sisters of the Church espoused the more inclusive stance associated with Barnett’s Settlement work in England (Bowpitt
1998), however, little is known of their attitudes to the poor or methods they used in their social welfare work in Sydney.
The suggestions of diversity are intriguing but do not amount to a detailed mapping of the range of approaches to nineteenth century social welfare provision in Australia. As noted above, the general adherence to a fairly undifferentiated depiction of the provision of charity is at odds with the recognition of diversity in contemporary social science research.
This is not to say however that the approach to poverty and charity which is portrayed as being dominant in nineteenth century Australia did not exist. There is too much reliable evidence that it did. What is questioned is the lack of investigation of variations and alternative approaches to this dominant stance.
35
The prevailing attitude towards the poor in late nineteenth century
New South Wales was a concern to prevent dependence and pauperisation. This has been found to be congruent with the principles which were embodied in the English legislation of 1834, the Poor Law
Amendment Act (Berreen 1994; Garton 1994; Mendelsohn 2000), and in some English ‘voluntary’ sector responses to poverty which were among the antecedents of professional social work in Britain (Forsythe 1995;
Bowpitt 1998).
The legacy of nineteenth century British Poor Law principles
In Britain by the early years of the nineteenth century in Britain there was much dissatisfaction with the arrangements for responding to the Poor. The usual portrayal is that since Elizabethan times there had been development of the Poor Laws, by which destitute individuals had an entitlement to assistance directly or via relief work (Trattner 1974;
Garton 1994; Mendelsohn 2000; Lansley 2001). By the early nineteenth century the Poor Laws were no longer meeting society’s needs as these were coming to be defined. The Poor Laws were seen as sapping self- reliance, increasing poverty and interfering with natural checks on population as well as market forces and economic development. This change has been depicted as having come about by a combination of factors including the social upheaval of industrialisation, new social and 36
political ideas (utilitarianism, political economy and the ideas of Malthus) and developments in religion (Prochaska 1990; Berreen 1994; Garton
1994; Lansley 2001). Together these posited as an ideal the economically independent individual espousing the ideal of moral self- improvement’. A concomitant notion was the necessity and inevitability of ‘testing and tribulation’ in this life (Lansley 2001:15).
In the early 1830s there was a move in England to abolish the Poor
Laws altogether (Lansley 2001). Instead, the result was the 1834 Poor
Law Amendment Act which introduced the principles of ‘less eligibility’ and the ‘workhouse test’, intended to make seeking charitable assistance so unattractive as to be an action of last resort. With these changes the notions of the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor gained greater prominence. The task of distinguishing between the two was essential to prevent pauperisation (Godden 1982; Dickey 1987a;
Berreen 1994; Garton 1994; Forsythe 1995; Bowpitt 1998; Mendelsohn
2000).
Opinions on the problems caused by the Poor Laws were shared by many in colonial Australia where there was no desire to replicate the problems of the ‘old world’ (Godden 1982; Berreen 1994; Swain 2001).
In New South Wales neither the poor nor the rich wanted a Poor Law.
The rich believed that there was no need for such provision because of 37
the prosperity of this ‘new’ land. They wanted neither the establishment of a right to relief nor the financial burden of a compulsory contribution to the support of the destitute. For their part the poor and the working classes, who were always in danger of slipping into poverty, did not want the harshness or stigma of the workhouse (Godden 1982; Dickey 1987a;
Berreen 1994). Governors of New South Wales were said not to have made any formal provision for the poor because they were more concerned with economic development and managing penal settlements than with recognising and addressing poverty (Harris 1992). The notion of state-sanctioned provision of assistance as a right was rejected.
However, the principle of ‘less eligibility’ and the notions of
‘deservingness’ and ‘undeservingness’ were evident in the charitable provisions which were made in New South Wales. Indeed several of the largest, most-respected and well-supported philanthropic bodies included the prevention of pauperisation in their statements of object
(Godden 1982: 88; Berreen 1994: 19). As Garton said
The figure that haunted the philanthropic imagination were [sic] the impostors, the persons who lied about their circumstances, representing themselves as deserving when they were not…. (Garton 1994: 26)
Government and ‘voluntary’ charity in New South Wales
There is broad consensus on the history of the development of the relationship between government and charitable organisations in 38
responding to poverty in New South Wales over the nineteenth century.
At the end of the period, the pattern of provision for the poor was quite different from that which existed several decades earlier. The main difference was that the government came to have a far greater and more direct role in providing for the poor (Dickey 1966a, 1966b; Garton 1994) and much of the charity provided by other groups was no longer subsidised by government (Horsburgh 1975; Dickey 1987a).
At the start of the period there was a minimal direct role by government, combined with provision by what would now be termed
‘voluntary’ charity, that is charity provided by philanthropically-minded individuals and organisations (Dickey 1987a; Garton 1994; Berreen
1994). Some of the latter were subsidised quite heavily by government and some were unsubsidised (Horsburgh 1975; Dickey 1987a). All charities which received government funding were termed ‘public charities’, including those fully operated by the government, such as the government orphan schools, asylums for the insane and for the indigent elderly. As Horsburgh explains, only charities which were controlled by committees elected by their subscribers were regarded as being ‘public’ charities and thus eligible for subsidy (Horsburgh 1975:119). 39
Most of the charitable activities under the auspices of the Catholic
Church 9 (nearly all of which were run by the Sisterhoods in this period) were not subsidised because they were not classed as having a general community base. The Sisters’ institutions were not administered by elected boards, but by the Sisters themselves. Because of this
perceived absence of public accountability they were regarded as
‘sectarian’ and were not eligible for government subsidy (Horsburgh
1975: 232; Dickey 1987a: 74ff.). The Roman Catholic Orphan School at
Parramatta was an anomaly, being a fully-funded government institution.
From the late 1850s it was staffed by the Sisters of the Good Samaritan, as government employees.
It should be noted however that it was not only Catholic charities which did not receive subsidies; a number of other groups were ineligible for the same reason, that is, they were not controlled by elected representatives of the general public (Horsburgh 1975: 232).
Dickey maintains however that the rule was designed to exclude
Catholic charities (Dickey 1985b:7). Nonetheless, in the anti-Catholic social climate of nineteenth century Sydney (Fitzgerald 1987; Hogan
9 There was also some Catholic involvement in ‘public’ charities via individual clergymen who were members of boards of management. The laymen’s charitable society of St Vincent de Paul commenced in Sydney in 1881. Male religious institutes were not involved in running charities until the Marist Brothers became involved in the care of destitute boys at St Vincent’s boys’ home Westmead, which opened in 1896 (Burns 1991: 37). 40
1987; O’Farrell 1988), the exclusion of Catholic charities from the government purse was seen by Catholics to be discriminatory.
Catholics felt that the Sisters’ charities should receive government support because the doors of the former were open to all regardless of religion and because they saved the government money in caring for people who would otherwise be a charge upon the state (see for example Freeman’s Journal (FJ 13 October 1875: 8,10; 13 November
1875: 8; 16 March 1878: 13). The irony in the arrangement by which only certain charities received government funding was that it did not guarantee accountability, efficiency of management or the quality or service provided.
Public concern about the standards of care and management in
‘public charities’ arose quite often (Peyser 1939b: 207; Horsburgh 1975,
1977a: 19; Dickey 1980: 68, 1979: 42; van Krieken 1991: 72ff).
Questions were asked in parliament about a range of matters, and newspapers reported allegations, court cases and official inquiries of various types of misconduct or incompetence by officials of the charities.
Examples included: embezzlement at the Institution for the Deaf Dumb and Blind (FJ 23 October 1880: 15); cruelty at the Randwick Destitute
Children’s Asylum (FJ 29 January 1876: 8, 4 March 1876: 15); incompetent handling of riotous behaviour at the Girls’ Industrial School
(Dickey 1980: 62) and interference in the management of Sydney 41
Hospital (FJ 24 September 1870: 2,7,8). Partly as a result of concerns such as these, the New South Wales Government sought to have a greater and more direct involvement in the provision of charitable services, and social regulation generally, over the last quarter of the nineteenth century. In 1888, for the first time, all government provisions for children and all government charitable institutions were made the responsibility of one officer, the ‘Director of Government Asylums and
Boarding Out Officer’ (Dickey 1966b:313).
The 1890s, which included a severe economic depression and associated social upheaval, saw a major change in beliefs about the causes of poverty, and differing ideas as to the most appropriate ways to respond. It became obvious that existing individualised responses to poverty incorporating moral reform were no longer effective and doubts arose that immorality was the sole cause of destitution (Dickey 1966a:
21, 1987a: 96ff; Garton 1990: 84-5). Government took a greater role in responding to the needs of the poor. In the first decade of the twentieth century many charities in New South Wales ceased to receive government subsidy (Horsburgh 1975) and the first government income support provisions were introduced, marking the beginnings of the
Australian social security system (Dickey 1987; Garton 1994; McMahon
2000). The increased role of government at the end of the nineteenth century did not mean however that ‘voluntary’ charity withered away; in 42
fact it increased to meet greater need (Dickey 1987a; O’Brien 1988;
Garton 1990).
The charitable work of Catholic women religious in late nineteenth century Sydney was therefore undertaken in the context of a social climate in which individual blame, parsimony and the goal of prevention of pauperism dominated the approaches to charity. Whilst there was a progression towards a greater direct role for government there remained a substantial, ongoing and growing charitable sector of which the
Sisters’ work may be considered a part.
Australian welfare history does not clearly articulate the dimensions of difference between the charities in this ‘voluntary’ sector in the late nineteenth century. The challenge of investigating the differences, of teasing out the variety in religious-based charitable work in the nineteenth century has not really been taken up, nor has the matter of the significance of the continuation of charity alongside government provided ‘welfare’ after the end of the nineteenth century. We do not have a detailed picture of the various nineteenth century antecedents of social work. These aspects of charity require further exploration, and some of this will be done in the present investigation of the social welfare work of Catholic Sisters in Sydney in the period.
43
Whilst the English antecedents of Australian responses to poverty noted above have been clearly acknowledged (see for example Godden
1986; Dickey 1987a; Berreen 1994; Garton 1994; Mendelsohn 2000;
Swain 2001), there has been little consideration of the legacy of the Irish experience for Australian social welfare. This seems to be a significant omission given the proportion of the New South Wales population in the nineteenth century who were Irish or of Irish descent, of the Irish face of the colonial Catholic Church and community, and the sectarian divisions in New South Wales society in the period (O’Farrell 1977a, 1988;
Fitzgerald 1987; Hogan 1987). As this thesis is an examination of the charitable work of Catholic women religious, consideration of aspects of the Irish history of poverty and charity is warranted.
Poverty and charity in Ireland
The history of poverty and charity in Ireland differs from that of
England in a number of respects. The best-known is the Great Famine of the mid nineteenth century, but there are other relevant differences.
The Famine resulted in the reduction of the Irish population by up to one third, with 2-3 million either starving to death or emigrating in an attempt to avoid starvation (Robins 1980: 178; MacDonagh 1986: 155, 1996: 89;
Foster 1989: 324). Assisted migrants to Australia during the Famine included upwards of 4000 orphan girls from Irish workhouses 44
(MacDonagh 1996: 90; Connors and Turner 1998: 106; Richards and
Herraman 1998: 82). New South Wales Catholics knew of the Famine, at the time and later, from personal or family experience, including by letters from Ireland (Fitzpatrick 1996) and from the press, notably the widely read Sydney Freeman’s Journal, which included regular content on Irish affairs and Irish history (Walker 1976: 150ff; Hogan 1987:108ff;
O’Farrell 1988). As MacDonagh notes, the Famine had symbolic significance for the next generation of migrants, who held the British government to be responsible, since it was the regulator of the Irish economy (MacDonagh 1996: 90).
There are other differences in the history of Irish poverty and charity which may also be pertinent to the Sisters’ social welfare work in
Sydney. As discussed below these differences include the long-term prevalence of poverty in Ireland, Irish people’s knowledge of the structural causes of poverty, the absence of an equivalent of the
Elizabethan Poor Laws, and Irish Catholic attitudes to English government provision and to proselytising Protestant charity (Robins
1980; Burke 1987; Foster 1989, 1992).
The pervasive and extreme poverty in nineteenth century Ireland was in a sense the culmination of centuries of English religio-political and economic policies in Ireland (Robins 1980; Burke 1987; Foster 45
1989; MacDonagh 1996). This included the centuries-long suppression of Irish Catholics, and Ireland’s stunted economic structure which had been engineered by England for its own economic and political advantage (Burke 1987; MacDonagh 1996: 90; Foster 1989, 1992). The
1800 ‘Act of Union’ was regarded by many in mid-nineteenth century
Ireland as ‘the fountain of all Ireland’s miseries and the murderer of Irish prosperity’ (MacDonagh 1996: 66). Thus, unlike the English, many Irish knew that the causes of poverty lay beyond the individual.
A significant point of difference in the history of poverty and charity in Ireland was that unlike England, the poor in Ireland had never had any entitlement to a system of parish assistance such as the Poor Laws
(Burke 1987: 1; Robins 1980: 6ff). As Robins noted of Ireland:
Such was the antipathy between the oppressed and oppressors, divided not only by race but by religion, and driven even further apart by war and confiscation, that no spark of philanthropy remained. (Robins 1980: 5)
This antipathy and lack of compassion remained.
In 1836 the British government totally ignored the recommendations of a three year inquiry into Irish poverty which it had established. The 1833 Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Conditions of Poorer Classes in Ireland (hereafter RCCPCI) was chaired by the
Anglican Archbishop of Dublin (Robins 1980: 158; Burke 1987: 37ff) and 46
the other Commissioners included Dr Murray, the Catholic Archbishop of
Dublin (Burke 1985:17). The Commission had recommended a wide- ranging programme of structural economic reforms which were
‘generally enlightened and not hampered by currently held economic doctrines’ (Robins 1980: 158). The British government rejected the
Commission’s recommendations and appointed one of the British Poor
Law Commissioners who conducted a very brief investigation. He recommended a workhouse-based system of poor relief, similar to that recently introduced in Britain. Despite the opposition of Irish members of parliament in Westminster, including Daniel O’Connell, these later recommendations were adopted in the 1838 Irish Poor Relief Act
(Robins 1980; Burke 1987; Foster 1989; McLoughlin 1990; MacDonagh
1996).
It is significant both that the RCCPCI reports were very different from those of the English Commission several years earlier (which also was chaired by an Anglican bishop and included other bishops as members) and that Westminster rejected the Irish Commission’s recommendations. The latter included the undertaking of systematic economic development, and various social welfare provisions as well as assistance with emigration, rather than the establishment of workhouses (Robins 1980: 157ff; Burke 1987: 29-37, 43). The Irish
Commission had opposed the extension of the 1834 Poor Law to 47
Ireland, because the ‘workhouse test’ was irrelevant, there being no work available. The Commission stated that:
The difficulty in Ireland is not to make the able-bodied look for employment, but to find it profitably for the many who seek it . We see that the labouring classes are eager for work, that work is not there for them, and that they are therefore, and not from any fault of their own, in permanent want. (RCCPCI, 1836: 5, cited in Burke 1987: 29-30)
Burke further points out that unlike their English contemporaries, the Irish Commissioners did not equate poverty with criminality and thus did not assume that the poor would make fraudulent requests for assistance (Burke 1987: 32).
The principles and practices of the Irish Legislation of 1838 were similar to those of the 1834 English legislation, but they were even harsher, in that there was no outdoor relief whatsoever, not even for the manifestly ‘deserving’ poor, including children (Robins 1980: 159; Burke
1987: 47, 104). The new legislation was implemented in Ireland without consultation. Clergymen were excluded from membership of the Boards of Guardians, and workhouses were built with haste and parsimony
(Robins 1980: 160ff). The result was that shoddy workmanship was added to the intended austerity and coarseness of the design of the workhouses, which included dirt floors and no plastering of the internal walls (Robins 1980: 162). Most workhouses did not have waterproof 48
walls, and thus a number of workhouses which were insufficiently weatherproof were found to be structurally unsound within a few years of completion (Robins 1980: 162).
The Irish initially rejected the 1838 legislation. There was ‘general fear and suspicion’ from the poor and from property owners (Robins
1980: 167). Opposition included violent resistance to the collection of the poor rates and some Poor Law Guardians decided not to open the doors of their workhouses. However, the onset of famine forced the poor into the workhouses, in the absence of any outdoor relief (Robins
1980: 169-170). However, the prime concern of the government was to restrict the negative consequences of the famine for England. This included, but was not limited to, minimising the financial burden of providing relief (Burke 1987:112ff; Foster 1989).
As famine spread after 1845, the starving poor entered the workhouses, albeit sometimes reluctantly. Some Irish Poor Law Unions avoided providing outdoor relief by creating auxiliary workhouses in old warehouses and similar buildings (Robins 1980: 17-20). An 1847 amendment to the legislation (the ‘Gregory Amendment’) precluded relief for anyone who owned as little as quarter of an acre of land (Foster
1989: 328). Landowners had to legally relinquish ownership to avoid 49
starvation.10 Little wonder that Irish people did not easily forget the lack of compassion with which the Irish poor were treated by the British government and the systems they established.
The conduct of some Protestant charities in Ireland was also strongly disliked (Robins 1980; Burke 1987; McLoughlin 1990; Luddy
1995). Some Protestant church charities displayed levels of compassion comparable to the government’s, with food assistance to the starving being conditional upon renunciation of Catholicism.
Children were included. Only those who attended Protestant instruction were fed. Protestants saw the Famine as being punishment for
Catholics’ rejection of Protestantism (Obelkevich 1990: 336). This continued a longer tradition of intentional proselytising charity, particularly for Catholic children, of which the Charter Schools were a long-standing example (Robins 1980; Burke 1987; Luddy 1995;
Raughter 1997).11 These schools had been established in the eighteenth century for the religious education of the Irish poor. It was decided that the schools would be more effective in converting Catholic
10 Burke discusses in detail the various responses of the English government to the Famine in Chapter Five of her book (Burke 1987). Foster has a whole chapter on the Famine’s antecedent s and consequences, including details of the political context of Irish poor relief in the 1830s and 40s (Foster 1989: 318- 344).
11 These schools were operated by ‘the Incorporated Society for promoting English Protestant Schools in Ireland’ which had the support of the English government (Robins 1980: 65).
50
children if the pupils boarded at schools located in remote areas. This was intended to reduce the influence of parents and priests (Robins
1980: 65-6). It should be noted that this deliberate separation of Catholic children from their parents in the name of charity was also practised in
England in the nineteenth century by Dr. Barnardo (Forsythe 1995: 7).12
However, not all Protestant charities were so harsh; the Quakers in particular were genuinely compassionate as were many individual
Protestants (Burke 1987; Foster 1989: 329; Luddy 1995).
The Irish experience of poverty and responses to it in the nineteenth century were thus for Catholics a continuation of centuries of
English, Protestant oppression which included dispossession of land, religious persecution and a generalised lack of sympathy. Irish Catholic attitudes towards the poor differed from that of the British government.
This is evident in the contributions by bishops, clergy and women religious to government inquiries into poverty (including the RCCPCI), in their public criticism of the treatment of the poor under the provisions of the legislation and in their charitable work with the poor.
As noted earlier, Dr. Murray, Catholic Archbishop of Dublin (and a catalyst in the foundation of both the Sisters of Charity in 1815 and the
12 It should be noted that Dr. Barnardo’s was one of the British charities which sent destitute children to Australia and Canada. This continued until the late 1960s (Humphreys 1994). 51
Sisters of Mercy in 1831), was one of the ten members of the 1833
Royal Commission (Burke 1987: 16). Mother Mary Aikenhead, foundress of the Sisters of Charity13, wrote a detailed submission to the
RCCPCI based on her knowledge of Irish trade and twenty plus years of experience of working with the poor. She outlined the disastrous consequences for Irish trade of the 1800 Act of Union (O’Sullivan 1995:
7). The submission was so highly regarded by the Commissioners that they had it published (RCCPCI First Report, cited in O’Carrigan 1986:
8).
Other well-known Catholic Church office-holders also made submissions showing an understanding of the structural causes of Irish poverty. These included Dr McHale, Archbishop of Tuam and Dr Doyle,
Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin. The latter wrote about the need for more comprehensive state provision for the poor and argued against the case that ‘a legal provision for the poor invites to idleness and renders the poor themselves improvident’ (Burke 1987:15). Dr Paul Cullen, a subsequent Archbishop of Dublin and later Cardinal, publicly condemned aspects of the workhouse system, particularly its proselytising effects, including via pastoral letters in 1859 and 1861. It
13 Aikenhead had a privileged, Protestant upbringing and converted to Catholicism in her teens (O’Sullivan 1995: 5ff.). 52
must be noted however that not all the Catholic Bishops shared Cullen’s position (Robins 1980: 256).
The Catholic Sisterhoods which had been founded specifically to work with the Irish poor in the first three decades of the nineteenth century expanded their role in subsequent years. The Catholic understanding that Irish poverty had structural causes which were related to English oppression is underscored by the fact that both the women founders of the Sisters of Charity and Sisters of Mercy were associates of Daniel O’Connell, ‘the Great Liberator’ (Sc An. Vol.1 18,
SCA; Killerby 1996). O’Connell is said to have carved the Christmas roast at Catherine McAuley’s ‘House of Mercy’ in Dublin (Killerby 1996:
19).14 Nuns and Sisters who worked mainly with the poor formed the majority of all women religious in Ireland in the first half of the nineteenth century (Clear 1987: 37). The Sisters’ work spanned the full spectrum of charity – hospitals, poor schools, orphanages, accommodation and training for ‘respectable women’, as well as magdalen asylums for women wishing to leave prostitution (Clear 1987; Luddy 1995;
MacGinley 1996a). One notable development which exemplified the
Irish understanding that economic and social structures caused poverty was the establishment of cottage industries by communities of Sisters,
14 This was prior to Catherine MacAuley’s foundation of the Sisters of Mercy, and thus the ‘House of Mercy’ was not part of their convent at the time (Killerby 1996: 19). 53
as well as laywomen (Glynn 1894; Luddy 1995: 188; Ryan 1996b).
The Sisters’ enterprises included lace-making, knitting, weaving and woollen mills. The Sisters put up the capital, trained the workers and found markets. Some of these ‘convent industries’ saved whole villages from starvation (Ryan 1996b: 15). The number of the Sisters’ industrial schools increased after government funding was made available (Clear
1987: 108-9). Ryan contrasts the positive, developmental, non- stigmatising ethos of these schools with that of the government’s own industrial schools which were much more like reformatories (Ryan
1996b: 14).
Another change over the second half of the century was the entry of Sisters into Irish workhouse hospitals as paid, trained nurses after the
1860s (Robins 1980: 288-9; Burke 1987: 262-72; Clear 1987: 108).
Prior to this time those nursing the sick in the workhouses were untrained, often themselves workhouse inmates (Robins 1980: 289).
Whilst the entry of Sisters into workhouse hospitals was acknowledged as improving nursing care in the workhouses, McGrath suggests however that there was also a negative legacy. In her history of the
Parramatta Sisters of Mercy who came from Callan, Ireland in 1888
McGrath claims that as a result of this Irish experience, the Parramatta
Sisters accepted workhouse conditions for the treatment of the poor.
McGrath concluded that these standards, which included low staffing 54
levels and poor quality food were transposed to St Brigid’s orphanage at
Ryde, established in 1898 (McGrath 1988: 85).
For many Catholic women religious, clergy and laypeople in
Sydney in the late nineteenth century, attitudes to poverty and responses to it were coloured by the lens of Irish experience and earlier history. The significant role of religion in charity in nineteenth century
New South Wales thus had additional dimensions for Catholics. They knew that religious difference had been a basis for British government action which resulted, inter alia, in the impoverishment of Catholics in
Ireland and that the British government had shown total contempt for
Irish understanding of the causes for Irish poverty in rejecting the
RCCPCI report in 1836. They also knew about charity being used as an opportunity for proselytism. When the New South Wales Government closed its Catholic Orphan School in 1886, the Freeman’s Journal stated that ‘The little Catholic orphans are evicted as coolly by the government as tenants in arrears are evicted in Ireland by their absentee landlords’
(FJ 21 August 1886: 8).
The British government’s responses to the Irish Famine exacerbated and extended the Catholic Irish experience of the punitive
‘charitable’ treatment of the poor. The continuation of proselytising charity during the Famine was seen as further confirmation of a 55
Protestant lack of compassion. On the other hand the actions of some
Irish Catholic bishops and women religious reveal attitudes to the poor and to the provision of charity which differed markedly from those of the
British government in London and its appointed officials, as well as many Protestant charities. For the Catholic bishops, women religious and other Catholic Irish, a belief that poverty was caused mainly by individual moral failure was incompatible with their knowledge of poverty and oppression in Ireland, as well as with Christian teachings about duty to the poor.
Religion and Charity
The role of religion in the response to poverty in the nineteenth century has been alluded to earlier. Many nineteenth century charities in Sydney were either formally connected with some branch of organised religion or were run by practising Christians (Dickey 1980,
1987a; Godden 1982; O’Brien 1988). Since poverty was generally seen as being due to individual moral failing, its elimination necessitated moral retraining by religious instruction and religious observance. All religious denominations in Sydney believed ‘that poverty and distress were due primarily to the innate evil in the heart of man, that man could be changed and that wider social problems would be solved by reforming the individual’ (O’Brien 1988: 190). The close association of 56
morality and religion meant that for the dispensers of relief, spiritual well- being was regarded as being of equal or greater importance than material well-being. One religious historian has noted: ‘Moral control through religious reform was the establishment solution to issues of alcoholism, destitution, prostitution, gambling, venereal disease and criminality’ (Carey 1996:105).
Looking beyond the nineteenth century Australian situation there are several points to note. One is that there have been changes over the centuries in Christian attitudes towards poverty and the duty of charity.
The second is that, as noted earlier, at any one period there was some diversity in the stance towards the poor related to different theological interpretations. In terms of earlier historical changes the relationship between religion and charity underwent significant changes as a result of the Reformation and the Counter Reformation. The latter ushered in major changes in the way the Catholic Church responded to ordinary,
‘non-elite’ Catholics. Later developments included the eigthteenth century evangelical revival and the increasing association between women and religion. Another nineteenth century development was the blending of social philosophy and political economy with religious ideas.
To understand the relationship between religion and charity in the late nineteenth century it is necessary to consider briefly certain earlier historical developments. 57
Bowpitt (1998: 679) identified three essential components of
Christian charity based on the scriptures. These are ‘compassion’ which is an ‘unconditional response to immediate need’; ‘testimony’ to God’s love, and ‘personal regeneration’ whereby ‘charity channels God’s love as a means of changing lives’ (Bowpitt 1998: 679). However, as Bowpitt noted these elements have been differently emphasised by various theological traditions.
One obvious result of the Reformation was that alternative arrangements for assistance to the poor had to be made after the dissolution of monasteries and convents which had traditionally provided charity. As noted above, in England this was done via the Poor Laws which were passed from the early seventeenth century onwards
(Lansley 2001: 2). Another effect of the Reformation was on attitudes to poverty and charity. The new emphasis was that faith was the only path to eternal salvation; actions or good works would not suffice. This meant that performing acts of charity no longer helped the performer to attain salvation (Tawney 1972: 117). Moreover, Calvin condemned indiscriminate charity, and the elimination of pauperism became part of
Christian duty (Tawney 1972: 122).
58
The evangelical revival of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries brought other developments. More people were inspired to engage in charity because of the opportunity such acts provided for saving souls and also because the performance of good works might be taken as evidence of salvation (Obelkevitch 1990: 322; Garton 1994; Lansley
2001). Moreover, it has been argued that the significance of charity became more pronounced because a number of key evangelicals, including William Wilberforce, rejected the notion of pre-destination, instead believing that salvation was provisional, and good works became one means of achieving this goal (Prochaska 1990: 379).
The developments in religion were associated with a change in the meaning of charity. The older, medieval meaning was more universal and reciprocal in scope, with Christians expected to be ‘in love and charity with all men’ (Lansley 2001: 2). This contrasted with the ‘newer’ concept of benevolence as a ‘one way transaction in which the rich help the poor’ (Lansley 2001: 2).
Another aspect of religion relevant to subsequent nineteenth century developments in charity was that the churches taught that civil obedience and acceptance of a hierarchical social structure was also necessary (Lansley 2001: 5). These changes in religion were coupled with the developments in utilitarian ideas and political economy. 59
Religion dictated that you should work hard, but having done so and accumulated some wealth, you couldn’t spend it on yourself. The alternatives were to re-invest in your business, if that was possible, or to disburse it via philanthropy. One historian of philanthropy has argued that ‘British Protestantism was compatible with laissez-faire doctrine.
Philanthropic enterprise was, in a sense, laissez-faire capitalism turned in on itself’ (Prochaska 1990: 378). Lansley has demonstrated that such beliefs were held by two of the Anglican clergymen on the 1830s
English Poor Law Commission who recommended the 1834
Amendments to the Poor Law, including its chairman Bishop Blomfield and Bishop Sumner, who later became Archbishop of Canterbury
(Lansley 2001).
For Catholics, the Counter Reformation, also termed the Catholic
Reformation (Luebke 1999; Mullett 1999), had implications for Catholic attitudes to poverty and charity. New ‘apostolic’ religious institutes were founded which did not have the edification of their members as their sole purpose. These ‘socially active’ institutes gave priority to the education of ordinary people. The primary motivation was to promote the practice of religion by increasing religious knowledge, but the teaching of literacy was a prerequisite for religious education. The Jesuits were the prime example of the new institutes, being a force behind the education of boys. New groups of women religious with a concern for the education 60
and well-being of women and girls followed. The Ursulines were among the first (MacGinley 1996a: 27; Mullet 1999). Moreover, this education of the masses was undertaken by going out to the community, rather than having small numbers of the wealthy elite come into convents and monasteries, which had previously been the case (Luebke 1999). Thus not only did the Counter Reformation result in education, both religious and secular, becoming available to a broader range of people, there was a reconfiguring of the character and activities of Catholic religious orders.
The new apostolic institutes for women adopted the spirituality of the French school which stressed the ‘abnegation of self for openness to divine initiative; the abandonment of the will to an often inscrutable
Providence; and a generous, continuing sacrifice of personal wishes, and often needs, to apostolic priorities’ (MacGinley 1996a: 340). This feature was to have significance for the charitable work of women’s institutes. Another development of the Catholic Reformation relevant to attitudes to poverty and charity was the development of confraternities for lay men and women. These organisations engaged in charitable work in the local parish. In Europe, including France, new groups of religious-inspired women were formed to undertake works of charity and education in the community. These groups were not traditional nuns as they did not take solemn vows, did not recite the Divine office and were 61
not enclosed within their convents (MacGinley 1992, 1994, 1996a,
2001). Some were models for the nineteenth century Sisterhoods. For example the French Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul were an inspiration for the Irish Sisters of Charity (MacGinley 1996a: 66). The
Australian Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart were partly modelled on another French group, the Sisters of St Joseph of Le Puy (MacGinley
1996a:150). Thus, not only did Catholicism retain a significant doctrinal place for charity after the Reformation, but the Counter Reformation was the catalyst for the development of new forms of women’s organisations as well as an approach to charity that emphasised the education of the poor.
Religious differences and the development of welfare states
It should be noted that religion has been found to have played a part in the historical development of the different approaches to welfare evident in present day Europe. A significant difference in welfare states is that between the countries in Protestant, northern Europe and those of the Catholic south. Weber and Tawney both linked capitalist industrialisation with the development of Protestantism (Hugman 1994:
60ff.). As Esping-Anderson noted ‘Where Catholicism is strong, the dominant ideals of social justice are likely to be coloured by the world- view of the Church’ (Esping-Anderson 1990: 112). 62
The relationship is not simple however. Religion was not a direct cause of differences in welfare systems, but has been posited as one of the variety of inter-related components of broader social change, which included the rise of the welfare state. Esping-Anderson saw religion affecting the development of different types of welfare state via processes related to the mobilisation of the working class (Esping-
Anderson 1990: 108ff.). As Hugman put it, the effect of capitalist development was ‘filtered through a different religious philosophy’
(Hugman 1994: 60). In nineteenth century New South Wales (as in other places), religious philosophy was not a stand-alone, separate characteristic, but was interwoven with many other aspects of individual and social life. Its role in responses to poverty warrants further consideration.
Conclusion
Literature on the nineteenth century history of social work and social welfare in Australia differs from that of the corresponding period in
Britain in several respects which are significant for this thesis.
Australian social work is generally not seen as having any direct connection with nineteenth century efforts to alleviate poverty. The role of women in providing charity in Australia has not been well-defined and 63
the charitable work of Catholic Sisters is all but invisible. An early denial by historians that poverty had any significant place in Australian history was replaced in the last decades of the twentieth century by studies which found the provision of charity to be a process of social control of the poor by the wealthy. This depiction has painted the providers of charity as being fairly uniformly oppressive towards the poor. This contrasts with British social work and welfare history in which different approaches are manifest. It also contrasts with post-modern analyses of contemporary social work and welfare that acknowledge diversity and contradiction. Whilst there are some suggestions in the Australian historical literature that there were variations in the approach taken towards the poor by different providers in the nineteenth century these have not been fully investigated. The dominant stance towards the poor and charity remains virtually the only approach which has been analysed in any detail.
In late nineteenth century New South Wales the prevailing response to poverty was the prevention of dependence and pauperisation by very selective and parsimonious individual assistance, combined with moral retraining. This approach was shaped by a combination of a belief in the prosperity of the ‘new land’, the ascendancy of notions of individual responsibility for material well-being, the rejection of an automatic right to charity (and of the responsibility 64
of all to pay for such relief via a compulsory levy), coupled with a renewed evangelical fervour which permeated many Christian denominations.
Earlier Christian notions concerning poverty and the duty of charity had been modified by the Reformation and the doctrines of utilitarianism and laissez-faire political economy. The coalescence of these emphasised individual responsibility and the ability of the market to eventually eradicate poverty. This approach was based on the assumption that poverty was caused by individual moral failure. In
Britain these changes had been formalised in 1830s legislation and administrative arrangements centring on the principle of ‘less eligibility’ which was implemented through harsh regimes in workhouses. Those motivated by evangelical religion often undertook charitable work with the poor as a means of saving the souls of the latter and of helping to ensure their own salvation. Even though New South Wales did not have a Poor Law, the dominant charitable approach identified by historians of welfare showed an ethos similar to that of the 1830s Poor Law legislation of England and Ireland.
In contrast to the dominant approach above was the Irish experience of poverty and charity. The Irish understood that poverty could have structural and political causes. Irish Catholic bishops and
Irish women who founded nineteenth century socially active women’s 65
religious institutes in Ireland shared this understanding and used it as a basis for the charitable work of the Sisterhoods which flourished over the course of the century . The establishment of these institutes was facilitated by earlier Counter Reformation developments in forms of religious life. The emphasis on apostolic work beyond the cloister and the ethos of the abnegation of self for direction by divine Providence were significant elements of these institutes.
In Ireland the creation of convent-based industries and the provision of education and training to equip the Irish poor to earn a living were outcomes of the Irish structural understanding of poverty. The literature on women and religious-inspired works which is discussed in the next chapter further highlights the inter-relatedness of religion and charity and provides several themes which are used to guide the exploration in the thesis of the charitable work of four Catholic
Sisterhoods in late nineteenth century Sydney. 66
CHAPTER 3
‘SEPARATE SPHERES’: WOMEN, RELIGION AND PROFESSIONAL WORK
Introduction
This chapter canvasses several bodies of literature which are relevant for the present study. The first covers historical work on women and women’s religious-inspired work, (including charity15 and missionary work) and scholarship on Catholic women religious. The second covers literature on women and professions and includes historical and sociological works. Themes and theoretical constructs from these bodies of literature will used to interpret the data in this thesis.
In the historical literature on women and religious-inspired work, social class difference (as well as morality) is a major factor in charitable relationships. In relation to the expansion of women’s work, the historical discourse is largely in terms of the ways in which religion interacted with male authority and gendered norms of conduct, to extend
‘the woman’s sphere’, that is, to allow women opportunities for meaningful work outside the family, and to develop ‘new’ knowledge and
15 Much of the literature uses the term’ philanthropy’ which, as discussed in Chapter 1, I am regarding as synonymous with ‘charity’ and which is the nineteenth century equivalent of the term ‘social welfare’, which came into usage in the twentieth century. 67
skills. This second theme is also emphasised in recent historical literature on Catholic women religious and literature on women and other religious-inspired activity, such as missionary work, clergy wifehood and nursing (for example Godden 1997; West 1997; Haggis
1998; Marshall and Wall 1999; O’Brien 2000c). The historical and sociological literature also includes this theme of gendered social processes, amongst others.
Whilst religion has a central role in the women’s history literature, it has to some extent been treated as a constant, the evangelical revival of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries being seen as a common and catalytic factor inspiring women to undertake works of charity
(Summers 1979; Prochaska 1980; Fessenden 2002). The effect of differences in religious beliefs on the nature of the work undertaken by women, on the relationships between women providers and the recipients of charity, or on processes involved in women’s increasing involvement in professional work have not received a great deal of attention in the historical literature pertaining to women (Marshall and
Wall 1999: 2f). This contrasts with scholarship focusing on the history of the social work profession, in which the relationship of varying religious backgrounds to the stance taken towards the poor has been demonstrated (Forsythe 1995; Bowpitt 1998).
68
Running through the historical studies of women’s religious work in the nineteenth century is the notion of ‘separate spheres’ for men and women, and the corresponding ‘public - private’ dichotomy. The construct posits the existence of a distinct ‘public-masculine’ world separate from a ‘private-feminine’ realm (see for example Vicinus 1985;
Kerber 1988; Pateman 1989b; Walkowitz 1992; Woollacott 1998;
Wright 2001; Fessenden 2002). This concept is also found in literature on the histories of women and the professions (and indeed in much scholarship on women’s history, in Australia and elsewhere).
The notion of ‘separate spheres’ seems to have been a catalyst for the feminist struggles that contributed to professionalisation in nursing, social work and related occupations. Recent analyses have challenged the rigidity of a dichotomous formulation of ‘separate spheres’, alerting us to the points of permeability between the boundaries (for example
Wright 2001: 63). It was however a notion which had wide social acceptance in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and was implicated in women’s struggles around professionalisation (Godden
1983; Pateman 1989b: 127; Woollacott 1998; Marshall and Wall 1999:
3) and remains a valid analytical tool. 69
‘Woman’s sphere’ charity
The history of women and charity, whilst obviously focusing on women’s activities, concurs with much of the picture of poverty and charity in the nineteenth century depicted in the previous chapter.
Generally held beliefs about the causes of poverty and the most appropriate responses to it have been shown to have been shared by female as well as male philanthropists (Godden 1983: 69). The concept of ‘woman's sphere charity’ reflects the dominant nineteenth century pattern of the separation of men’s and women’s activities in society, and the norms which sustained it.
The usual formulation of the development of ‘separate spheres’ is that with increasing industrialisation and urbanisation, British society had gradually become differentiated along gender lines, so that the public sphere had become the domain of men, whilst women were largely confined to the private sphere of home and family (Vicinus 1985: 2;
McDowell and Pringle 1992: 15; Phillips 1992: 96). This gender segregation was founded on notions about the innate qualities of the two sexes (see for example Prochaska 1980: 3ff; Vicinus 1985: 2; Godden
1986: 47). Women were thought to embody ‘emotion, love, virtue and care’ and men ‘reason, law, morality and action’ (Swain 1998: 30ff.). It was believed that these intrinsic characteristics made women 70
particularly fit for child rearing and domestic management whilst men were suited to business, government and virtually everything else outside the domestic realm.
The belief in women’s innate qualities also contributed to an acceptance of ‘feminine moral authority’ (Woollacott 1998: 86ff.). The literature shows that the idea of separate spheres was widely accepted at the time, was ‘enforced’ by negative reactions to women who breached the boundaries of accepted feminine behaviour or who engaged in activities in public ‘masculine’ places (see for example
Prochaska 1980; Vicinus 1985; Walkowitz 1992; Marshall and Wall
1999) and were reinforced by social institutions, including legislation prohibiting women from certain activities in the public domain or ‘man’s sphere’, such as voting and holding public office (Allen 1979: 107-117).
Kerber (1988) points out that feminist scholarship, after initially interpreting the division into separate spheres as one which oppressed women through containing them, subsequently found the ‘woman’s sphere’ also to have been a locus of development for a distinctive women’s culture. As such it was a source of strength and psychological support for women (Kerber 1988: 17). Woollacott (1998) also demonstrates the strength of the associated moral authority of women who operated within this sphere. The spatial correlates of this gendered 71
division of society could also confer advantages as well as disadvantages on women. Whilst it was morally and physically dangerous for respectable women to be on the streets of certain parts of cities, separate women’s spaces such as women’s clubs and women’s settlements such as Jane Addams’ Chicago settlement, Hull House, were safe places for women to live, work, meet and learn within the larger, unsafe urban environment (Kerber 1988: 36). Such places were, moreover, sites of female autonomy. These notions of the facilitative aspects of women’s separate physical spaces for the development of women’s culture are obviously relevant to the work of Catholic women religious who lived and often worked in separate, women-only physical spaces, as well as being members of all-female organisations. McLay makes the point that in Australia the work of women religious gave rise to the development of ‘conventual economies’ (McLay 1992a: 43).
The religious dimension associated with men’s and women’s separate spheres is said to have developed over time. With the evangelical revival of the eighteenth century, and the increased association of the public world, and therefore the male sphere, with the scientific and secular (Vicinus 1985: 2), women were said to have been particularly drawn to religion (McNamara 1996: 600f.). Numerous scholars have emphasised the dominance of religion in women’s lives in the nineteenth century (Prochaska 1980; Vicinus 1985; Luddy 1995; 72
Swain 1998; Haggis 1998), and there is broad agreement that ‘the missionary impulse, like domestic ideology, was very much part of mainstream Victorian culture’ (Godden 1997: 77). There is also agreement that for nineteenth century women, this urge was most often given expression through philanthropy (Summers 1979; Prochaska
1980; Windschuttle 1980a; Vicinus 1985) to the extent that evangelicalism and philanthropy were ‘all but synonymous’ (Owen quoted in Windschuttle 1980a: 55). Colonial society in Australia has been depicted as an attempt to ‘re-create and adapt British life-styles to antipodean conditions’ (Godden 1986: 41, 1982; Swain 2001). In
Australia as in Britain, women’s involvement in philanthropy grew because such activities were within the accepted limits of what was appropriate activity for respectable women (Prochaska 1980; Godden
1983, 1986). Social class was a major component of Victorian
‘woman's sphere’ charity, intertwined with gender and religion (Summers
1979; Godden, 1983, 1986; Vicinus 1985; Luddy 1995; Swain 1998
Woollacott 1998; Fessenden 2002). ‘Class superiority went hand in hand with moral superiority’ (Vicinus 1985: 74). Fessenden makes the important point that much North American historical literature on women and religion ‘camouflaged’ the operation of both class and religious differences (Fessenden 2002: 166ff.).
73
Godden showed how class and gender interacted to shape
‘woman’s sphere philanthropy’ in Sydney in the late nineteenth century period (Godden 1983), although as noted earlier, she did not find that religious differences shaped the charity in any significant, distinctive ways. Her analysis was that the dominant dynamic was one of social class, that is of upper class women attempting to influence the conduct of working class women and children (Godden 1983: viff.). Godden’s analysis was also in keeping with social control analyses within
Australian welfare history (Kennedy 1982b, 1989b; Watts 1982, 1988;
Berreen and Wearing 1989; Garton 1990, 1994; Berreen 1994). Thus, women’s charity in the nineteenth century was found to have reflected the presumed social and moral distinction between the givers and receivers of charity, as did the field as a whole.
Women, professions and the expansion of the ‘woman’s sphere’
Historians of women have noted that the recent interest in women’s charity work has been connected with its role ‘as a pathway to power for women’ (Swain 1998: 33). Woollacott saw women’s movement into professional work as a core feminist issue in early twentieth century Britain (Woollacott 1998: 86). All the historical literature on women which has been mentioned to date makes a contribution to the discourse on the role of religious-motivated work in 74
extending the domain of acceptable activity and roles for women outside the ‘private’ sphere of home and family. Religious-inspired charitable work has been shown by a number of scholars to have expanded the
‘woman’s sphere’ in various ways: by enabling participation in a wider range of meaningful work; by working in ‘new social spaces’, both in areas of the city not commonly frequented by middle class women
(Walkowitz 1992: 65) and in the mission field; by the development of new skills and expertise, particularly in administration (Marshall and Wall
1999); and by working co-operatively with other women and independently from men. Social status and recognition often accompanied this work (Summers 1979; Prochaska 1980; Godden
1983, 1986; Vicinus 1985: 212; Luddy 1995; West 1997).
Whilst there has been little denominational differentiation of the type of charity offered, or manner of offering, other differences have been ascertained. It has been found that women who joined Protestant sisterhoods and deaconess institutes, women’s settlement houses, and
Catholic women’s religious institutes generally were able to go further beyond the existing boundaries of the ‘woman’s sphere’ than women who undertook charitable work whilst continuing to live a family life
(Godden 1983; Clear 1987, 1990; Luddy 1995; Carey 1996; West
1997). This has been related to such women living communally with other women and apart from men (Vicinus 1985; Clear 1990; Mumm 75
2001). Haggis (1998) suggests another interpretation. Her work on women missionaries portrays a process of professionalisation. It was professionalism which enabled women missionaries to more easily transcend the boundaries of the ‘woman’s sphere’ (Haggis 1998: 171).
Others have pointed out a connection between women’s ability to transcend the gendered boundaries of both the socially and the socio- geographically respectable spheres because of their membership of particular organisations or occupations. Marshall and Wall (1999) argued that nuns and Sisters overcame gender role restrictions because their vow of chastity effectively rendered them to be a ‘third gender’ which allowed them a ‘separate space’ in which to undertake work not normally done by other women (Marshall and Wall 1999: 7). Walkowitz points out the importance of the visible symbols of membership of such organisations. She found that the uniforms of both the Salvation Army
‘lass’ and the district nurse protected them in London’s slum areas: ‘The nurses’ uniform offered women special protection in public, transporting them beyond gender’ (Walkowitz 1992: 58). Perhaps the uniform also provided women with immunity from the moral contamination to which it was thought they would otherwise have been subjected.
Various writers have suggested that Catholic women religious extended their sphere to a greater extent than lay women, in terms of the variety of work undertaken, the skills they acquired and the 76
autonomy they exercised (Godden 1983; Vicinus 1985; Clear 1987;
Luddy 1995; Brown and McKeown 1996; West 1997; Smyth 1999).
Catholic Sisters were found generally to have undertaken a variety of caring work including child care, teaching, nursing, home visitation, work with former prostitutes and so on. Smyth, commenting on the situation of Catholic women religious in Canada noted that:
entry into religious life gave access to careers and independence that few of their contemporaries possessed. It offered them status, power and authority as women who were professional workers in both the religious and secular worlds. (Smyth 1999: 238)
Smyth thus considers the Sisters to have been professionals, (in fact dual professionals when their occupation as professed religious is included). Other North American scholarship in which the Sisters’ charitable work has been integrated into the history of the development of social welfare regards them similarly (Oates 1995; Brown and
McKeown 1996; Hoy 1997, 2002; Anderson 2000). Whilst Australian studies of the Sisters’ status as professional workers has been acknowledged in education (Burley 1998,1999) and recently, nursing
(Nelson 2001), there has been no comparable investigation of the
Sisters’ work in social welfare in Australia.
The entry of women into professional work has been seen as a process of transformation, of changes in both the ways women and their
‘place’ have been regarded, as well as in women’s own mentalities and 77
conduct. Religion has been found to have had a central place in women’s expansion of their sphere of action and movement into professional work. It did this initially by aiding women to transcend the boundaries of their gendered sphere of action, by providing a rationale which used familiar vocabulary to explain and justify their conduct
(Haggis 1998: 17; Marshall and Wall 1999: 2). Religion was an important constituent of ‘female moral authority’16 over the poor and it legitimised their undertaking of work outside their homes, beyond the authority of fathers and husbands. Haggis found that for the women missionaries she studied, the process of professionalisation was not so much an ‘emancipatory struggle’ as a more ‘subtle re-ordering of existing norms and values’ (Haggis 1998: 172). Woollacott has also shown how both women’s ‘old’ female moral authority and ‘new’ secular professional authority co-existed amongst YWCA social workers in the early twentieth century (Woollacott 1998).
As well as challenging patriarchal norms and social structures, women themselves had to change when entering into professional work:
‘the emotionalism, religiosity and close domestic ties of traditional women had to be replaced with rationality, scientific knowledge and
16 The term ‘female moral authority’ is taken from Woollacott (1998). However, as she was writing about a later, more secular period in the third decade of the twentieth century, she saw the primary source of female authority to be maternalism rather than religion (Woollacott 1998: 86ff.). 78
corporate loyalties’ (Haggis 1998: 171-2). Walton (1975) prefigured
Haggis’ (1998) statement about the mental change that individual women needed to make in order to become professionals, stressing the importance to social work of ‘an attitude of mind’ (Walton 1975: 14).
Hearn (1982) argued that the changes women had to make in the process of becoming professionals were about controlling emotionality.
He saw this as having occurred via a ‘de-feminisation’ of responses, by which female emotionality was replaced by a set of codified, more masculine, ‘professional’ responses. This ‘defeminisation’ through codification of conduct had other consequences, as it facilitated the entry of men into these emerging professions (Hearn 1982: 190ff.).
Masculine power and authority
Within the discourse on women’s increasing engagement in the public world via religion is the issue of the role played by male power and authority, masculinist values and masculinist social institutions, particularly the churches. Religion was found to empower women but also to constrain them. Religious belief gave women the justification for apostolic work, thereby performing a wider range of skilled work, including charity. On the other hand, organised religion - the church as institution - was not necessarily facilitative. Like most social institutions in the public domain, nineteenth century religious denominations had a 79
masculinist bias and were very male-dominated (O’Brien 1993, 1997).
Men made the decisions and controlled the money, and thus could formally constrain women’s activities within the church or enable and support them. Women could experience co-operation or opposition from men. As women, those engaged in religious work outside the home were often very powerful, but as members of mixed sex church congregations, they could be relatively powerless. This last point has also been made in relation to Catholic women religious (Clear 1987,
1990; Luddy 1995).
In some of the historical writing on women and religion the expansion of the woman’s sphere through religious work has been portrayed as having been mainly dependent on the influence of patriarchal values, authority and social structures. Other research portrays a more complex picture which includes factors such as imperialism, class, religious denomination and the changing political and economic context, as well as patriarchy (Godden 1997; Haggis 1998).
Recent developments in the sociology of the professions supports this picture of the involvement of an array of factors in shaping the process of women’s professional work in charity and social work. This is discussed later in this chapter. 80
Women’s charity in nineteenth century Sydney
Godden’s work stands out as a detailed academic analysis of
Sydney women’s philanthropy that includes the charitable work of
Catholic women religious (Godden 1983). It must be noted that
Godden’s study included very few Catholic laywomen. The sectarian divisions in Sydney society precluded Catholic women from joining
Protestant-dominated committees, as it did in Melbourne (Swain 1998:
33). The apparent dearth of Catholic laywomen’s charity in Sydney has not been examined. Luddy found that in Ireland the Catholic clergy and hierarchy preferred that charity be carried out by the Sisters, rather than laywomen (Luddy 1995: 35-6). This may have been the case in Sydney, although further research is needed to explore this. However, the clergy and hierarchy knew what they were dealing with in the Sisterhoods. The institutes had formal structures of internal authority, responsibility and discipline as well as some provision for the operation of male Church authority. The Sisters could generally be relied upon to do a good job with little fuss and little likelihood of damage to the Catholic Church’s position in the wider community. Moreover, demographic studies suggest that there was only a very small pool of Catholic laywomen in
Sydney with sufficient resources to become involved in charity to an extent which would make any significant difference to the great pool of unmet need. That is, there was an abundance of poverty and social 81
need among Catholics, and a relatively small Catholic upper class capable of responding with charity (Hogan 1987: 138,142; O'Farrell
1988: 120).17 The Catholic women in Godden’s study were therefore members of the various socially active Sisterhoods in Sydney.
Godden charted the waxing and waning of woman’s sphere philanthropy in Sydney over the three decades from the 1870s (Godden
1983). She identified changes in terms of the numbers of women involved, the scope and clientele of their charitable ventures and their acceptance by men in positions of authority. She identified a major catalyst for the expansion of middle-class women’s charitable work in
Sydney as being the recommendations of the government-appointed
Public Charities Commission of 1873/4. The Commission found that the deficiencies of various government subsidised charities for children were due to the lack of involvement of ladies in the management of these charities. The Commission recommended that standards of care be raised by appointing ladies both to committees of management and to paid positions within charities (Godden 1983: 20). Godden found that the 1880s had been the hey-day of woman’s sphere philanthropy in
17 In the early 1900s Irish Catholics were 20-25% of the population but only 5 -10% of the wealthy (O'Farrell 1988: 120). The socio-economic position of Irish immigrants was very low, but the position of Australian-born Catholics was not much better. Hogan noted the low social position of Catholics, reflected in the crime statistics. Catholic men were in gaol in twice the expected number and Catholic women comprised two thirds of the female prison population (Hogan 1987: 142).
82
Sydney, with the 1890s seeing its waning. The demise has been attributed to various causes. Not least was the manifest inadequacy of charity in the face of the widespread poverty of the Depression years early in the decade (Dickey 1980; Garton 1994).
Godden also found that charity in late nineteenth century Sydney was affected by the rise of faith in expert, ‘scientific’ knowledge that was found in Britain. The status and presumed moral power of the ‘lady’ were superseded by expertise. Trained women in paid employment became more common. The role of ‘lady’ lost ground. There was both an elevation in the status of ‘mothering’ and of trained women in paid employment (Godden 1983; Swain 1999). As in Britain, female ‘moral authority’ came to be replaced by secular ‘professional authority’
(Woollacott 1998). Godden found that in Sydney the philanthropic ‘lady’ was replaced by ‘the new woman’, who was happy to be paid, and to work with men and be subject to their authority. In doing so ‘woman’s sphere philanthropy ’ as a separate domain of ‘the lady’ began to fade
(Godden 1983: 254ff.). This process can be clearly seen in the field of child welfare in New South Wales. The women-initiated pilot project in
‘boarding out’ which commenced in 1879 was replaced by a male- dominated government bureaucracy, the ‘State Children’s Relief
Department’ (Dickey 1980: 83ff.). Volunteer ‘lady visitors’ were eventually replaced by paid male inspectors. The role of the 83
Department eventually expanded to include responsibility for delinquents
(male and female) as well as destitute children. This effectively removed its work even further beyond the domain of female moral authority. The legacy of this dual process of masculinisation and bureaucratisation in New South Wales child welfare lasted for nearly three quarters of a century, with there being gender-based barriers to women’s roles in the Department18 until the early 1970s (Hughes 1990:
69f.).
Godden’s work remains the only substantial research on a range of women’s charity work in late nineteenth century Sydney, and the only study to have included the Sisters alongside laywomen. She found that the Sisters’ work was very similar to that of other middle-class women involved in charity in Sydney (Godden 1983: xxf.). This she attributed to a shared class position and religious motivation. This thesis affords an opportunity to re-examine Godden’s conclusion, and its bases, by interrogating the data on the Sisters’ charitable work in terms of the model proposed by Godden.
18 From the mid twentieth century onwards the functions of the nineteenth century N.S.W. State Children’s Relief Department were carried out by the Department of Child Welfare and Social Welfare, subsequently re-named the Department of Youth and Community Services then later again, the Department of Community Services, which it is at the time of writing. 84
Literature on Catholic women religious
There is a growing body of overseas literature focusing specifically on the charitable work of women religious, particularly in North America.
It is noted earlier, some of this literature depicts the Sisters’ charitable work within the broader contexts of the social history of the Catholic community and the historiography of American charity and social welfare, (for example Oates 1978, 1995; Brown and McKeown 1996;
Hoy 1997, 2002; Anderson 2000). However amongst the burgeoning scholarship on Australian women religious in the last decade or so there have been relatively few works which have focused on the Sisters’ charitable work. Notable exceptions are works by Foale (1981, 2001),
Press (1994), Fox (1994), Ryan (1996a) and Kelleher (2000). Not surprisingly, these studies mostly have not considered the Sisters’ charitable work in the broader context of the antecedents of social work and social welfare. As O’Brien noted, rigid territorial boundaries between religious historians and social historians have not benefited the history of women in Australia (O’Brien 2000a: 238).
A number of other Australian works on Catholic Sisterhoods include (to varying degrees) their charitable activities (for example
McGrath 1988; Burford 1991; Foale 1994; 1997; Killerby 1996;
MacGinley 1996a; Walsh 2001). What is striking to a reader used to late 85
twentieth century ways is the extent to which the Sisters’ charitable work was an integral component of their lives as women religious, and was not clearly demarcated from their work in education and with the sick.
What would now be regarded as social welfare work was just one part of a continuum of response to material and spiritual need. Indeed many of the Sisterhoods, now best known for their prominent roles in education or health care, were founded expressly to work with the poor. These historical works on Australian Catholic women religious, although not referring to social welfare work, nonetheless offer insights into the world of the Sisters in nineteenth century Australia. Valuable examples include Burley’s work on women religious in South Australia, particularly in education (Burley 1994, 1998, 1999); Nelson’s revisiting of the history of nursing (Nelson 2001), and Zimmerman’s work on women religious in the Maitland diocese (Zimmerman 1999a, 2000a).
A significant revelation in these and other historical works on women religious in Australia is the extraordinary extent of the Sisters’ struggles to become established and to undertake their various works in the community. Hardship in terms of poor accommodation, insufficient financial and human resources and frequent setbacks in their attempts to overcome these difficulties are features of most historical accounts of
Catholic nuns and Sisters in Australia (and in North America).
MacGinley’s landmark work on the history of women religious in 86
Australia (MacGinley 1996a) includes many such stories, as do all the works cited above. O’Sullivan, writing of the experience of the Sisters of
Charity earlier in the nineteenth century argued the importance for women’s religious institutes of being economically independent as a prerequisite for fulfilling their charitable mandate (O’Sullivan 1992). The
Sisters’ broader social context played a significant role. Nelson points out that in the nineteenth century, communities of Catholic women religious ‘were part of an international and internationalizing church.
Catholic women were caught up in the great diaspora that led to the establishment of the Catholic Church in the English-speaking world - in
Britain as well as in the settler societies of North America and Australia.’
(Nelson 2001: 17). These elements have not featured in the few
Australian historical studies undertaken by ‘outside’ researchers of the
Sisters’ charitable work.
The two studies by women who were not themselves members of religious institutes which have linked the Sisters’ work to the wider context of welfare history have not been complimentary. Godden criticised the Sisters at Sydney’s House of the Good Shepherd refuge for treating former prostitutes in the same punitive manner as did laywomen at the Protestant refuge (Godden 1986), and for attempting in other types of charity to impose on the poor the norms of conduct of the middle class (Godden 1983). In this she followed the widely held ‘social 87
control’ interpretation of Australian welfare history (Dickey 1987b) and did not see positive aspects of the Sisters’ work or points of difference between the two refuges.
Fox (1994, 1997) criticised the Sisters’ work in orphanages19 on various grounds, largely because it was age and sex-segregated congregate care, rather than foster care or small group care. Her analysis omitted relevant comparative information such as the fact that government congregate care also shared all of the features for which she criticised the Sisters. Her study did not include the considerations noted by Dickey as important in researching welfare history, that is, an awareness of the constraints which shaped the choices available
(Dickey 1987b). It was just not possible for women religious in nineteenth century New South Wales to have implemented a foster care scheme (Hughes 1998a). Fox seemed unaware that children could also have suffered in foster care, or that the Sisters’ orphanages were potentially more ‘family oriented’ or ‘parent friendly’ than the government’s foster scheme. The Sisters’ orphanages could be more flexible in that they provided parents with greater access to a needed resource (alternative care for their children) and did not require them to sever contact with the children once they were in care. It was also
19 Fox’s research covered a much longer time period than the present study extending up to the second half of the twentieth century (Fox 1994, 1997). 88
potentially easier for parents to get their children out of the Sisters’ orphanages than to regain custody of them from foster parents
(Horsburgh 1980: 37ff.). The restrictive features of the government scheme were intentional. Its aim was to ‘protect’ children (and society) from the pauperising influence of their parents by sending the children to foster homes in distant locations (Horsburgh 1977b, Hughes 1998a).
Whilst much of the recent historical scholarship on Australian women religious has been by members of the institutes studied, very little of this work can be dismissed as hagiography. Many studies by women religious have been undertaken as research projects for university higher degrees, and have survived academic examination processes, for example those of McGrath (1988), McLay (1992),
O’Sullivan (1995), Ryan (1996a), Trower (1998), Zimmerman (2000b),
Kelleher (2000). Other researchers, such as MacGinley and Press had established academic credentials at the time of publication of works cited.
Godden (1983, 1986) argued that the Sisters’ charitable work in
Sydney was very similar to that of the Protestant lady philanthropists she studied 20, but she did discern some differences. Amongst the
20 The women in Godden’s study seem to have been close in terms of social class, to O’Brien’s (1988: 199) ‘Lady Bountiful’ of the Queens’ Jubilee Fund. See discussion in Chapter 2. 89
similarities, she asserted that the Sisters were similar in class background to the Protestant women philanthropists, they also focused their attention on women and children, and had similar aims as the
Protestant women (Godden 1983: xx-xxi). In terms of differences,
Godden found the Sisters to have generally been younger than the
Protestant lay women engaged in philanthropy (Godden 1983: 77) and to have had greater power and autonomy in their work, compared to their lay counterparts (Godden 1983: 292).
In terms of the role of masculine power and authority in facilitating or inhibiting the development of women’s agency, the literature on
Catholic women religious echoes much of the more general literature on women and religion. As Clear said of Ireland in the nineteenth century
‘stories of strong-willed superiors outwitting bishops abound in convent lore’ (Clear 1990: 37). In some of the histories of Catholic women religious this theme of gender opposition is the dominant one. A North
American example is Liedel (2000) on the battles of the Grey Nuns in
Cleveland with their bishop. The Australian literature also includes this theme in abundance. McLay’s history of the Sisters of Mercy in Western
Australia takes its title - ‘Women out of their sphere’ - from a comment by one of the Sisters’ male opponents (McLay 1992: 42). Other histories and biographies of Australian women religious share this theme, for example works on Mothers Mary MacKillop (Burford 1989; Gardiner 90
1993; L. O’Brien 1994), Ursula Frayne (Killerby 1996) and Vincent
Whitty (O’Donoghue 1977), and the histories of the Sisters of Charity
(O’Sullivan 1995) and the Diocesan Sisters of St Joseph in Maitland,
New South Wales (Zimmerman 1999a). All paint a picture which includes male power being exercised over the Sisters by bishops, and the efforts of women religious superiors to secure autonomy for their communities.
In some of the literature, the picture which is painted of relationships between the women religious and masculine Church power is quite negative (for example Purcell 1977; West 1994). In others it is more variegated, depicting co-operation and support for the Sisters by clergy and hierarchy as well as opposition (for example McGrath 1988;
MacGinley 1996a; Zimmerman 2000a, 2000b). Literature on women religious in other parts of the English speaking world is congruent with this mixed picture (for example Clear 1990; Hoy 1997; Anderson 2000;
Liedel 2000). MacGinley shows that churchmen often co-operated with, encouraged and often were the catalysts or co-founders of new institutes (MacGinley 1996a). Her accounts of the institutes’ early days in Australia also reveal numerous instances of male lack of support, obstruction and opposition. She argues however that such male action was partly understandable in terms of the state of flux in canon law and lack of consistent directions from the Vatican. This was especially so 91
with respect to the ‘newer’ unenclosed, socially active women’s institutes which were founded from the eighteenth century onwards (MacGinley
1994,1996a,1996b, 2001). Liedel (2000) further suggests that the bishops’ attempts to gain greater control over women religious in the
United States in the nineteenth century were related to the mission status of the Church at the time (Liedel 2000: 464), as well as to ethnic divisions (Liedel 2000: 242). Attempts by bishops and clergy to control the activities of women religious in this period were thus not unique to
Australia and were not a simple matter of male opposition to female autonomy.
Issues of autonomy and responsibility were further compounded by difficulties which arose from attempting to transpose to colonial
Australian conditions a form of women’s religious organisation which was originally developed in Europe in the Middle Ages, and was subsequently modified for nineteenth century European social and geographical contexts (MacGinley 1992; 1994; 1996a; 2001). The literature also suggests that having to adapt to a very different geographical and social context impinged on the autonomy of Catholic women religious in the late nineteenth century in other ways. As noted earlier, there was a widespread experience of difficulty in gaining access to sufficient resources, particularly property and finance. This constituted a major constraint on the work the institutes could undertake and on the 92
health and well-being of their members (Sturrock 1994; O’Sullivan 1995;
MacGinley 1996a; Ryan 1996b).
Women and professionalisation
Much of the literature on women’s religious-inspired work is further illuminated by recently developed approaches to the analysis of the professions. This branch of sociological inquiry has moved away from a concern with issues of the classification of occupations based on their traits. Questions about whether a particular occupation qualified as a
‘full’ profession - like medicine or law - or a ‘semi-profession’ such as social work or nursing (Etzioni 1969) are no longer widely pursued.
Both Witz (1992) and Hugman (1991) argue the flawed nature of this approach. Witz deconstructs the gendered nature of the older approach showing that it amounts to stating that ‘because women are not men, semi-professions are not professions’ (Witz 1992: 60).
Recent scholarship has focused on the social processes associated with the development of professionalisation (Hearn 1982;
Hugman 1991; Witz 1992). In these works, the central processes are seen to involve social structures. Hearn (1982) and subsequently
Hugman (1991) and Witz (1992) argued that patriarchy was interrelated with professionalisation. Hearn and Witz showed that accounts of the 93
development of women’s professions ‘need to be grounded within the structural and historical matrix of patriarchy as well as capitalism’ (Witz
1992: 5). As noted earlier, Hearn outlined a process of professionalisation in which women’s emotionality was replaced by more codified responses. This effective ‘defeminisation’ then made it easier for men to enter these ‘women’s’ occupations and occupy positions of power thereby having authority over the women workers and influencing the further professionalisation of the occupation (Hearn 1982: 190ff.)
Witz argued moreover that a universal concept of ‘profession should be replaced with ‘historically specific professional projects’ (Witz
1992: 5). This entails process as well as structures. Her analyses of a number of women’s occupations draw on and elaborate Weber’s concept of occupational closure21, with a number of specific strategies to achieve this being revealed. Witz, like Hearn considered patriarchy and capitalism to be the relevant parameters in an analysis of ‘professional projects’ (Witz 1992: 51). Hugman, focusing specifically on the ‘caring professions’, also includes racism as one of the ‘arenas of power’ in which caring professions operate (Hugman 1992: 8, 28).
21More correctly, both Witz (1992) and Hugman (1991) draw on Parkin’s (1979) development of Weber’s concept of closure (cited in Hugman 1991: 82ff., Witz 1992: 46ff.). 94
Whilst Witz focuses on the actions of and consequences for workers of various strategies of ‘occupational closure’, Hugman’s scope is broader. Hugman argues that power operates within the professions, between workers and those who use their services, and also between one profession and structures outside it. By including ‘clients’ as well as workers, and deconstruction of the notion of ‘caring’, he encompasses the substance of the caring work, not only the occupation as an entity. Hugman notes that caring entails ‘knowledge, moral values and personal traits’ (Mayerhoff 1972 cited in Hugman 1991: 9). This point is relevant to the point made in the historical literature on women and professional work that social work was about ‘being as much as about doing’ (Walton 1975: 14).
Other points in the historical literature on the development of professional social work in Britain can also be usefully allied to insights from professionalisation theory. Walton comments that ‘The desire to understand rather than condemn and to serve responsibly rather than to seek self-aggrandisement for women are the epitome of the best traditions in social work’ (Walton 1975: 83f.). This notion can be used in interrogating the Sydney Sisters’ narratives about their charitable work.
Another valuable inclusion in Hugman’s framework is the differentiation between ‘caring about’ and ‘caring for’ (Hugman 1991: 10ff.), with
‘caring for’ involving close personal contact between professional and 95
client. This distinction is relevant to the historical literature. In applying these definitions it becomes clear that philanthropical individuals who did not have any direct contact with the poor, being involved solely via committee work, did not ‘care for’ the poor, although they may have
‘cared about’ them. This seems to have been the case for the upper class Sydney women in Godden’s study, who were socially isolated from the poor and hence were ignorant of their needs (Godden 1983: 52f.,
104).
Relationships between women charity workers and the poor
The history of women and philanthropy depicts a widespread nineteenth century belief that effective charity required a personal relationship between the philanthropist and the object of their attention
(Summers 1979; Prochaska 1980; Swain 1998, 1999). This belief in the necessity of personal dealings in charitable work has been depicted as a continuation of the practice of home visiting of the poor which had been common in earlier rural, and pre-industrial society (Summers 1979;
Prochaska 1980). As noted earlier, an important ingredient in personal philanthropical contacts were the presumed qualities of the nineteenth century ‘lady’. This was based on a widely-held belief in the moral authority of the upper class woman. Her high level of morality, when propelled by strong religious motivation and channeled by women’s 96
assumed innate tender feelings was thought to guarantee the change in morals and behaviour which were believed necessary to lift the poor sinner out of poverty and misery. Such was the faith in the ability of the
‘lady’ that there was a sense that her influence was virtually a panacea for moral ills (Summers 1979; Godden 1982, 1983; Vicinus 1985).
The picture which is portrayed of Australian women’s charitable relationships is somewhat at odds with the situation in Britain as depicted by Vicinus (1985) and Summers (1979) in that there is little evidence of intimacy between Australian ‘charitable’ women and the poor. Swain found that philanthropical women in Victoria regarded those they assisted as being ‘foreign or alien, and the places in which they live as much a site of mission as faraway lands’ (Swain 1998: 34).
Sydney women philanthropists were found by Godden to have had little empathy for the poor because they had no understanding of their situations. For example she depicted the Sydney City Mission Ladies’
Committee in the 1870s as responding to needs that others said existed, the ladies themselves having no personal knowledge of the problems they sought to address (Godden 1983: 85). This mitigated against the potential effectiveness of their efforts. Godden gives the example of the children’s crèche which was established so that poor women could go out to work. The organisers, in their ignorance of the financial facts of life for women from the lower classes, charged a fee which was 97
approximately a third of women’s wages. Poor women simply could not afford to use the crèche. As a result it was short-lived (Godden 1983:
52-3).
Godden argued that Sydney philanthropical women’s ignorance of the poor continued because they had negligible personal contact with them. Institutional charities with which the Sydney female philanthropists were associated generally employed paid staff, who worked directly with the poor. The middle class women’s isolation from the poor was necessary for them to maintain their unsullied status as ladies (Godden 1983: 52). In Hugman’s terms, they cared ‘about them’ rather than ‘for them’ (Hugman 1991). Moreover, Godden implied that the Catholic Sisters involved in charitable work were no different to laywomen in this respect. She assessed a number of the Sisters as having come from higher class family backgrounds, which she equated with those of the Protestant laywomen she studied. Godden seems to have concluded from this that the Sisters were similarly isolated from the poor, equally ignorant of their lives and had similar relationships as did the Protestant ladies.
In social control interpretations of nineteenth century charity and twentieth century welfare, a direct personal relationship was perceived to allow the philanthropist to exercise judgement and surveillance of the poor person. Ruling class women were attempting to control poor 98
women and children, by requiring certain behaviours of them as a condition of assistance. A check on the moral bona fides of anyone requesting assistance was necessary to prevent imposition and the risk of pauperisation. A continuing relationship between the two parties permitted oversighting of the poor person’s compliance with the moral and behavioural changes recommended by the philanthropist. The social control dimension of charity is emphasised in many historical studies of women and philanthropy (Summers 1979; Prochaska 1980;
Godden 1983, 1986; Vicinus 1985; Swain 1998, 1999), particularly that focusing on work with former prostitutes (Godden 1987; Luddy 1990).
As has been discussed earlier however, this one dimensional depiction is at odds with recent trends in studies of contemporary social work and social welfare, towards more diverse interpretations of relationships.
Given that there were other Protestant charity workers in late nineteenth century Sydney who were closer to the poor, as discussed in Chapter 2,
(O’Brien 1988; 199; Garton: 1999: 54 Ball 2000: 83ff.; Campbell 2002), it is likely that their stance may also have differed from the ‘dominant’ one generally depicted in the literature.
Other literature which includes but does not emphasise the Sisters’ charitable work does not in the main support Godden’s conclusion about the nature of the relationships between the Sisters and the poor.
Certainly it seems that the Sisters were not as socially isolated from 99
those they sought to assist as were the ladies. Various groups of
Sisters in ninteenth century Sydney lived under the same roof as those they sought to assist - for example the Sisters of Charity (O’Sullivan
1995), the Sisters of the Good Samaritan (Kelleher 2000; Walsh 2001), and the Sisters of St Joseph (Burford 1991). These works also indicate that the Sisters were acquainted with the poor through their visitation work to the homes of the poor, asylums for the aged, reformatories and gaols.
Literature on the charitable work of Catholic Sisters in other places also suggests that the Sisters had a relationship to the poor different from that described by Godden. Studies of nineteenth century North
American Sisterhoods have commented on the Sisters’ understanding of the poor. This was attributed to similarities of class backgrounds or the fact that the Sisters lived in the same neighbourhoods as poor people
(Hoy 1997, 2002; Anderson 2000). Hoy contrasts the basis of the
Sisters’ understanding with that of the later settlement house workers in
Chicago:
nuns did not go out looking for a neighbourhood in which to begin their work; their homes were always in the urban, immigrant neighbourhoods they served. Until the 1880s the Little Sisters of the Poor occupied the building that became Hull House. (Hoy 1997: 293, note 73)
The point is also made that the Sisters’ vow of poverty partly countered economic differences within the conventual community and between it 100
and the people it served (Anderson 2000: 67). Hoy found that the
Chicago Sisters, through their understanding, showed ‘compassion’ and
‘respect for the concerns of poor families’ (Hoy 1997: 276).
There is other evidence in the literature which suggests that there may have been a difference in the attitude of Catholic women religious compared to that of other charity workers. Whilst Luddy (1990) found little difference between the charity of the Sisters and that of Protestant laywomen in Ireland, others did. For example, Clear found Irish women religious who worked with prostitutes to have been less judgmental than laywomen engaged in this area of work (Clear 1987: 163). As noted earlier, Ryan also found differences in the work of women religious with girls in industrial schools in Ireland. The government industrial schools gave priority to protecting society from incipient delinquency, whereas the Sisters’ institutions were more oriented to equipping the girls with skills that would enable them to gain employment (Ryan 1996b). This is consistent with the finding noted in Chapter 2 of this thesis that the Irish understood that social structures, and not simply individual moral failing, caused poverty.
It seems therefore, that Godden’s position that the Sisters had a similar relationship with the poor as did Protestant laywomen in Sydney
(Godden 1983) is at odds with the depiction of the empathic 101
relationships of Sisterhoods in North America. The nature of the relationships between the Sydney Sisters and the poor with whom they worked therefore warrants further examination.
Conclusion
Historical studies of women, religion and charity include several themes which will be used to interpret the data in this thesis. One theme is the expansion of the ‘woman’s sphere’ for middle and upper class women. The extension of the accepted domain of women’s activity through religiously-motivated work was associated with women engaging in more independent ‘work’ outside the family, including an expanded range of charitable activities, and the acquisition by women of skills not normally included within the accepted norms of conduct for middle class women of the time. This expansion included changes in both structural as well as individual, psychological and emotional dimensions. Gendered social processes feature strongly in the historical studies which make use of the ‘separate spheres’ construct.
Scholarship on professionalisation also includes gender, as well as showing that other inter-related social structures and processes were involved in the development of the ‘caring’ occupations. These analyses provide additional tools for interpreting the documentary sources on the Sisters’ charitable work. They include the exercise of 102
power in terms of race and colonialism, as well as gender and class.
The notion of ‘hierarchy’, within a profession, between caring professionals and their ‘clients’, and between the profession and aspects of its social context is also relevant for the present study. The idea of ‘occupational closure’ as part of the professionalisation process
(Parkin 1979; Hugman 1991; Witz 1992) is also important.
The second theme in the historical literature on women, religion and charity is the relationship between women charity workers and the poor. This has been portrayed as having being shaped by religious motivation and being hinged on differences in social class between the two parties. This theme is congruent with ‘social control’ interpretations in welfare history generally, as discussed in Chapter 2. More specifically the evangelical nature of nineteenth century religion was found to have influenced philanthropists to be concerned with modifying the ‘immoral’ and ‘improvident’ behaviour of the poor, which was widely believed to be the cause of their plight.
Literature on charity and early social work in Britain reveals a diverse pattern of assistance, some of which was attributable to religious differences (Forsythe 1995). However, historical studies of women’s charity in nineteenth century Australia have shown little diversity or differentiation. The dominant approach has been shown to be one that 103
was compatible with the principles of the British Poor Laws of the 1830s.
The apparent uniformity in charity in nineteenth century New South
Wales is partly because of the strength of social control analyses and partly because there has been so little research done on women’s charitable work that there has been little opportunity to discern diversity.
Another reason is suggested by the work of Fessenden (2002) who notes that in American women’s history, the centrality of religion in the lives of ‘good’ women was not deconstructed and effectively masked other differences. The effects of differences in religious beliefs and theological interpretations amongst women charity workers in late nineteenth century New South Wales deserves greater attention.
The literature on British women’s philanthropy depicted the moral influence of charitable women on the poor as requiring a personal relationship akin to friendship between the two parties (Summers 1979;
Prochaska 1980; Vicinus 1985). However, it seems that in both Britain and Australia the relationships between women charity workers and the poor were not often friendships. Scholarship on nineteenth century women’s philanthropy in Sydney and Melbourne noted its characteristics as including the philanthropists’ lack of understanding of, and empathy for, the poor (Godden 1983; Swain 1998). This was found to be rooted in the philanthropists’ social isolation from and consequent ignorance of the poor, and a stance which embodied the ‘lady’ philanthropists’ 104
assumed moral and class superiority. There are several insights from the sociological literature on the caring professions which are congruent with these historical findings. One concerns the hierarchical power relations identified as existing between caring professionals and clients
(Hugman 1991). Another pertinent insight is the distinction between
‘caring about ‘ and ‘caring for’ discussed above (Hugman 1991: 10ff.).
‘Caring for’ requires direct contact and involvement, whilst it would be possible to be isolated and ignorant from the poor but still ‘care about’ them. Knowledge from personal acquaintance and dealings would seem to be necessary to ‘care for’ someone and a pre-requisite for a more equal ‘caring’ relationship, that is, one in which the recipient of charity is not dominated by the charity provider.
One researcher who has considered the charitable work of Catholic women religious in the context of 'women's sphere philanthropy' in nineteenth century Sydney is Godden (1983, 1986). She portrayed the
Sisters’ charity as generally being similar to that of middle and upper- class, lay Protestant philanthropists, in terms of the purpose of charitable work and the attitude taken towards the poor. This contrasts with the suggestion in the literature on the charitable work of Catholic
Sisters in North America that their relationships with the poor were more empathic than those of other charity workers because the Sisters had a better understanding of the situation of the poor. The two factors 105
suggested as having influenced this were the social class similarities between Sisters and the poor and the Sisters’ familiarity and knowledge of the poor from living amongst them. As noted earlier in this chapter, the literature on Australian social welfare canvassed in the Chapter 2 also suggests that some providers of charity had an approach to the poor which differed from the dominant ‘anti-pauperism’ stance in late nineteenth century Sydney, particularly those providers who lived close to the poor (Cummins 1971: 9; O’Brien 1988: 199; Garton 1990: 54;
Rathbone 1994: 69; Ball 2000).
It seems therefore that further examination is warranted of the
Sisters’ work with the poor in Sydney in order to clarify the nature of the power relations between the two parties.
Aspects of the Sisters’ charitable work which should be investigated include their attitude to the poor and their knowledge of the lives of the poor. Of significance for the former are the dimensions of a
Catholic, rather than Protestant, stance towards poverty and charity, and also the Sisters’ understanding from Irish experience of the causes of poverty. Another aspect of the Sydney Sisters’ social welfare work warranting investigation pertains to their membership of Catholic women’s religious institutes. This is important for two reasons. First, given the importance of the ‘mentalities’ of those undertaking charitable 1 06
work (Walton 1975; Hearn 1982; Dickey 1987b), it is necessary to take into account the fact that the Sisterhoods had specific, codified value positions in relation to the poor and to work with them. Secondly, the sociological literature alerts us to the role of hierarchy and bureaucracy in the process of professionalisation. Catholic women’s religious institutes were large, formally structured organisations which were also located within the larger, patriarchal and hierarchical Catholic Church.
It is inconceivable that these features did not shape the charitable work of the Sisters in Sydney in this period.
The insights from the several bodies of historical literature considered in this chapter and the previous one, canvassing poverty, charity, women and religion, as well as historical and sociological literature on professionalisation, thus provide some analytical tools for this thesis. The following chapter outlines the methodology which was used to analyse and interpret the documents pertaining to the four
Sydney Sisterhoods’ experience of providing charity in late nineteenth century Sydney. 107
CHAPTER 4
METHODOLOGY
‘WE HEAR NOTHING FROM THE GOOD SISTERS THEMSELVES. THE SOUND OF THEIR VOICE IS NOT HEARD’
Introduction
This chapter will discuss the method of investigation adopted, its assumptions and associated issues. The thesis is an historical study which takes a inductive qualitative approach to the analysis of documentary sources. A qualitative approach was chosen because the aim was not to determine a unitary truth or to draw universal conclusions, but rather to understand the work of a certain group of women in a particular time and location. The thesis is not intended to be a comprehensive catalogue of the Sisters’ charitable endeavours or a detailed sequential history of developments over the quarter century of interest. Neither does it make any claim to be a definitive depiction of the charitable work of Catholic Sisterhoods in late nineteenth century
New South Wales. It is assumed ‘that no picture is ever complete – that we need to employ many perspectives, hear many voices before we can achieve a deep understanding of social phenomena’ (Lincoln and
Denzin 2001: 1044). The thesis proceeds on the basis that it is contributing to an ‘ongoing conversation’ (Carey et al 2001: 71) about 108
the charitable work of Catholic women religious in the late nineteenth century and therefore about the antecedents of social work in Australia.
As noted in Chapter 1, the work of Catholic women religious is missing from various branches of Australian history for several reasons including a conceptualisation of social work which has truncated its history; because of the way Australian welfare history has been written, and of biases associated with masculinism and with religion (including sectarianism and secularisation). As a multiply marginalised group it is not surprising that the Sisters are not visible. These problems may be regarded as having been due, at least in part, to approaches to research which have privileged a particular epistemology in which a single truth was sought as a contribution to a grand narrative and in which accounts which stressed ‘order, restraint and continuity’ were valued (Plummer
2001: 12). Problems arising from such an approach are not restricted to the history of the charitable work of Catholic Sisters in late nineteenth century Sydney, and in recent decades these issues have been addressed by developments in qualitative social science research (see for example Denzin and Lincoln 2001; Bryamn 2001; Plummer 2001) and in approaches to writing history (Burke 1991; Sharpe 1991). 109
‘New history’ and interpretive social science approaches
In history, new approaches have been developed in response to dissatisfaction with the traditional history paradigm. The latter claimed to be objective (Burke 1991: 4), was concerned with events of national and international significance, and was written from the perspective of the privileged, which usually equated with a bourgeois, male, white, colonialist position. The ‘new history’, which built on the approach of the French Annales school (Sharpe 1991: 31), included various ‘history from below’ approaches such as labour history, feminist history and history of everyday life (Lerner 1990; Burke 1991; Sharpe 1991; Shapiro
1994). These aim to present the historical experiences of ‘ordinary’ people rather than those of ‘top people’ and to foster identity in their readers (Sharpe 1991: 36). However to be effective such histories must be contextualised and cannot be separated from questions of power and social structure (Sharpe 1991: 33).
In the social sciences there have also been developments in approaches to qualitative research, including relatively exotic flowerings such as performance ethnography, which is the presentation of research findings in the form of dance, drama or music (McCall 2001). Some concepts and assumptions are however not novel. Denzin and Lincoln
(2001: 1) point out that interpretive approaches to knowledge existed well before the most recent developments in qualitative research, and 110
Plummer reminds us that sociology has always had a ‘triple focus on biography, history and structure’ (Plummer 2001: 6). As in the ‘new history ‘ approaches, Plummer stresses that ‘the concrete human must always be located within this historically specific culture, for the individual becomes a very different animal under different social orders.’
(Plummer 2001: 7). These developments are part of the ‘post-modern turn’ in the social sciences and humanities. They have meant that there is now much less distance between the approaches of historians and of social scientists than previously:
The challenges of postmodernism have disrupted an easy acceptance of dominant narratives in the humanities, and the historical community is more open to multiple readings of the past and a wider variety of texts as sources of historical explanation… (Carey, et al 2001: 70)
The methodology of the present study incorporates the perspectives common to ‘new history’ and interpretive, qualitative social science research in attempting to render the Sisters’ charitable work visible and to understand the Sisters as living, feeling, interacting human beings in a particular social context. In analysing the Sisters’ work as a women’s ‘professionalising project’ the thesis seeks to understand what the Sisters were attempting to do, what factors influenced the way they went about this and particularly, how they experienced their situation.
The most significant part of the ground shared by interpretive social science and history relates to assumptions about subjectivity and 111
interpretation. Historians have described the capacity to interpret sources which depict the subjective reality of others as ‘historical mindedness’ or ‘cultural empathy’ (Shafer 1974: 156). McLay refers to it as becoming aware of the ‘historical horizons’ of those being studied
(McLay 1992: 20). At the most basic level ‘cultural empathy’ is necessary to avoid seeing the past solely in terms of the present. In writing welfare history there is a danger of judging the past by criteria informed by present knowledge, or of seeing the past solely as steps in the inexorable progress towards the present arrangements. Both tendencies have been evident in the writing of Australian welfare history
(Dickey 1987b: 83).
Interpretive social scientists argue for much the same process, using similar terms. Historical mindedness is ‘the ability to accurately take the role of acting others and view the world from their perspective’
(Gottschalk, Kluckhohn and Angell 1945, cited in Denzin 1978: 243).
This call for ‘historical mindedness’ has been made in relation to history generally (Carr 1974: 105; Shafer 1974: 656), and in relation to the writing of welfare history (Dickey 1987b: 83ff.; Chambers 1992: 493), as well as in interpretive social science. Moreover, commentators on the writing of welfare history have underscored the importance of focusing on the values, mentalities and available options of those providing assistance to the poor (Dickey 1987a:xii, 1987b: 83; Gavreau and 112
Christie cited in Hutchinson 2001: 237). To do this requires knowledge both of the actors’ subjective experience of their situations, including ways of thinking and reactions, as well as knowledge of the real world circumstances impinging on the actors. Like historians, interpretive social scientists speak of the need for the researcher to have an
‘empathic identification with the actor’ (Schwandt 2001: 192) and they echo the historians’ call for knowledge of ‘historical horizons’ in saying that ‘one must grasp the situation in which human actions make (or acquire) meaning in order to say one has an understanding of the particular action’ (Outhwaite 1975 cited in Schwandt 2001: 193). One particular interpretive social science approach which is very close to that taken by ‘new’ historians is ‘life history’ (Denzin 1978; Plummer 2001;
Tierney 2001). The main thrust of this approach is the development of understanding of ‘the subjective behaviour of individuals or groups’ via the use of documents (Denzin 1978: 215). The approach assumes that the perspective of the actors is the key to understanding their conduct and that the meaning they ascribe to their situation is the one to be prized, with the objective situation and the perspectives of others being included but as subordinate to the perspective of the subjects themselves (Denzin 1978: 216). This depth of understanding is achieved via a loop or circular process in which the part, or particular action, can only be understood by ‘grasping the whole’ of the situation and vice versa. The process is one of constant switching between 113
looking at the specific in terms of the broader picture, then modifying the broader picture in the light of the new insights about the particular, and then once again refocusing on the particular (Schwandt 2001: 193).
The position taken in this study is that it is possible to understand the Sisters’ charitable work in terms of the way they made sense of their situation; the way they understood the options available to them; and their perspectives on their work; by studying their documents and by learning about the broader contexts in which they lived and worked.
The latter included their spiritual and organisational contexts and the various dimensions of their broader social context in late nineteenth century New South Wales society. The understanding of the particulars of the Sisters‘ work which was achieved then enriched the understanding of the broader picture of charitable work in the late nineteenth century. The first methodological challenge in the investigation was therefore to acquire an empathic understanding of the contexts in which the Sisters’ work was undertaken.
Developing empathy or ‘historical mindedness’
The initial task in developing ‘empathy’ was to become familiar with the social context of the Sisters’ work that is, the demography and living conditions in Sydney and the broad social issues and concerns of the period. The second task was to ‘tune in’ more closely to the Sisters’ 114
situations. The broader preliminary task was undertaken by reading secondary sources such the relevant volume in the Oxford History of
Australia (Kingston 1993) and works on life in Sydney such as that of
Kingston (1975), Kelly (1978), Gibbs et al (1981), Fitzgerald (1987),
Mayne (1992), and Karskens (1997). The next step was to focus on the
Sydney Catholic community, to become familiar with the social position and perspectives, world view and concerns of its various components, that is laity, clergy and hierarchy, and women religious. This was done by reading works such as those by O’Brien (1952), Waldersee (1974),
Willis (1977), O’Farrell (1977a, 1988), Hogan (1987), Hosie (1987),
Campion (1987,1994), Turner (1992) and Edward (1996).
Development of a contextual understanding of the social location, aims, ethos and mentalities of women religious in the nineteenth century was achieved by recourse to a number of works of broader scope, including studies on women and philanthropy (for example Prochaska
1980; Luddy 1995); on the historical development of women’s religious institutes (such as Clear 1987 ; MacGinley 1992; 1994; 1996a; 1996b;
MacNamara 1996) and on women and religion in Australia (Willis 1977;
Hutchinson and Campion 1994; Carey 1996; West 1997), and Catholic women religious in Australia (for example O’Donoghoe 1977; McGrath
1988; Allen 1989; Institute of Religious Studies 1992, 1994, 1996; 115
O’Sullivan 1995; Killerby 1996; Burley 1998, 1999; Zimmerman 1999a,
2000a; Nelson 2001; Hellwig 2001).
As well as these secondary sources, primary sources were also used to develop ‘historical mindedness’, the major one being the Sydney independent Catholic newspaper the Freeman's Journal (FJ). The
Freeman’s also served as a source of data on the particulars of the
Sisters’ work as it contained information not found elsewhere. 22
Although it was a very rich source of information on Church events its content was not restricted to this. The Church news in the Freeman's included the texts of sermons, pastoral letters, speeches and public addresses made by members of the clergy, hierarchy and prominent laymen. There was extensive coverage and support for fundraising, including for the Sisters’ charitable and educational endeavours. The
Freeman’s also included extensive reporting and editorial comment on
New South Wales politics, and other types of ‘secular’ news from
Sydney, from ‘country correspondents’ and from Ireland. It was also very involved in the sectarian ‘warfare’ which characterised the period and influenced the Catholic hierarchy’s prioritising of the provision of
22 One such event was a meeting held in 1878 to plan for a Servants’ Home and Training School which the Sisters of Mercy intended to open. The news item contained information not revealed elsewhere about a disagreement between the Mercy Superior and the men at the meeting. This incident is discussed in Chapter 5 (FJ 18 May 1878: 10).
116
Catholic schooling, which directly affected the Sisters (Walker 1976;
O’Farrell 1988; Hogan 1987).
The Freeman’s Journal reported episodes of overtly anti-Catholic behaviour by politicians, government officials, government funded organisations, Protestant clergymen and other newspapers (chiefly the
Sydney Herald). These reports contrasted with the Freeman’s celebratory chronicling of Catholic achievements, including examination successes and concerts in the Sisters’ schools, and the never-ending inauguration or completion of building works for charitable institutions, schools and churches. The Freeman's Journal thus provided some detail of what particular groups of women religious were doing and how they were regarded within the Catholic and wider community, as well as news of events in the Sydney Catholic world and a Catholic perspective on wider current affairs.23
Whilst the ‘tuning in’ to the social context of late nineteenth century
Sydney and to the state of evolution of Catholic women’s religious institutes was begun as a necessary first stage in the investigation prior to research with the documentary sources in the archives, it also continued over the duration of the study as new works were published.
23 The editions of the Freeman's Journal which were read are listed in Appendix 1.
117
Thus the methodology included an ongoing switching of focus ‘from the part to the whole’ and back again, noted above as a characteristic of interpretive social science research.
Methodological issues
There were several methodological issues associated with this particular study. One problem was to do with the availability of records which gave access to the Sisters’ views and experience of their charitable work. First, there was a paucity of records pertaining to the
Sisters’ charitable work. As most of the Sisters’ charitable endeavours did not receive a government subsidy and were directly administered by the Sisters concerned, there were fewer records kept than for charities which received public funding. (An exception was the work of the
Sisters of the Good Samaritan at the NSW Government’s Catholic
Orphan School, Parramatta). Another reason for the scarcity of records was that some documents had been removed from the Sisters’ keeping by members of the Church hierarchy. Many documents of the Sisters of
St Joseph were taken by Bishop Reynolds at the time of his dispute with them in the 1870s (Gardiner 1993: 329, note 2). Cardinal Moran is also said to have ‘borrowed’ documents and photos from ‘all over the country’, including from the Sisters of the Good Samaritan, for his history of the Australasian Church, published in the mid 1890s (McEwen 118
1989: 46). In addition, at the time of undertaking the present research some documents of the Sisters of St Joseph were not available because they had been required for the process of Mary MacKillop’s beatification.24
The second aspect of the relative scarcity of material on the
Sisters’ subjective experience is to do with the nature of membership of the institutes. Those joining a women’s religious institute were required to sever, or at least substantially loosen, their ties with their former lives.
The ethos of ‘abnegation of self’ resulted in a suppression of individuality in order to adopt a spiritually-based, communal identity.
This meant that the Sisters produced fewer personal documents such as diaries and letters than might have been expected of lay women of their time (MacNamara 1996: 616ff.; Burley 1999: 275). Fortunately there are some personal documents, and they provide a rich source of insight into the Sisters’ experience of their lives and work, revealing their similarities to other women of their time, as well as their differences. A related issue is that many of the Sisters’ narrative documents, such as histories, and accounts of the ‘early Sisters’, are communal documents, in that they are compilations of records kept by a number of women over time, or their authorship is uncertain. Thus when attempting to see the
24 Personal communication from staff of the Archives of the Sisters of St Joseph, North Sydney. 119
Sisters as living, breathing human beings in a particular social context there are some difficulties in doing so via approaches which assume documents pertain to the lives of individuals.
There was another methodological issue in relation to the Sisters’ narratives. This concerns their ‘objectivity’. Until recently many histories of the women’s religious institutes were not in the ‘academic mainstream’ and have been celebratory, rather than critical (Burley
1999: 276ff.). Two points to note here are that first, until recently
‘insider’ accounts of the lives and work of women religious were often the only ones available, and secondly, such works were not primarily intended to be ‘objective’ histories for the consumption of those outside the institutes, but were a means for maintaining, revitalizing and passing on an institute’s culture and identity (Smyth 1997: 103ff; Burley 1999:
276). When the purpose of research includes ascertaining and considering the mentalities of those whose actions are of interest, this material cannot be ignored, and in certain instances these ‘insider’ narratives are the only source of information on particular aspects of the
Sisters’ lives and works. In a ‘modernist’ social science approach the
‘celebratory’ and ‘biased’ nature of these narratives would be a constraint on producing generalisable ‘truth’. However, for an interpretive approach focusing on understanding the situation or events from the perspective of the narrators themselves, this is not a concern. 120
A further issue relates to the use of ‘official’ documents, such as the institutes’ rules, constitutions and guidebooks. These reflect, not so much individual subjectivities of the Sisters but the values, ethos and
‘communal identity’ which they were expected to adopt, including the approach to be taken by Sisters in their work with the poor. There is little ‘proof’ that these prescriptions were internalised by all the Sisters or were followed in practice. This is a particular issue in relation to the
Sisters’ charitable work. As discussed in earlier chapters, in studies of both historical and contemporary social welfare, there is a widespread skepticism concerning the rhetoric of the providers of assistance. This is perhaps because of the previous long-term dominance of ‘top down’ histories of charity and welfare and the subsequent embrace of a ‘social control’ interpretation of the relationship between the poor and charity providers, which has been seen as part of broader neo-Foucauldian understanding of systems of surveillance (Forsythe 1995: 15). Basically many of those who sought to assist the poor have been regarded as
‘oppressors’ and until very recently there has been little concern with uncovering diversity in approaches to the provision of charity. The penchant for binary oppositional systems has meant that the alternative perspectives sought have been those of various groups of the poor, rather than of other providers of assistance. This raises the possibility that an attempt to understand the Sisters’ intentions and stance towards the poor which draws on their own documents will be regarded with 121
cynicism. For this reason, in this study some external sources of information on the Sisters’ work have been used because of the opportunity they provide for triangulation (Bryman 2001: 274, 454-456;
Denzin and Lincoln 2001: 3ff). External sources also provide essential information about the context in which the Sisters carried out their work, including the actions of other players and their attitudes towards the
Sisters’ work. However, as noted on p. 111 above, it is the Sisters’ perspective which is ‘prized’ (Denzin 1978: 216).
As with other historical studies where primary sources are fragmentary in nature, the Sisters’ archival sources have been supplemented with secondary material. This was essential for knowledge of some historical events and actors located outside the convents but which were directly relevant to the Sisters’ lives and work.
Recourse also was had to available secondary sources focusing on the
Sisters when primary sources were incomplete. The former included research undertaken by qualified professional historians (such as
Killerby 1996; Walsh 2001). Other secondary sources were based on historical studies written by members of the institutes in question, referred to above. Indeed the bulk of secondary sources on the
Sisterhoods were studies conducted by members of the institute in question. Whilst these authors were not from the same historical time as the Sisters they wrote about, such works have the advantage of 122
having being written with an understanding of the earlier Sisters’ identity and purpose whilst also having met the requirements of ‘academic rigour’.
External sources
In addition to the Freeman’s Journal, other primary sources used included material in the Sydney Catholic Archdiocesan Archives and government reports. The latter included government statistical reports; the ‘Minutes of Evidence’ and ‘Reports’ of the 1873/4 Royal
Commission into Public Charities; Reports to the New South Wales
Parliament by the Inspector of Public Charities, and by the President of the State Children’s Relief Board. The government sources covered the work of the Sisters of the Good Samaritan at the Roman Catholic
Orphan School, Parramatta. Evidence to the Charities Commission given by one of the Sisters also highlighted their work with delinquent girls and former prostitutes. This evidence was able to be compared and contrasted with evidence given by the Matron of the Protestant female refuge.
The annual reports from the Inspector of Public Charities and the
President of the State Children’s Relief Department similarly allowed the
Sisters’ work at the Catholic Orphan School to be seen in a wider context, particularly government perceptions of the causes of poverty in 123
families, and government policy on how to respond to poor parents and their children. These sources external to the Sisters’ archives provided information on other actors, structures and forces in the social contexts of the Sisters’ charitable work. They thus permitted a greater understanding of the Sisters’ work via adding to the ‘larger picture’ which used in the process of enhancing understanding by going from ‘the part to the whole and back again’. In modernist terms these external sources also provided some opportunities for ‘triangulation’ between the Sisters’ subjective accounts and observable ‘results’ of their stated approach, at least in relation to work with destitute children at the Catholic Orphan
School. It must be noted that the statements of the prescribed approaches the Sisters were to take in their work, and other statements reflecting the Sisters’ intentions, are not assumed to be evidence of their actions.
The period of interest
The last quarter of the nineteenth century was chosen as the focus of the present study because this period was an important one in the development of social welfare in New South Wales. At this stage the state took significant steps to ensure a greater role in the provision of services for the poor, and social regulation generally. As Dickey said there was ‘a shift in pace… starting in about 1870’ (Dickey 1987a:xv). 124
There were numerous pieces of social legislation in this period, including legislation pertaining to employment, education, and charitable provision
(Dickey 1980: 67-140). This period was also marked at either end by
Royal Commissions into Public Charities, which occurred in 1873-4 and in 1898. As a result of the first inquiry, a State Children’s Relief
Department was established (albeit belatedly) in 1881, and government orphanage care of destitute children was replaced with boarding out in foster homes by 1886 (Horsburgh 1975, 1976, 1977a, 1977b; Dickey
1980; Ramsland 1974,1986). This was a major alteration, both in the arrangements for caring for destitute children, and in the extent of direct involvement by government. In terms of the history of women’s involvement in charitable work in Sydney the period was significant because the 1880s has been depicted as the zenith of ‘woman’s sphere’ philanthropy (Godden 1983).
The 1890s was a time of economic depression which produced widespread unemployment and poverty. It has been said that the subsequent inability of existing forms of charity to deal with such a situation was said to be one of the catalysts for eventual acceptance by the state of the responsibility for income maintenance (Dickey 1980:
96ff; Garton 1990: 84-5). Certainly the 1890s saw the beginnings of a major change in perspective, with the notion of universal rights gaining prominence (Dickey 1987b: xv). The turn of the century also brought 125
Federation. 1900 was the last year before the Australian
Commonwealth came into existence and made possible Commonwealth government provision for social welfare.
The period was also an important one in terms of Catholic Church history in New South Wales. In this period the education question was finally settled with government spending on education going into a system of public schools, rather than church-run (but government funded) schools. The consequent moves by the Catholic Church hierarchy to establish a network of Catholic schools operated by women’s and men’s religious institutes in this period also meant there was a rapid increase in the numbers of Sisterhoods and Sisters in New
South Wales (Fogarty 1959: 280; MacGinley 1996a). As many institutes undertook charitable work alongside their work in education, there was an increase in the number and range of the charitable works of
Sisterhoods. The period also saw the end of the era of English
Benedictine rule of the Sydney Archdiocese, with the installation of the
Irishman Patrick Francis Moran as Archbishop (later Cardinal) in 1884
(O’Farrell 1977) (see Table 2, page 128).
Selection of Sisterhoods to study
The obvious first criterion for selecting which Sisterhoods to include in the study was that they needed to have been engaged in works of charity outside their convents. The second criterion was that they had to 126
have been engaged in such work for most of the period concerned. As
Godden had found the 1880s to be the decade of the greatest expansion of ‘woman’s sphere’ philanthropy in Sydney it seemed appropriate to include only communities who were active over this whole decade (Godden 1983: 131, 180). The end of 1880 was thus chosen as the cut-off point for inclusion, that is, only institutes which were established in Sydney by this time were included. As it happened, this point also marked the beginning of a five year ‘break’ in the arrival of new women’s religious institutes in Sydney.25 There was also a pragmatic advantage in only including institutes which had been active over most of the period. It was hoped that a lengthier involvement in charity would mean that more documents would have been produced and thus would be likely to be available as a source of data.
Four of the first five communities of women religious to be established in Sydney met both these conditions of being ‘socially active’ and being involved in charity over most of the quarter century under consideration. These were the Sisters of Charity who arrived at the end of 1838, the Sisters of the Good Samaritan, established in
Sydney in 1857, the Sisters of Mercy (of Church Hill and later North
25 After Mary MacKillop’s Sisters of St Joseph established themselves in the inner Sydney slum district of The Rocks in 1880 no other ‘socially active’ institutes made foundations until November 1885 when a community of Sisters of the Little Company of Mary arrived (MacGinley 1996a: 260).
127
Sydney), who arrived in 1863 and Mary MacKillop’s Sisters of St.
Joseph whose first Sydney community was founded in 1880. The
‘enclosed’ community of Benedictine nuns who established their convent at Subiaco near Parramatta in the 1840s was thus not included, nor were numerous later arriving Sisterhoods, many of whom engaged in charitable work.
Conclusion
The methodology adopted in this historical study of the experience of four groups of Catholic Sisters in providing charity in late nineteenth century Sydney is an inductive, interpretive one. Its purpose is to engage in a critical but empathic understanding of the Sisters’ situation from their own accounts and other documents, seeing them as women of their time, place and culture, focusing on their values and mentalities as well as on contextual constraints. For a research purpose such as this, a qualitative methodology is appropriate. The thesis uses a structural analysis of the documentary data which draws on professionalisation theory and constructs from historical scholarship on women, religion and charitable work.
The thesis does not seek to produce either a detailed sequential record of the work of the four groups of Sisters studied, or a definitive account of the 128
charitable work of all Catholic women religious in Sydney or further afield in the nineteenth century. The findings will not be generalisable beyond the four groups of women studied, but this does not mean that they will be of little value. It is anticipated that the thesis will contribute to knowledge of the diversity of past approaches to working with the poor, to a greater understanding of the place of religious values in social work, and to knowledge about the history of women’s engagement in professional occupations. It is hoped therefore that this thesis will raise further questions for research into the history of social work in Australia. 129
Table 2
Episcopal Office-Holders, Archdiocese of Sydney
John Bede Polding
Vicar Apostolate of New Holland, 1838 - 1842
Archbishop of Sydney 1842 -1877
Roger Vaughan
Archbishop of Sydney 1877 - 1883*
Patrick Francis Moran
Archbishop of Sydney 1884 - 1911
Cardinal 1885
* During the period between Vaughan’s death and the appointment of Moran, the archdiocese was administered by Fr John F. Sheridan, who had been Vaughan’s Vicar-General. (O’Farrell 1977a: 237).
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CHAPTER 5
THE SISTERS’ WORK IN CONTEXT: THE CASE OF THE HOUSE OF MERCY
Introduction
This chapter begins the examination of the experience of the
Sisters in undertaking social welfare work in late nineteenth century
Sydney. It is a case study of one of the four groups included in this research and examines the factors which affected the establishment of one of the key charitable works of the Sisters of Mercy. The case study is presented at this point in the thesis because it reveals important aspects of the socio-historical context shared by all four institutes which were relevant to the shaping of their charitable work. Thus, there are many elements of this particular story which were relevant to the other three institutes. The case study focuses on the Sisters' attempts over twenty-five years to establish a particular charitable venture. In terms of the literature discussed in Chapters 2 and 3 the case study pertains to extending the ‘woman’s sphere’ and the structures and processes involved in this, rather than to the nature of the Sisters' relationships with the poor. Investigation of this latter dimension commences in Chapter 6.
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In Chapter 3 a number of inter-related social structures and processes were identified as being significant for women’s ‘expansion of their sphere’ and the development of professional work. Many of these are evident in this case study of the ‘House of Mercy’, which reveals the importance for the Sisters’ charitable work of their location within the
Sydney Catholic Church and community as well as within late nineteenth century New South Wales society. It was noted in Chapter 3 that such factors operated within the caring professions and were not divorced from their operation in the wider society (Hugman 1991). One factor common to both the historical and sociological literature canvassed in
Chapter 3 was patriarchy, in the form of masculine power and authority and gendered norms of conduct. In this case study of the work of the
Sisters of Mercy, patriarchy is seen to be intertwined with other structural elements of the Sisters’ social context. Most of these factors took effect via the Sisters’ access to the resources needed to undertake their chosen charitable work.
It must be noted that the institutional Church was both male- dominated and hierarchical in structure, both being features which have been found to have shaped the development of caring professions
(Hugman 1991). Women’s participation in nineteenth century charity work (neophyte social work) was often dependent on male patronage, especially when women did not have independent means to finance 132
such ventures (Walton 1975). The work of the Sydney Sisters of Mercy was no exception. The Sisters’ work was also shaped by sectarianism, which overlapped with anti-Irish racism in New South Wales society.
These inter-related factors impinged upon the Sisters from the beginning of their Sydney foundation, in fact patriarchal forces which affected the
Sisters’ work were in operation during their voyage to Sydney.
The small group of Mercy Sisters arrived in Sydney in 1865 bound for Bathurst about 100 miles west of Sydney. They were not consulted by the male Church hierarchy about changes in diocesan boundaries which were made after they had agreed to Archbishop Polding’s request to come to New South Wales. This meant that the Sisters’ destination and the size of their conventual community were altered, that accommodation had not been prepared for them in Sydney and that they were therefore to undertake different work from that agreed upon.
All of these factors were related to the gendered nature of authority and decision-making in the Catholic Church. The changes adversely affected the Sisters’ resources and their consequent ability to undertake charitable work. Also impacting on the Sisters’ wherewithal were the inadequacy of the finances of the Sydney Catholic Church and community to meet the demands upon it, and differences in priorities held by the Sisters on the one hand and by the local Church hierarchy on the other. 133
Factors impinging on the Sisters from their location in the broader
New South Wales social context also affected their financial resources.
Sectarianism (and for Catholics in Sydney the closely associated, anti-
Irish racism) impinged upon the Sisters’ work in a number of ways. As
Catholic women religious, the Sisters found it difficult to acquire property. Sectarianism and growing secularisation also affected the
Sisters of Mercy via several areas of government policy, that is, in relation to charities’ eligibility for subsidy, and changes in education policy culminating in the discontinuation of government funding for church schools. Both of these policy areas were driven by the government’s desire to have a more direct role in providing services and regulating social life, and both had an element of sectarianism.
Because of these factors of the hierarchical nature of the Catholic
Church, patriarchy within and outside the Church, sectarianism and racism, the Sisters of Mercy struggled to survive as a community in
Sydney. The result was that commencing one of their core charitable works remained an unmet ideal for more than a quarter of a century.
Investigating the Sisters’ relationships with masculine authority
As discussed in Chapter 3, gender-related processes have been identified in the historical and sociological literature as being important determinants of women’s involvement in professional work. For Catholic 134
women religious in Australia and elsewhere the nature of the relationships between them and the male Church hierarchy has been found to be significant (O’Donoghoe 1972; West 1994, 1997; Clear
1990; MacNamara 1996; Killerby 1996; Liedel 2000). Within Australia, the battles between the foundress of the Sisters of St Joseph, Mother
Mary Mackillop, and bishops in Adelaide, Bathurst and Brisbane are well-known (for example Gardiner 1993; O’Brien 1994). Also in the public domain, although perhaps less familiar, are the troubles that the
Sisters of Charity experienced with the Benedictine hierarchy in Sydney earlier in the nineteenth century. A key issue for the autonomous operation of the Sisters of Charity in this earlier period was their ownership of property and their economic independence (O’Sullivan
1992, 1995).
Relatively little is known, however, of how the four Sydney
Sisterhoods in this study experienced their relationships with Sydney churchmen in the later nineteenth century. Investigating this was not straightforward. Official and semi-official Church sources of the period are not very revealing. Church narratives were concerned to present a strong, positive view to Catholics and the wider society. In the face of anti-Catholic sentiment in the press and in the New South Wales
Parliament (O’Farrell 1977a, 1988; Hogan 1987) a united front was important to enhance the standing of Catholicism and Catholics in the 135
wider community. Presentation of such an image to the Catholic lay community also was important as the Church hierarchy was dependent on the laity for financial support for churches, schools, clergy and for communities of religious women and men. Sources such as the
Freeman’s Journal also present a sanitised image. It suited the
Freeman’s agenda - of building a strong Catholic identity which could become a political force - to present as positive an image as possible of all aspects of the Church’s operation (O’Farrell 1977a; Hogan 1987).
Hence for this period there is little evidence of anything other than unity and agreement between hierarchy, clergy and religious in Sydney in this period.
Many of the histories, memoirs and other historical accounts prepared by the women’s religious institutes present a similarly consensual view of their relationships with the clergy and hierarchy.
This may have been because, as Smyth suggests, their purpose was not to produce ‘objective’ historical knowledge but rather material for use solely within the institute, to pass on their particular communal identity and ‘mysteries’ (Smyth 1997: 101ff.). There is little direct evidence of the Sydney Sisters’ experiences of and opinions about their relationships with the local Church hierarchy. This is partly because, as noted in Chapter 3, the Sisters, following precepts of self-abnegation and communal living, generally did not keep personal diaries or papers. 136
Thus sources of evidence are sparse, but there are a few recollections and some correspondence which provide valuable insights. Mother
Ignatius McQuoin, foundress and Superior of the Mercy community for twenty years, was the author of documents such as these. She wrote a history of the early decades of her community and left a good deal of correspondence (McQuoin n.d. SMA). This case study draws on the history which Mother Ignatius wrote, her correspondence, the community’s account books and other Mercy documents, as well as documents from the Archdiocesan archives, press reports of the Sisters’ work and other ‘external’ documents. Mother Ignatius’ account of her attempts to establish a ‘House of Mercy’ illustrates the centrality of resources in the shaping of the Sisters’ charitable work and the way that the Sisters’ relationships with male authority were interwoven with other factors to affect the resources they had available to them. Before examining these factors the concept of, and need in Sydney for, a
‘House of Mercy’ will be discussed. The chapter then continues with an outline of the situation of the early Sydney Mercy community, including accommodation, finances, and personnel, before examining the impact of changes in government education policy and Mother Ignatius’ relationships with Churchmen vis a vis her proposed ‘House of Mercy’. 137
The ‘House of Mercy’ concept
‘Houses of Mercy’ had been a core work for all communities of
Sisters of Mercy since the institute’s inception in Dublin in the 1830s
(MacGinley 1996a).26 The Sydney ‘House of Mercy’, the Mater
Misericordiae Servants’ Home and Training School, did not open until
1891, more than 25 years after the Sisters first came to Sydney. It closed in 1919 (SM MS I, n.d. n.p. SMA). Its relatively short life compared to some other of the Sisters’ charitable institutions is easily understandable in terms of the social changes that were occurring by the time it opened, that is, the expansion in women’s employment options beyond domestic service and the major economic recession of the 1890s. Of more interest for an understanding of the factors which shaped the charitable work of the Sisters in Sydney this period, is the fact that it took Mother Ignatius and her community more than a quarter of a century to commence a work that was stated to be central to the institute’s purpose. There is a parallel with the history of the Sisters of
Charity, who did not commence a hospital for the poor until nearly twenty years after their arrival in Sydney (O’Sullivan 1992, 1995).
26 Actually the first ‘House of Mercy’ predated the foundation of the Sisterhood. The Mercy foundress, Catherine McAuley commenced her charity for women and children several years before she decided to start a women’s religious institute (MacGinley 1996a: 100ff.). 138
The establishment of a ‘House of Mercy’ was regarded as essential for all Mercy communities. For all four Sisterhoods in this study, the undertaking of works of charity was the reason they came into existence. The spiritual and temporal welfare of poor women was a core focus of all four institutes, including the Sisters of Mercy. Catherine
McAuley, the Irish founder of the Sisters of Mercy, recognised that women had a better chance of obtaining and remaining in employment if they were trained in the relevant skills (Killerby 1996; MacGinley 1996a).
A ‘House of Mercy’ was thus intended to provide training as a means to effect economic independence, as well as providing temporary accommodation for respectable women.
The need for a ‘House of Mercy’ in Sydney
The history of Australian poverty and charity shows that such an institution was needed in late nineteenth century Sydney as well as in early nineteenth century Dublin. In both cities the situation of financially unsupported women was precarious, with few options for economic survival besides marriage, domestic service or prostitution (O’Brien
1988). For Irish Catholic women in Sydney, the role of domestic service was more pronounced because there were fewer opportunities to marry, as Catholic women outnumbered Catholic men. In the 1871 census
‘there were 64.4 Irish males to every 100 Irish women, and 79.8 in the 139
1891 census’ (Fitzgerald 1987: 178-81). The significance of domestic service as an occupation for Catholic women in Sydney is reflected in the fact that: ‘In 1857…of 316 brides [at St Mary’s Cathedral], 259 were
Irish-born; 237 of these (over 90 percent) had been in domestic service’
(O’Farrell 1990: 57).
In Sydney over the last 25 years of the nineteenth century, there was a big demand for domestic servants and turnover was high, as had been the case for most of the century (Kingston 1975). There was dissatisfaction by employers as well as servants. This was recognised from the earliest years of the nineteenth century and prompted the foundation of the Protestant ‘Female School of Industry’ in 1826 by Eliza
Darling, wife of the Governor (Windschuttle 1980: 60ff.). This institution was established mainly to provide servants for its subscribers (Godden
1982, 1983). Its operating principles seemed to have been congruent with the dominant nineteenth century charity pattern of providing assistance to the poor, alongside attempting to control their behaviour.
It also served the self-interest of the charitable women who were its subscribers and Board members by producing domestic servants trained to meet their requirements. The institution was run by Anglican women from the highest echelons of Sydney society (Godden 1983: 49).
The anti-Catholic bias in the colony meant that poor Catholic girls could not be admitted to the institution for training, and also that Catholic 140
women were not welcome as Board members (Godden 1983: 28ff., 39).
Whilst Caroline Chisolm’s work had helped Catholic immigrant girls (as well as non-Catholic girls) obtain employment earlier in the nineteenth century century (Russell 1994: 102ff.) there were in the last quarter of the century many unemployed women requiring such assistance. Thus racism and sectarianism in the existing provison of assistance resulted in a need for a service such as that proposed by Mother Ignatius.
For the Sydney women who employed servants, dissatisfaction with their domestic workers, particularly the Irish, was legendary. Many
Irish girls from rural areas were not well acquainted with what was required of them to help run a middle class household. For their part, women and girls in domestic service were also frequently unhappy with how they were treated. Irish servants were also objects of ridicule in the
Sydney press (Hogan 1987; O’Farrell 2000). Domestic service was usually a live-in position paying low wages. Female servants thus found it difficult to save money as a buffer against possible future unemployment. A female domestic servant ‘out of situation’ was therefore likely to be homeless as well as penniless, and consequently at risk of prostitution. Thus, Mother Ignatius’ desire to provide unemployed women and girls in Sydney with temporary accommodation as well as skills training, in accordance with Mercy aims of facilitating their economic independence, was a pragmatic and appropriate 141
response to the prevailing social conditions she found on her arrival from England in the mid 1860s. It was also part of the official charter of the Mercy Institute, which included detailed prescriptions for how such an institution should be operated in order to help the young women achieve economic self-sufficiency.
Situation of the early Mercy community in Sydney
In order to understand the situation of the Sisters of Mercy in
Sydney and the various factors which impinged upon their ability to establish a servants’ home and training school it is necessary to consider some of their earlier history. The Mercy community experienced difficulties from the time of their arrival in 1865. As noted above, the foundation in Sydney was unplanned which resulted in immediate constraints on their activities. The Sisters had originally been recruited from Liverpool, England by Archbishop Polding for Bathurst where they were to join two other Sisters of Mercy from Brisbane.
However, after Polding’s invitation was accepted by the Liverpool
Sisters, Bathurst was made a separate diocese. The new Bishop of
Bathurst, Matthew Quinn, was consecrated in Ireland the day before
Mother Ignatius arrived in Sydney (MacGinley 1996a: 130-133). Quinn had decided to bring a group of Sisters of Mercy from Ireland to Bathurst and did not therefore require the services of the Liverpool Sisters. The 142
result was that on arriving in Sydney Mother Ignatius’ group discovered that they were no longer required in Bathurst and were invited to stay in
Sydney, in St Patrick’s parish in the inner city area known as Church
Hill.27 The priest in charge of the district was Archdeacon McEncroe.
The Sisters took over the running of the government-funded
Denominational School at St Patrick’s from which they derived an income in the form of payment of salaries for two teachers.
The viability of the Sydney Mercy community was jeopardised because there had been no proper preparation for their arrival in Sydney in terms of accommodation, possible work or source of income
(McQuoin: 1 SMA). Moreover, because they had intended to join the existing small community in Bathurst, there were only three Sisters in the group, including one novice (who left after a short time due to ill- health) (McQuoin: 1 SMA). The situation was no doubt complicated by the fact that Archbishop Polding was absent overseas at the time of the
Sisters’ arrival in 1865 until August 1867. On his return, and until his death in 1877, he felt unfit for office and wished to retire (O’Farrell
1977a: 150). It seems that that the fledgling Mercy community was affected by this state of the local Church administrative hierarchy.
27 Near the present-day Wynyard district. 143
The Sisters’ acquisition of property
The Sydney Mercy Sisters were beset with accommodation concerns for many years, as were each of the other three Sydney institutes in this study (MacGinley 1996a: 132). This hampered their charitable and other activities. In this were intermingled the structural dimensions of sectarianism, patriarchal attitudes and in this case an underdeveloped State administrative system, which was a legacy of the status of New South Wales as a British colony. The house that was bought for their first convent had not been purchased directly by the
Sisters, because of fears that the vendor might not sell the property if he knew it would become a convent (McQuoin: 2, SMA). The Sisters relied on the competence of their friend and male ‘agent’, Archdeacon
McEncroe, the priest in charge of St Patrick’s parish, to handle the purchase. This was to have serious negative consequences. The
Sisters’ were burdened for some years by the mortgage and cost of alterations to this property. This situation was not uncommon amongst nineteenth century Sisterhoods in Australia nor was the subsequent experience of hardship from servicing the debt (FESM: 4 MSA; O’Farrell
1977a: 170). The greater long-term problem for Mother Ignatius was that the subterfuge involved in the purchase resulted in the Sisters of
Mercy not having title to their property.
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Mother Ignatius’s narrative records that after the death of Father
McEncroe a legal dispute arose as to the ownership of the convent property. The result was that it was declared Church property and was subsequently given to the newly arrived male community of French
Marists, who had been invited to open schools for boys and to take over the parish (McQuoin: 4, SMA). Consequently, the Sisters were obliged to vacate their convent and start again in the former presbytery. Thus, the Sisters’ attempts to undertake professional work was dependent on men allowing them access to the necessary physical space. This seems to be the obverse of the point noted in Chapter 3 about the benefits of separate women’s spaces for facilitating women’s professional work (Kerber 1988; Walkowitz 1992). This move also resulted in them paying for alterations to make the building suitable for the needs of a group of women religious. Mother Ignatius felt the
Sisters were badly done by. Thus it can be seen that the Sisters were dispossessed by a combination of factors - what appeared to them to have been favourable treatment for a male religious institute by the local male Church hierarchy, plus the hierarchy’s earlier inadequate preparation for the Sisters’ arrival, as well as patriarchal and anti-
Catholic attitudes in the wider community which led to the Sisters having someone else buy the property on their behalf. The underdeveloped government record system was also a factor. This can be seen as result of colonialism, the apparatus of responsible 145
government and administration in New South Wales still developing.
The Sisters’ problems with accommodation were to recur several years later and again involved the dimension of male Church authority.
In 1874 Mother Ignatius responded to a request from the priest at
Parramatta, Archdeacon Rigney, to commence a school there. The
Sisters and their pupils endured primitive conditions in the school buildings. As Mother Ignatius wrote:
Very soon the fame of the infants’ school caused a rapid increase in numbers, and for their accommodation a shed was erected in the Play ground where they went through their exercises to the astonishment of the passers by. The next addition was a stable fitted up with old desks and forms and the walls patched up with old sugar bags to keep out the dust and wind which at times, blew the copy books off the table. The number of children at this date on the Roll would be 200, 150 or so in ordinary attendance. (McQuoin: 5 SMA)28
The accommodation of the nearby male Marist community at Parramatta again seems to have contrasted with that of the Sisters, as the Marists had a fine building for their boys’ school while the Sisters and their pupils suffered the elements. It was more than ten years after the Sisters’ arrival in Parramatta before work commenced on a convent for them (McQuoin: 5 SMA).
The Sisters’ ongoing struggles to raise money for adequate
28 The Sisters of the Good Samaritan also had a shed made of boughs for their first school at Hughenden in Queensland (Walsh 2001: 206). The Sisters of St Joseph regularly taught in similar conditions, and their first school in South Australia was also a shed (Gardiner 1993; 57). 146
buildings meant that time, energy and money were not available for a
‘House of Mercy’. Another factor which was intertwined with the relationships between the Sisters of Mercy and the hierarchy and which hindered the Sisters’ charitable work was the inadequacy of the Sisters’ personnel resources.
The Sisters’ human resources
In the early years of their Sydney community the Sisters of Mercy were expected to do a great deal with very few workers. This became apparent soon after arrival when the Sisters took charge of the government–funded St Patrick’s denominational school. After a short while, the original group of three Sisters was reduced to two, with
Mother Ignatius being the sole ‘professed’29 Sister for over a year
(McQuoin: 1 SMA). Mother Ignatius was simultaneously trying to establish a conventual way of life, maintain the Sisters’ health, train new members, raise money for the mortgage and improvements to their
‘convent’ and school, teach unruly children, and instruct adults in the faith. The Sisters were also undertaking works of charity, including visiting the poor, sick and institutionalised. There were simply too few
29That is, Mother Ignatius was the only member of the community to have taken her final vows, the others being still ‘novices’. 147
Sisters, as well as insufficient money, to be able to open a ‘House of
Mercy’.30
It seems that it was difficult for the community to ‘get ahead’ in terms of resources compared to the demands upon them. When the community opened a house on Sydney’s North Shore in the early 1870s as a sort of sanatorium for the Sisters who were suffering the ill-effects of the cramped and unhealthy conditions at St Patrick’s convent, they were soon asked by local Catholics to commence a school there
(McQuoin: 4, SMA). So, rather than providing the intended respite from the heavy workload and unhealthy conditions at St Patrick’s, the venture onto the North Shore brought more work for the Sisters and more financial strain.
The demand for the Sisters to operate schools for Catholic children increased with the growth in population in Sydney and the movement of the government away from supporting Denominational Schools. The education of poor children had been part of Catherine McAuley’s original charitable charter for the Institute of Mercy in Ireland. Provision of education, long denied Catholics under the Penal Laws, was part of the way the Sisters of Mercy addressed the factors which had contributed to
30 This situation was exacerbated when, after the departure of two Sisters, Mother Ignatius was left as the sole professed Sister for over a year (McQuoin: 2, SMA).
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Catholic poverty in Ireland. Education was also a means to ensure the spiritual well-being of Catholics via instruction in the mysteries of their faith and their religious obligations. In Sydney, the Mercies’ educational work with children was commenced earlier than was the provision of training and charitable assistance to unemployed women and girls. This was because the development of a Church-run Catholic school system became an urgent necessity following developments in government education policy. The educational branch of the Sisters’ work went ahead because it was compatible with the local Church hierarchy’s prioritisation of education. The ‘House of Mercy’ did not have the same urgency for the hierarchy as it did for Mother Ignatius.
Government policy changes in education
The ‘education question’ in New South Wales was intertwined with relations between the Sisters and the clergy and hierarchy, and it impacted on the Sisters’ work directly and indirectly. The longstanding social issue of the move to secularise schooling had several milestones before funding to church schools finally ceased. These were the result of overlapping social forces of longstanding anti-Catholic sectarianism and growing push for secularization in all areas of state provision. In
1866 legislation was passed which abolished the separate administrative structures for government-funded denominational schools 149
and for the newer public schools. Both were brought under the same authority and the eligibility conditions for church schools to receive aid were tightened. This included compulsory inspection of the schools by government officials (O’Farrell 1977a: 151). This change was resisted by the Catholic hierarchy and women religious, and more than one religious institute made life difficult for the inspector.31 In 1880 legislation abolishing all funding for denominational schools was passed.
This anticipated event resulted in the Church hierarchy making a priority of establishing a Catholic school system staffed by religious institutes.
There was increased pressure on the existing Sisterhoods in New South
Wales to take over existing denominational schools and open new ones to cater for the growing Catholic population. The services of additional female and male religious institutes were also sought from overseas.
Consequently over the 1880s, the numbers of religious in New South
Wales increased dramatically.32 This prioritising of education by the
Catholic hierarchy as a result of decisions by male authority at State level had a significant impact on the Sisters of Mercy.
31 Walsh (2001: 132ff.) and Kelleher (2000: Ch. 6) discuss the Good Samaritan Sisters’ active opposition to inspection of their Pitt St. School and the Catholic Orphan School, Parramatta.
32In 1880 there were 175 women religious and 49 men religious in the Sydney Archdiocese, (CD, 1880: 53-55, SAA). In 1891 the corresponding numbers were 589 and 131, (ACD 1891: 70, SAA).
150
The 1866 changes affected the Sisters of Mercy quite dramatically.
St Patrick’s Denominational School received adverse reports from the government inspector – due in large part, no doubt, to Mother Ignatius and her Sisters having too many responsibilities for the resources available (MacGinley 1996a: 133). Consequently, Archbishop Polding advised Mother Ignatius to withdraw the school from the government system and operate without the government-paid educators’ salaries.
This advice of Polding’s seemed to lack an appreciation of the serious financial consequences of such action for the Sisters. The Sisters previously had a modest but secure income from the two teachers’ salaries paid by the government, but their financial situation became dire with the cessation of these regular payments when the school was withdrawn from the government jurisdiction (SM FESM: 3, SMA).
Once St Patrick’s became an independent school, the Sisters’ main source of income was from the meagre primary school fees, fees from the small ‘select’ High school the Sisters had commenced in order to increase their income, and from music lessons (McQuoin: 2, SMA). In the relatively poor parish of St Patrick’s these sources were never going to provide the Sisters with an income sufficient to establish a ‘House of
Mercy’ as well as meet their living expenses and accommodation costs.
Archbishop Polding’s advice to withdraw from the government denominational school system may indicate that he was been ignorant 151
of, or insensitive towards, the Sisters’ needs and the additional demands that such a decision would place upon them. Moreover, the Sisters’ efforts to meet their expenses seem to have been hampered by a direction from the Church hierarchy that they were not to ask the parishioners of St Patrick’s for donations. The source and reason for this directive is not given (SM FESM: 4, SMA; McQuoin: 4: SMA). The
Mercy community’s account books verify the ongoing financial struggles of the Sisters to make ends meet (SM AB MSA 1866 – 1882, SMA).
Survival of the community became the first priority for Mother Ignatius.
Resources of time and physical, mental, emotional and spiritual energy that might otherwise have been used to develop works of charity such as the House of Mercy were thus diverted into the Sisters’ basic survival needs. With the Sisters’ purchase of property north of the harbour and the subsequent commencement of schools there and at Parramatta and in the early 1870s there was an even greater disbursement on living expenses for multiple conventual communities, as well as payments for mortgages and building work.
Establishing a convent and schools on the North Shore was the beginning of a period of expansion of the educational responsibilities of the Sisters of Mercy in Sydney. As well as drawing on the Sisters’ personnel resources, the building, extending and equipping of school buildings also was largely the financial responsibility of the Sisters. In his 152
address at the opening of extensions to Monte Sant’Angelo, in 1882,
Archbishop Vaughan gave the figure of £9,000 as the total cost to date of the new Mother House and schools on the North Shore (FJ 20 May
1882: 15). The pattern of the early years - of subsistence living and working - was again evident. Mother Ignatius said of the Sisters’ school at Lane Cove, which they commenced in 1883:
The Sisters, by giving Music lessons managed to support themselves - the School fees being low and the children’s attendance being very irregular, owing to the necessity of helping their parents in the fruit season; fruit growing being the most profitable source of their land (McQuoin: 6, SMA)
The Sisters’ account books reveal that from 1879 to at least 1887,
Mother Ignatius had to cope with much building debt. In September
1879, £663 was paid ‘builder last payment’; in March 1882, £350 was paid to ‘Mr Hayes’; in May 1883 ‘3rd installment’ of £500 to the same person; in November 1883, £2,500 was borrowed from the ‘Oriental
Bank’ and in January 1887, £550 was borrowed from the same source and an identical amount was ‘paid to Mr Hayes, contractor’ (SM AB
MSA 1879 – 1904, SMA). Some of this debt was for a chapel and improvements to the convent, thus strictly speaking not all the debt was incurred as a result of requests by the Church hierarchy to open schools. However it could be argued that a convent and chapel were essential for the material and spiritual needs of the Sisters.
Nonetheless, this debt added to the financial burden on the Sisters. The 153
adequacy of the Sisters of Mercy’s resources for their charitable and educational work, was bound up with the Sisters’ relationships with men, clerical and lay. The nature of these relationships, particularly the extent to which the men helped or hindered the Sisters in securing financial support affected the Sisters’ ability to engage in their preferred method of charitable work with unemployed women and girls by opening as
‘House of Mercy’.
Mother Ignatius’ relationships with Churchmen
As discussed above, the male Church administration in Sydney was involved in the Sisters' early problems of accommodation and financial difficulties, as well adding to difficulties in these areas by requesting the Sisters to open more schools from the early 1870s onwards. In these matters masculine authority and power were intertwoven with other structural factors. Mother Ignatius did not feel well-supported by the hierarchy in this period, especially after the death of Archdeacon McEncroe in 1868. He had been a great friend of the
Sisters since their arrival at St Patrick’s in 1865. Mother Ignatius described his death as having left her ‘disconsolate…a stranger in the
Colony, unknown and misunderstood….’ (McQuoin: 2, SMA). It seems that this situation of little clerical support may have continued for some years, with evidence that gender-related authority issues played a 154
bigger role in some episodes of the Mercy community’s history, including some direct male opposition to Mother Ignatius’ plans to open her ‘House of Mercy’.
One instance of a conflict over resources between the Sisters and local clergy occurred in relation to the Parramatta branch convent. As noted above, this community was established in 1874 in response to the parish priest’s (Archdeacon Rigney) request that the Sisters take over the Parramatta Catholic denominational school (McQuoin: 4, SMA), which they did, teaching and living in sub-standard conditions. Five years later Rigney wanted Mother Ignatius to send an additional teacher for the school, but she thought that the more urgent need was better accommodation for the Sisters who were already there. Mother Ignatius tried to use the priests’ desire for an extra teacher as a lever to improve the Sisters’ living conditions. She instructed the Sister in charge at
Parramatta how to negotiate with the priest: ‘And don’t fear to enlarge on the want of another Sister – at the same time letting him understand that I will not give you one until you have more accommodation.’ (SM
McQuoin to Parramata Superior, 23 Oct. 1879, SMA).
This episode shows the strategising in which the leaders of women’s religious communities engaged when dealing with clergy and hierarchy whose priorities did not coincide with theirs. Whilst Mother 155
Ignatius was attempting to fulfill her duty of care as Superior by ensuring adequate living conditions for the Sisters who were providing services to the Catholic community, it seems that Archdeacon Rigney’s priority was to maximise services to his parishioners whilst minimising costs.
Mother Ignatius was attempting to use the priest’s wish for more teaching Sisters as a lever to secure her priority of better accommodation. By getting the Parramatta Superior to talk to Rigney in the terms quoted above, Mother Ignatius was also avoiding a direct confrontation with male authority. This is in keeping with the point made by Zimmerman (1999a, 2000b) about the tactics used by Sisters in the
Maitland diocese when dealing with male Church authority, that is, that the Sisters preferred not to openly defy male authority, because they were supposed to be obedient to bishops, so they had to find other means to get what they wanted. It was not always possible however, for the Sisters to avoid confrontation with masculine power.
Planning for the House of Mercy
There is evidence that an open disagreement with masculine
Church authority in 1878 interfered directly with Mother Ignatius’ plans to open her much desired House of Mercy. In 1877 a Catholic Servants’
Home and Registry staffed by a lay matron, rather than Sisters, was opened in Elizabeth Street Sydney (Price 1987: 7; Sheridan MS n.d. 156
SAA ; FJ 8 September 1877: 14; SSD, 1879) . It seems that this institution was a compromise. It was a joint venture between the Sisters of Mercy and the Catholic Young Women’s Benefit Association, whose president, Miss Ellen Carton, was Matron.33 The Sisters visited to instruct the young women and provide support to the matron. But ‘this was not the institution proposed by our Holy Foundress’ (McQuoin:
7,SMA). In Sept 1877 Mother Ignatius wrote that ‘the Home in
Elizabeth Street takes very well but everyone says the servants want training so they must help me to build a House of Mercy’ (McQuoin to n.k. 17 September 1877, SMA).
A notice in the Freeman’s Journal in May 1878 confirmed that
Mother Ignatius was pursuing her intention and was planning a bazaar the following September to raise money to begin the training school.
This notice goes on to say that:
His Grace the Archbishop fully approves of the undertaking, and the Very Rev. the Vicar General and the Revd. Marist fathers will gladly receive donations in money or goods for the above purposes.
Subscriptions also will be gratefully received by the Sisters of Mercy, St. Patricks. (FJ 18 May 1878: 10)
33 The Freeman’s Journal, 8 Sept 1877; Sands’ Sydney Directory gives the address as 131 Elizabeth St., in the 1882 edition the address was 117 Elizabeth St., in 1885 its location was 195 William St. The home was listed at that address and with Miss Carton as Matron in Sands’ Directories up to and including 1894.
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It is noteworthy that it seems to have been thought that the venture should be endorsed by the highest male church authority in Sydney, that is, the Archbishop, and that various male agents should be authorised to receive donations. It is possible that this was merely the normal custom for fundraising by women religious, and that it served the additional purpose of reassuring the public as to the bona fides of the intended institution and the security of their donations. It is also possible however, that it may have been intended by the Church hierarchy to limit the Sisters’ financial responsibility and autonomy. Another alternative explanation is a pragmatic one – that with the Sisters being fully occupied during the day and therefore relatively inaccessible it may have provided additional opportunities for the public to make donations and subscriptions. It is likely that there were elements of all three reasons in these arrangements for donations for the Home.
Mother Ignatius’ plans did not proceed smoothly in spite of having
Archbishop Vaughan’s ‘full approval’. Mother Ignatius’ history does not record what happened, but the Freeman’s Journal provides some interesting evidence that there were other sources of male authority and power that impinged. Three weeks after the above notice appeared, a report in the Freeman’s records that Mother Ignatius disagreed with a committee of ‘laymen and clergymen’ about the proposed location of the institution. It seems that Mother Ignatius wanted to site the servants’ 158
home and training school with the new Mercy ‘mother house’ and novitiate which were being established at the recently acquired North
Shore property (FJ 8 June 1878: 14). This would have made sense in terms of access to personnel resources (the Sisters and novices) and it was probably easier and more economical to locate the training school within the Sisters’ existing property, rather than try and obtain suitable property south of the harbour and thereby add to the Sisters’ debt. Such a plan would have been in keeping with the observation that bureaucratic organisations can actually facilitate the development of professional work via their greater provision of resources (Hugman
1991). The men of the committee however did not want the institution on the North Shore. They thought it should be in Sydney. The
Freeman’s Journal reported on a meeting in June 1878 at which a fairly extraordinary course of action was decided upon by the male committee:
A meeting in connection with this object was held in St Patrick’s Hall on Wednesday evening last, the very Rev. the Vicar General in the chair. There was a full attendance of clergymen and laymen. The question having been mooted as to where the home and registry office should be erected, it having transpired that the intention of the Reverend Mother was to place it on the North Shore in connection with the branch convent there, it was the opinion of the meeting that it would be necessary to have the institution in Sydney as at present. The Reverend Mother not being able to acquiesce in this opinion it was unanimously resolved to suspend all action 159
in the matter for the present and to return the subscriptions received. (FJ 8 June 1878:14)
This was a fairly unusual report for two reasons. First, it is possibly the only report in the Freeman’s Journal of conflict between women religious and other members of the Catholic community in Sydney in this quarter century period. Secondly, for Catholics to decide to give back money which had already been contributed was unheard of in that era of frantic, incessant building and fundraising for schools, charities, churches and convents. Of significance is the fact that the meeting was chaired by the Vicar General, the Archbishop’s second-in-charge in administering the diocese. If the Vicar General had been in favour of the institution being located on the North Shore as Mother Ignatius wished, it is highly unlikely the laymen at the meeting would have opposed him.
The Vicar General at the time was Fr J. F. Sheridan, an Irish-born
Benedictine who was a member of the government’s Immigration
Committee for some 18 years and who had a long history of involvement with various charities (Sheridan n.d., SAA; O’Brien 1952: 65; Duffy
1976: 119; Cashman 1985). One of the ventures with which he had been associated in the 1850s and 60s was a servants’ home and registry at Darlinghurst, the district for which he had responsibility. The
Darlinghurst home was closed when the property was resumed by the government in the late 1860s, for reasons which had an anti-Catholic 160
element (FJ 30 November 1878: 14-15). This earlier institution was under the auspices of the Catholic Young Women’s Association, which
Fr Sheridan had formed for the benefit of young Irish immigrant women.
It was visited by the Sisters of Charity (Sheridan, n.d.: 4, SAA; SC An
Vol. 1: 159ff., SCA). This was the same model as the later servants’ home established in the 1870s to which the Sisters of Mercy gave visiting supervision. It may have been the case that Sheridan favoured this model of provision rather than the ‘House of Mercy’ concept for pragmatic, or other, reasons.
Mother Ignatius persists
There is no information in Mother Ignatius’ ‘History’ or in any of her surviving letters as to how she reacted to the decision of the men’s committee to cease all support for her venture. However, it seems from information in other sources that she continued with fundraising for the home and training school. The bazaar was held on 25th November
1878 and was opened by Archbishop Vaughan. The Governor’s wife,
Lady Robinson, was also present. It is interesting to note that the text of
Archbishop Vaughan’s address at the opening of the bazaar indicates that it was intended that the Servants’ Home and Training School eventually be located on the North Shore (Vaughan 1881: 45, SAA). 161
Presumably the Archbishop was in agreement about its location there or he would not have made such a statement.34
It seems however that the bazaar was less successful than anticipated. The report from the following week’s Freeman’s Journal indicates that only £50 was taken on the first day (FJ 30 November
1878: 14-15). This figure is lower than was usual for such an event, especially one opened by Archbishop Vaughan, a renowned public speaker who attracted standing room only crowds to his Charity
Sermons in St Mary’s Cathedral. Unusually, there was no subsequent report in the Freeman’s about the close of the bazaar, or the total sum raised. It seems likely therefore that the bazaar was not a financial success. Perhaps Mother Ignatius’ disagreement with the Churchmen and local lay community was partly responsible for any lack of success.
Father Sheridan was an experienced and successful fundraiser, having cleared the debts at the House of the Good Shepherd and at St Francis’ parish in the Haymarket.35 If Father Sheridan had thrown himself behind the fundraising for the House of Mercy in the late 1870s it would probably have been possible for it to open within a short space of time.
34 This raises the possibility that Vaughan and Sheridan disagreed on this point.
35 Sheridan is said to have cleared £4000 debt at St Francis in six months and raised between £7,000 and £8,000 for the House of the Good Shepherd during his time at St Francis’ (Sheridan n.d.: 3-4, SAA ).
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The conclusion drawn is that the fund raising, and hence the venture itself, stalled because of insufficient support from an influential churchman.
There is no further mention of the ‘House of Mercy’ until 1891 when the ‘Mater Misericordiae Servants’ Home and Training School’ opened in Princes St. in St Patrick’s Parish (SMH 28 September 1891: 6). It seems likely that Mother Ignatius had not been able to muster sufficient resources for this to occur until that time. For the male Church hierarchy and local lay community a servants’ home and training school may not have been as high a priority as the establishment of more Catholic schools and supporting the existing Catholic charitable institutions such as the House of the Good Shepherd, St Vincent’s Hospital and St
Joseph’s Providence Home for children and elderly women (which was located in the Rocks, not that far from St Patrick’s convent). The former task certainly occupied the Sisters of Mercy themselves. At the time of the 1878 bazaar for the House of Mercy, Mother Ignatius and her community were embarking on the purchase of the Monte Sant’Angelo property at North Sydney. As noted earlier the property itself cost over
£ 7,000 and there was also the expense of alterations which were required before the Sisters could move in, which they did in 1879
(McQuoin: 6, SMA).
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Masculine support for the Sisters’ work
The history of the difficulties posed by the combination of shortages of resources and insufficient support from Catholic laymen, clergy and hierarchy cannot be read as demonstrating that the Sisters experienced all their relationships with men as problematic. Male authority and power also facilitated the Sisters’ work. Mother Ignatius and her community were helped by Archdeacon MacEncroe
(notwithstanding that his strategy for purchasing a property for their first convent ultimately resulted in their loss of ownership). As noted above, when MacEncroe died, Mother Ignatius felt the loss of his friendship and support very dearly.
There was also another very significant supportive relationship with a man, begun a number of years after the death of MacEncroe, which cut across the sectarianism of the times. This friendship was with an
English Protestant businessman, Mr G. R. Whiting.36 It seems that Mr
Whiting provided great support to the Sisters as a financial adviser and agent over a number of years. He assisted them with purchasing the
Monte Sant’Angelo property after his wife suggested that the property
36 Accounts in the Mercy archives of the beginning of the relationship state that Mr Whiting introduced himself and his three daughters to the Sisters after hearing them singing, when he was passing their convent (FESM: 3, SMA). Little is known about Whiting. In 1888 he was said to be the ‘Managing Director of the Grosvenor Hotel Co.’ which opened a new, very modern hotel of that name in late 1888 (FJ 1 Dec. 1888: 10). 164
would suit the Sisters’ needs (Whiting to McQuoin 14 July 1879, SMA).
To facilitate this purchase Mr Whiting acted as agent for the sale of the
Sisters’ first, small North Shore property, doing so in such a way as to maximise their profit. He also acted as guarantor for the substantial mortgage they had to take out. The Mercy account books also indicate that he gave them money on at least one occasion, including £100 in
1882 (AB MSA 1866 – 1882: March 1882, SMA; Whiting to McQuoin 14
July 1879, SMA). The Sisters of Mercy were not the only community of
Catholic women religious in Sydney at this period whose work was facilitated by men (as well as being constrained by them), although the
Sisters of Mercy were perhaps unusual because their primary supporter was not a Catholic.
Conclusion
This case study shows the complex of inter-related factors which helped shape the social welfare work of the Sisters of Mercy in late nineteenth century Sydney. It demonstrates the incredible effort the
Sisters had to make to subsist in Sydney and the constraining effects on their charitable work of insufficient resources of personnel, accommodation and money. The Sisters of Mercy history illustrates that a number of contextual elements were intertwined with the Sisters' quest to obtain sufficient resources. Structural changes in the local Catholic 165
Church, such as the creation of a new diocese and bishops’ rights to select which groups of religious would work therein had an enormous effect on the fledgling community of Mercy Sisters. The effects of changes in government policy on education which resulted in altering the priorities of the Catholic hierarchy towards the provision of schooling were also far-reaching for the Sisters, including a dramatic loss of income. The story of the Sydney Sisters of Mercy shows moreover that the role of the various contextual factors was not straightforward.
Sectarianism could impede the Sisters’ property acquisition in one instance, but individual friendship with a sympathetic Protestant was also very important in the Sisters’ acquisition of another property that was to be a secure and healthy base for the growth and development of their institute and of their socially active work.
As noted in Chapter 3 a strong, common thread – both in the general literature on women and religion and in the literature on Catholic women religious – is the role which was played by masculine power and authority in influencing the extent to which women were able to expand their sphere through religiously-motivated work. Whilst the historiography of women, religion and philanthropy has stressed the pivotal role of masculine authority and power in facilitating or hindering the expansion of the boundaries of the ‘woman’s sphere’, this case study of the ‘House of Mercy’ shows that for women religious in Sydney 166
in this period the effect of this was not simple or predictable, and that there were a number of other factors inter-related with the dimension of gender power. Friendship relationships and other societal factors were also involved.
For the Sisters of Mercy the importance of supportive friendships with individual men shows that relationships between the Sisterhoods and males in various positions were not uniformly positive or negative.
The Sisters had good relationships with Archdeacon McEncroe, and later the Protestant Mr Whiting, but they did not have a good relationship with the committee of men ‘assisting’ with the planning of the House of
Mercy, and probably the Vicar General, Fr Sheridan.
As discussed in Chapter 3, the North American literature reveals that male authority and power were intertwined with other factors. These facilitated, constrained and generally shaped what the Sisters were doing. This literature indicates that besides the crucial role of the male
Church hierarchy and clergy in supporting or obstructing the Sisters' work, a significant factor was the adequacy of the financial and other resources available to the Sisters. Another significant influence on some of the North American institutes’ charitable work was their relationship with civil authorities. There the Sisters’ relationship with civil authorities impinged on their finances and material resources, 167
particularly in terms of access to public money (Oates 1995; Hoy 1997;
Anderson 2000). As with the Sisters of Mercy in Sydney these relationships were often in a social context which included sectarianism and ethno-centrism.
This case study of the House of Mercy was possible because of the methodological approach taken. The process of developing ‘historical empathy’ facilitated the case study both generally, by revealing some of the contextual factors which impinged on the Catholic Church and community in Sydney at the time, and also particularly, because it resulted in discovering the information about the male opposition to
Mother Ignatius’ intended location for her Home and her persistence despite this. Seeking the Sisters' voice in the institute’s narratives was supplemented with financial information from their account books, and by material from the press and the Archdiocesan archives. The following chapter is directed at exploring the Sisters' charitable work. It looks at the basis of the relationships which the four Sydney
Sisterhoods had with the poor in Sydney.
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CHAPTER 6
‘IN THEM THEY REGARDED THE PERSON OF OUR DIVINE MASTER’: THE SISTERS’ ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE POOR
Introduction
The previous chapter explored the inter-related structures and processes which affected the ability of the Sisters of Mercy to undertake one of their institute’s core charitable works. The forces identified there, that is patriarchy, sectarianism and colonialism, limited the extent of the
Mercy Sisters’ engagement in the professional work of their institute.
This is in keeping with other historical and sociological findings about women and professional work, as discussed in Chapter 3. However, this process was not just one which hindered a group of women in attempting to ‘expand their sphere’. The structural forces which were operating to constrain the Sisters’ professional activities simultaneously restricted their ability to meet a certain social need in Sydney. That is, it
‘limited the choices available’ to them as providers of charity. This is something to which any historical study of charity or social work must attend (Dickey 1987b). Another is the value position of those providing charity (Dickey 1987b). As was noted in Chapter 2, values have a paramount position in social work (Walton 1975; Dickey 1987a, 1987b; 169
Hugman 1991, 2001; Forsythe 1995; Bowpitt 1998). Beliefs about the causes of social needs, particularly concerning the responsibility of individuals in bringing about their plight, and conceptualisations of the appropriate way to go about meeting needs, were (and remain) central issues in social welfare.
It is well to keep in mind that, as noted in Chapter 2, the history of social work and social welfare in nineteenth century Britain acknowledges that there were diverse approaches to working with the poor and that these were related to different theological and sociological interpretations (Walton 1975; Parry and Parry 1979; Forsythe 1995;
Bowpitt 1998; Hugman 2001). On the other hand, as was discussed in
Chapters 1 and 2, Australian social welfare history is generally characterised as having been largely concerned with social control, although certain providers have been noted as diverging from this
(O’Brien 1988: 199; Garton 1990: 54). As in Britain, charity in nineteenth century Australia has been depicted as being part of a system of surveillance and discipline, which discriminated ‘against all the lower orders in favour of the possesors of power and the fabricators of knowledge’ (Bowpitt 1998: 15).
As noted earlier, the widespread adherence to this interpretation of past responses to social need in Australia contrasts with the acceptance 170
that contemporary social provision combines elements of care as well as control. Whilst the post-modern turn has encouraged the exploration of diverse perspectives in social work (for example Healy 1999; Jessup and Rogerson 1999; Rossiter 2000), there does not seem to be the same willingness to accept that past providers of social welfare assistance may have had varying attitudes to the poor. The present is seen to have many shades of grey but the past is still quite black and white. This tendency seems even stronger when religion is a factor
(see for example Godden 1986; Mark 1996). As noted in Chapter 2, this attitude towards religiously-motivated charitable work may be to do with the reluctance or inability of contemporary, secular scholars to comprehend a religious world view (Holton et al 1998). However, as the works of Forsythe (1995) and Bowpitt (1998) illustrate, it can be useful to undertake an examination of the influence that different theological interpretations had on attitudes to poverty and charity.
This chapter argues that the espoused attitudes of the four
Sisterhoods towards the poor were compassionate and inclusive and thus differed from the stance which has been stated by others to have dominated late nineteenth century charity in Sydney (as discussed in 171
Chapters 2 and 3).37 It is contended that the Sisters’ stance was associated with various structural factors, including the contemporary
Catholic attitude to poverty and charity, the aims and rules of the four institutes, and the fact that the Sydney Sisterhoods were largely Irish in character in this period. Chapter 7 argues that an additional influence on the Sisters’ stance was the fact that the Sisters had knowledge of the needs and daily lives of the poor which was grounded in direct experience and interaction.
Methodological note
As is discussed below, the various narratives in the Sisters' archives indicate that all four institutes expressed an attitude of genuine concern for the poor – which was compassionate, accepting, generous and non-stigmatising. Skeptics may be unwilling to accept such accounts at face value, pointing to the hagiographical nature of convent narratives (cf Smyth 1997; Burley 1999) and query whether the Sisters' stance was any different in practice from the dominant, anti-pauperist approach espoused by government and some of the major ‘public charities’ under voluntary control, discussed in Chapter 2. It is difficult
37 Although, as noted earlier, some providers of charity diverged from this essentially punitive stance, for example Ardill, the Salvation Army, some officials of the Benevolent Society and possibly the Anglican Sisters of the Church (Cummins 1971: 9; O’Brien 1988: 199; Rathbone 1994: 69; Ball 2000: 83ff.). 172
to obtain evidence that the Sisters’ actions were congruent with their words, especially if what is sought is the perspective of those who sought and received assistance from the Sisters. For this reason, in this study some external sources of information on the Sisters’ work have been used because of the opportunity they provide for triangulation
(Bryman 2001: 274, 454-456; Denzin and Lincoln 2001: 3ff). There is therefore some evidence from sources external to the Sisters’ records which indicates that their attitude to the poor was indeed compassionate (in those particular areas of work). External sources also provide essential information about the context in which the Sisters carried out their work, including the actions of other players and their attitudes towards the Sisters’ work. However, as noted on p. 111 above, it is the Sisters’ perspective which is ‘prized’ (Denzin 1978: 216).
Additional ‘internal’ support for the supposition that the Sisters did hold the compassionate attitude which was expressed in their narratives comes from the fact that their charitable work was carried out within the rules and structures of formally constituted Catholic women’s religious institutes. These were founded specifically to work with the poor, and the four Sydney institutes had official statements of ethos, purposes and aims which prescribed the stance the Sisters were to take. These are contained in the Sisterhoods’ official Rules and Constitutions which were
173
approved by the highest levels of Catholic Church authority. It is shown below that the official positions of the four Sisterhoods were congruent with statements about the poor and charity made by the Catholic clergy and hierarchy in Sydney in the period.
The inclusion of such values in the Sisterhoods’ official prescriptions and their congruence with the publicly expressed views of clergy and bishops does not prove that the Sisters did actually hold and implement such attitudes. However, it is unlikely that the Sisters’ actual conduct with the poor was in contradiction to the stance of the Church hierarchy or in breach of the Sisters’ own official prescriptions, not least because the Sisters' work was under the scrutiny of the Church hierarchy, as well as that of the public on whom the Sisters depended to financially support their work.
Sisters’ narratives and attitudes to the poor
The Sisterhoods’ narratives depict a sympathetic and inclusive stance towards the poor, despite provisions in official prescriptions not to assist those judged undeserving (discussed later in this chapter). The
Sisters’ accounts of their work state that they acted with kindness and compassion. All four institutes’ annals, histories, anecdotes, memoirs and accounts of the lives of individual Sisters contain general statements consistent with a compassionate stance. These include 174
comments which indicate the Sisters' distress at having to turn poor people away from already overcrowded charitable institutions, and their desperation to find the resources needed to help various groups of the poor (for example GS An: 36, GSA; SSJ Carolan to MacKillop 24 April
1980, MMA). They also include stories of the Sisters' kindness, efforts and personal sacrifice. There are almost no accounts of instances where the Sisters declined to assist people because they thought them undeserving, or of harsh treatment inside their charitable institutions.
Such a positive, celebratory tone is perhaps to be expected, and it is consistent with the role of convent narratives as a vehicle for the maintenance and passing on to current and future members of the spirit and culture of the respective institute (Smyth 1997). An example of this process is found in the recollections of a Good Samaritan Sister who as a child had been educated by the Sisters state that:
I watched them closely, first as a child at their school in Manly, later as a boarder at Rosebank. Never did I see anything but the same loving kindness for all, the same gentle and patient behaviour, even in very trying circumstances. When I entered the convent in Pitt Street I was able to observe them even more intimately. I noticed their genuine love of the penitents and the poor. They loved them exactly as God loves us… (A Sister of the Good Samaritan 1972: 69)
Detailed accounts of specific episodes and individual Sisters add to the weight of evidence offered by the more generalised statements in 175
the narratives. The Sisters offered consolation, encouragement and practical assistance. One episode concerns a Sister of Charity, Mother
Joseph Chisolm, who was superior at a branch convent. She is said to have given away the Sisters’ food from the convent table at one meal time:
One holiday evening a women, mother of a large family came begging for bread… in a trice, before anyone had time to disapprove, the half-cut loaves disappeared from the table and were deposited in the poor woman’s apron, the good Superior consoling her community, thus suddenly deprived of their evening meal, with the promise “we can make scones tomorrow”. (SC An. Vol.1: 211, SCA)
Another example of the Sisters’ attitude to the poor is found in accounts of Mother Aloysius Raymond’s work with Irish immigrant servant girls.38 As noted in Chapter 5, this group of young women was generally much maligned in Sydney at the time. They were ridiculed in the press, and their prominence amongst assisted migrants fuelled attempts to introduce immigration restriction measures in the New South
Wales Parliament. Mother Aloysius’ work with them at Sunday meetings of the Catholic Young Women’s Association in Darlinghurst included:
instructing and advising them in every difficulty, helping them to write their letters home or even for some who were utterly devoid of education, reading the letters received. (SC An. Vol. 1: 159-60, SCA)
Among individual Sisters noted in the narratives for their
38 It is possible that this work may have occurred in the 1860s, rather than after 1875. 176
compassion and generosity are Mother Gertrude Byrne, the Good
Samaritan Sister who had worked at the Roman Catholic Orphan
School, Parramatta and who later took charge of the penitents’ refuge St
Magdalen’s Retreat, at Arncliffe. In her work at the latter institution she was said to have shown:
wonderful sympathy, ever ready to listen to and console these poor creatures, when feeling sad and depressed and when tempted to return to their former life of easy living and sin. She often spent hours listening to those who came to her in their distress and dejection. They never left her unconsoled. She knew just the right thing to say to each. (Hanly MS n.d. second bundle, n.p., GSA)
Mother Gertrude was said to have been equally compassionate with prisoners whom she visited:
Whilst at Parramatta, she frequently visited the local gaol where she gladdened the hearts of many prisoners, showing great love and mercy and her encouraging words soothed many broken-hearted residents and prepared them for a return to their God. (GS Ob., GSA)
Accounts of a similar stance being taken in prison visitation work by other named Sisters are found in the Sisters of Charity narratives (SC An. Vol.1:
78, SCA).
That such descriptions of the Sisters’ stance towards the poor did really reflect their actual approach is suggested by the terms used to describe various groups of the poor when the Sisters’ conduct is not being commented 177
on, such as in the account below of the commencement of the work of the
Sisters of Charity at Liverpool, south-west of Sydney:
In 1878 the most striking building in the whole town was the government Asylum, which sheltered 600 homeless and invalided men. Each of these poor souls, castaways of a busy and selfish world, was precious in the sight of their Creator and Redeemer (emphasis added)…. (SC An. Vol. 2: 71, SCA)
In commenting on the work of the Sisters of the Good Samaritan with the boys on the industrial training ship the ‘Vernon’ and the later reformatory ship the ‘Sobraon’, their institute’s annals state that many boys ‘owed their refractory ways to the want of a kind word and encouragement’ (GS An.: 23, GSA). This depiction contains no inherent blaming of the individual boys, instead suggesting that external environmental factors were responsible. This value position is also found in relation to the Good Samaritans’ views on the young homeless girls accommodated alongside the former prostitutes at the House of the
Good Shepherd.39 The annals describe them as being ‘chiefly destitute creatures whose misfortune, not whose fault, it was to be cast adrift...’
(GS An.: 89, GSA).
At the heart of the Sisters’ descriptions of these groups of the poor is the
39 This was prior to the opening of the Manly Industrial School and Orphanage. The fact that homeless girls had no other alternative accommodation, and the Sisters’ judgment that a penitents’ refuge was no place for these girls, was the catalyst for the Manly institution (Kelleher 2002). 178
notion that their situation was not of their own making. There is no evidence that the Sisters had a pre-occupation with immoral conduct or any indication that a concern to protect society was paramount in the
Sisters’ attitude towards them. Accounts of the work of Sisters of all four institutes indicate that the Sisters showed compassion and respect for individuals who were stigmatised by others. The one field of the Sisters’ social welfare work which seems to have been approached differently from others, in terms of specified attitude and methods, is work with former prostitutes (‘magdalenes’ or ‘penitents’). The Sisters’ work with this group of women is discussed in Chapter 8.
That the Sisters should speak in this way about the poor with whom they worked in Sydney is in keeping with the values enshrined in their four institutes’ official statements of purpose. These were all very similar, that is the object of each institute (apart from seeking the spiritual perfection of each member) was to undertake works of charity or mercy.
The Sisterhoods’ official stance towards the poor
All four institutes used as the basis of their charitable work with the poor the exhortation ‘Amen I say to you as long as you did this to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me’ (SM HR 1833: 3, SMA; 179
SGS R 1857: 65, GSA). Each of the institutes had a similar official statement of principle. The Sisters of the Good Samaritan Rules state that ‘Each one must view Jesus Christ Our Lord in the persons of His lowly and suffering members’ (SGS R 1857: 64, GSA). The Rules of the
Sisters of Charity speak of the duty to ‘…minister to Jesus Christ, and serve Him in the persons of the poor and sick’ (SC RC 1912: 140, SCA), and the Sisters of St Joseph were instructed that the Sisters should recognize in the children they taught or cared for ‘the person of the
Infant Jesus and try to discharge the same holy office towards him that
St Joseph did to his charge’ (SSJ R 1867: 1, SJA).
Forsyth (1995) suggests that one of dimension of diversity in
English charity in the nineteenth century was that of inclusiveness. The above statements of the principles underpinning the four Sydney
Sisterhoods’ charity, and the examples from their narratives, suggest that they held a stance which sought to include the poor rather than stigmatise and exclude them. The statements of the attitude towards the poor which the Sisters were to adopt in their charitable work are reiterated and operationalised elsewhere in the institutes’ prescriptive documents. For example, the Sisters of the Good Samaritan were instructed that ‘each one shall be careful constantly to maintain such
Purity of Intention, as not to lose any part of the merit of every sentiment 180
of natural compassion, benevolence, or inclination’ (GS R 1878: 49,
GSA).
Similarly, the Sisters of St Joseph were instructed that in their work in their ‘Providence’ homes for the poor:
The Sisters in the Providence should consider themselves the servants of the poor, and therefore treat the inmates with the most affectionate consideration. They must bear with much, and be mild and patient. No deserving poor person should be refused food and shelter, for the Sisters are only administrators of the bounty which is God’s, who expects that everything should be done for His poor … (SSJ I 1870: 36f. SJA)
These Josephite Instructions go on to say that:
We should not readily get tired of relieving importunate and ungrateful people. God alone sees the heart, and we know not what good we may yet do.’ (SSJ I 1870: 36f., SJA)
The Sisters of Mercy had similar instructions (FIMCM 1927: 136, SMA)
Such exhortations to compassion in the institutes’ rules do not mean however that the Sisters were not discerning or never judged people to be undeserving. They did believe that assistance should be witheld from people who were not poor or who were manifestly sinful.
Statements to this effect are found in various of the institutes’ documents, such as those of the Sisters of Charity regarding admission to St Vincent’s Hospital:
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Subscribers are earnestly requested to inquire into the circumstances of the patients whom they may desire to recommend, in order to prevent the admission of those whose circumstances do not entitle them to the benefits of this charity. (SM SVH AR 1869: 15, SCA)
The Sisters of Mercy documents also state who is and who is not eligible for admission to orphanages in terms of financial situation. They also forbade the Sisters to assist those leading ‘openly scandalous lives’ or living in ‘houses of ill-fame’ who were not repentant. However, if repentant, they could be helped (SM G 1888: 25, SMA). The key to understanding this apparent contradiction may be that the Sisters were not to assist those who were manifestly ‘undeserving’ on either material or spiritual grounds, but if there was doubt, then they should be assisted. The Sisters of Mercy were instructed that ‘it is better to relieve a hundred imposters - if indeed there be any such - than to suffer one really distressed person to be sent away empty’ (FIMCM 1927: 136,
SMA). It seems therefore that the benefit of the doubt about the deservingness of applicants for assistance was likely to be extended by the Sisters. 40
Thus, the stance towards the poor and the Sisters’ response to them which is revealed in the institutes’ narratives is consistent with the
40 As noted earlier, there were some other providers of charity in Sydney who also took such a stance, such as Ardill (O’Brien 1988: 199) and some officials of the Benevolent Society ( RCPC 1898, Second Report, Minutes of Evidence pp. 12, 18, 36; Rathbone 1994: 69). 182
prescribed ethos contained in the Sisterhoods’ constitutional documents and detailed instructions for different types of work, which were approved by the Church hierarchy. Expressions of the Sisters' attitude towards the poor were also congruent with the attitudes publicly expressed by Catholic clergy in Sydney during the period.
Catholicism and attitudes to the poor
The Rules and Constitutions of the four Catholic women’s religious institutes in this study indicate that the beliefs about poverty and charity which the Sisters held were a ‘classic’ Christian formulation. The Acts of the Apostles are cited as evidence that the early Church was particularly concerned with assisting others (O’Sullivan 1995: 2).41 Indeed the claim has been made that this is the earliest expression of social work principles (Bessell cited in Bowpitt 1998: 676). As discussed in Chapter
2 however, in England by the nineteenth century this conceptualisation of charity had been altered by the influence of the Reformation, the eighteenth century evangelical revival, utilitarianism, political economy and dissatisfaction with the workings of the poor laws. Thus the dominant nineteenth century notion of charity centred on the belief that
41 She cites as evidence various sections of the Acts of the Apostles (O’Sullivan 1995: 13, Note 2) including that which reads ‘I have showed you all things how that so labouring you ought to support the weak and to remember the word of Our Lord Jesus, how he said: It is a more blessed thing to give, rather than to receive (Acts 20: 35, Holy Bible Douay Version, 1960). 183
individual moral failing was the root cause of poverty for all those whose circumstances were not obviously beyond their control (Dickey 1987a;
Garton 1990, 1994; Berreen 1994; Lansley 2001). This approach has been characterised as having been equally or more concerned with preventing dependence and pauperism than assisting those in need
(Garton 1994:26; Lansley 2001). Differentiating between the
‘deserving’ and the ‘undeserving’ poor was therefore imperative. As discussed in Chapter 2, Lansley (2001) has shown that in Britain several
Anglican bishops who held such views were instrumental in the framing of the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act which introduced the principle of
‘less eligibility’. It is not surprising that the Sydney Sisters’ stance towards the poor did not follow such an imperative, given the historical differences between Catholicism and Protestantism. As noted in
Chapter 2 others have found this religious difference to have been part of the historical development of diversity in welfare systems in Europe
(Esping-Anderson 1990; Hugman 1994).
The compassion of the Catholic stance during the late nineteenth century is evident in the sermons, speeches and pastoral letters of New
South Wales bishops in this period. What is evoked is the traditional pre-
Reformation notion of Christian duty to provide charity to the poor.
Archbishop Polding said in 1868: 184
From the earliest times the Church of Christ had special organisations for the relief of the poor, the sick, the decrepit and the aged who were looked upon as worthy of all the care that could be lavished upon them for the sake of Christ. (emphasis added) (SC An. vol.2: 32, SCA)
This position was re-iterated by the Sydney Catholic clergy and hierarchy over the last twenty-five years of the nineteenth century. 42
For example, in his Lenten Pastoral Letter of 1873, Polding said that
Catholics ‘are bidden to see, in the persons of the poor, our dear Lord himself’ (FJ 8 March 1873: 3). This is similar to other statements made by Polding, and other members of the hierarchy such as Bishop Murray of Maitland and Polding’s successors Archbishop Vaughan and Cardinal
Moran (see for example SM SVH AR, 1867: 3-4 ; FJ 8 March 1884:
13; SGS An.:18-9, GSA). Members of the clergy and hierarchy also addressed the issue of judgments about deservingness of the poor. In an 1887 lecture, Moran reminded his audience that ‘all men are equal
42 In 1891 Pope Leo XIII issued a papal encyclical entitled ‘Rerum Novarum’ which ‘is accepted as a foundational document for modern Catholic social teaching’ (Wilcken 1992: 96). It can be argued however that this had little effect on the Sisters’ charitable work in Sydney over the rest of the period because of the content of the encyclical, because of Cardinal Moran’s understanding of this, and because of what was already happening in Australia in terms of applying principles of social justice to workers. The encyclical addressed the inequalities that had occurred with industrialisation. It argued that workers had to be treated fairly and with respect (Wilcken 1992: 96), advocating co-operation between employees and employers, not revolution. Although the encyclical reiterated that it was no sin to be in poverty there was little doctrinal development on the topic (Wilcken 1992: 100). O’Farrell maintains that Australians were not really affected by the encyclical because it was very general and Cardinal Moran ‘was incapable of relating Catholic social principles to social practice in Australia’ (O’Farrell 1977a: 287). Hogan also argues that Rerum Novarum was largely irrelevant to Australian Catholics at the time because they were already putting its precepts into action (Hogan 1994: 5).
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before God’ (Moran 1890: 3, SAA) and went on to decry current treatment of the poor, likening poorhouses to ‘dreary prisons for the poor’ and questioning the doctrine of less eligibility (Moran 1890: 7,
SAA). Moran exhorted Catholics to support the House of the Good
Shepherd because former prostitutes were even more deserving than other groups of the poor because the stigma which the women bore meant that other avenues of assistance were not open to them (GS An.
118-9, GSA). Another manifestation of a non-judgmental stance being urged by the Sydney clergy is found in the 1898 address to members of the St Vincent de Paul Society at their quarterly meeting. Father Le
Rennetel is reported to have told the members that:
When speaking to poor he would advise them never to be harsh or unkind. It was no use telling a man he was undeserving of assistance because he had been a drunkard or had other faults. These things were not their business. (FJ 19 March 1898: 21)
A further example of the clergy’s application of compassionate, non-judgmental attitudes towards the poor occurs in the evidence given to the 1873/4 Public Charities Commssion by Father Sheehy, Chairman of the Catholic Orphan School Committee. When asked whether he thought that parental ‘intemperance’ was the reason many Catholic parents sought to have their children admitted to the Orphan School,
Father Sheehy replied ‘I am not in a position to say that, but I do not think that we have anything to do with the cause. If the children are 186
destitute, it matters not what the causes of the destitution may be.’
(RCPC E 1874: 15). Such a position flies in the face of the dominant approach to charity in New South Wales at the time. As discussed in
Chapter 2, the main concern was to rid society of ‘pauperism’ and therefore in order that a lack of self-reliance among the indigent was not rewarded, and encouraged those who offered charity were particularly concerned with judgments of deservingness. This position is evident in government documents relating to public charities in New South Wales.
The Roman Catholic Orphan School
The anomalous position of the Sisters of the Good Samaritan as
Government employees at the Catholic Orphan School at Parramatta provides us with evidence about some of the Sisters' actual work with the poor, as opposed to statements of principle or the subjective accounts in the institutes’ narratives. The inclusion of the work of the
Sisters of the Good Samaritan in various government reports such as those of the Inspector of Public Charities, the State Children’s Relief
Department and the 1873/74 Commission of Inquiry into Public Charities provides evidence both of how the Sisters acted towards the poor and how the government thought they should have acted. These reports also show the extent to which the Sisters' approach to work with the poor contrasted with that espoused by the Government at the time.
187
As is discussed below, although the Roman Catholic Orphan
School (RCOS) was praised by the government in 1874 for its care of children and efficiency of management (RCPC Second Report 1874:
93-4), it was criticised in subsequent years for not doing enough to reduce pauperism. The RCOS was accused of not being sufficiently rigorous in screening parents who applied to have their children admitted, of returning too many children to their parents rather than apprenticing them out, and of not applying ‘the apprenticing test’ to those parents who did not contribute to the maintenance of their children.43
Evidence given to the Commission of Inquiry into Public Charities in 1873/74 by several Good Samaritan Sisters44 reveals that the Sisters had a good understanding of the difficulties facing poor parents. The government position viewed poverty as resulting from individual moral
43 The ‘apprenticing test’ involved threatening to apprentice children to a master or mistress until 18 years of age. This severed parents’ legal right to request return of their children, and as most children were apprenticed in rural districts (SCRB AR 1883: 22, 1886:22, 1890: 6-7) parental contact was rendered impossible.
44 These were Mother M. Magdalen Adamson, Matron of the RCOS, Sister M. Gertrude Byrne, teacher at the RCOS and Sister M. Benedict Lawn of the House of the Good Shepherd Refuge, who had previously been at the RCOS. 188
failure, especially insobriety: ‘To intemperance, self-indulgence and self- neglect, may in large measure be traced the source whence flow the streams of our pauperism’ (IPC, 1877: 538). The Sisters' position showed a different stance towards the claims of the poor for assistance and indicates the ways in which they put such principles into operation.
Mother M. Magdalen Adamson, matron of the RCOS, showed a clear understanding of the circumstances of poor parents and a reluctance to make judgements of undeservingness. Her position contrasted markedly with that of the Commissioners and the Inspector of
Public Charities. When she was asked at the Public Charities’
Commission whether children should be taken in ‘who had not lost both parents’ she replied: ‘Yes, some mothers are quite unable to support their children’ (RCPC 1873/74 E p. 7, Q. 205). As discussed in Chapter
5, the limited employment options for women and the low level of income they yielded meant that even able-bodied mothers were unlikely to be able to support themselves and their children in Sydney in this period (Dickey 1980, 1987a; O’Brien 1988; Garton 1990). Mother
Magdalen knew this, the Commissioners apparently did not.
Evidence of the Sisters' lack of preoccupation with a narrow definition of ‘deservingness’ in providing assistance is found in Mother
M. Magdalen’s evidence about the age of some inmates at the Catholic 189
Orphan School. The Commissioners questioned her about a number of inmates who were adults, and inquired as to whether or not they were a financial burden. One such was Mary Murphy aged 29, who was
‘nearly blind’ and ‘unable to earn her living’. When asked whether she earned her keep, Mother M. Magdalen replied ‘Well I do not think that anyone would keep her for what she could do’. She had been a resident at the Orphan School for nearly 20 years. Mother Magdalen’s reply to the question as to whether the woman might be better off in some other institution, was ‘I think that if you took her away from here it would be her death’. Another adult in residence at the orphanage was Elizabeth
Flynn aged 22 years. She also had ‘very bad eyesight’ but ‘her work is fully equivalent to the cost of keeping her here’. Margaret Gleeson was
‘of weak intellect and of course no-one would take her on as an apprentice’. There was ‘another girl who is 19’ who was ‘of very weak intellect, almost idiotic’ (RCPC E 1873/74: 4-5, Q. 119-126). Thus, for the Sisters of the Good Samaritan, a compassionate response to individual need took precedence over government rules.
The Sisters' understanding of the poor contrasted with the government’s position, which did not extend the benefit of the doubt in relation to judgements of deservingness. The more punitive stance of 190
the government is also evident in the annual reports of the President of the State Children’s Relief Board: 45
the Board have still to complain of parents and other relatives not in indigent circumstances permitting children to remain a charge upon State charity until they are old enough to earn money, and then making determined efforts to reclaim them. The Board have an earnest desire to re-unite parent and child if the slightest justification for doing so is presented; but applications such as I have alluded to will not be entertained. It is justly considered that the child old enough for service, whose natural protector has manifested no interest in its welfare until it is able to become a source of profit, will be happier and better cared for in a good home selected and supervised by its legal guardians than with an unnatural parent. (SCRB AR 1884: 20f)
This sentiment is elaborated on in subsequent pages of the Board’s Report:
It has been discovered that the boarding-out system will in time greatly diminish the number of dependent children. It has transpired that many parents who would willingly allow their little ones to remain in institutions, where they are easily accessible, readily make homes for them when they are about to be sent into the country. In this way, as others, the system will tend to decrease pauperism, and to cause many careless parents to fulfill their natural obligations.’ (SCRB AR 1884: 21-22)
In the Inspector of Public Charities’ report of the following year, rather than expound upon the behaviour and motives of the parents of children in care, the advantages to the child (and also to the community) of boarding out are emphasized:
45 This was the body established in 1881 to ‘empty the barracks’ of the large children’s institutions by implementing a system of ‘boarding out’ or foster care. 191
The chief value of the newer system, apart from its greater economy lies in the fact that it removes the objects of its care from pauper associations and surroundings, and places them amidst influences calculated to engender habits of industry and self- dependence.’ (IPC 1885: 6)
Before the introduction of the ‘boarding out’ scheme, the publicly funded children’s institutions were expected not to keep children past about 12 years of age. Children of this age were expected to be
‘apprenticed out’, to masters, ostensibly to learn a trade. Such arrangements were legally binding until the child attained a certain age, usually 18 years. Once children were apprenticed their parents could not apply to have them returned to their care (Horsburgh 1980). The
Catholic Orphan School had far lower rates of apprenticing out than did the Protestant Orphan School and had correspondingly higher rates of returning children to their families. Government officials did not approve of this practice at the RCOS:
Year by year, in proportion to the total number but very few children are apprenticed from this orphanage, the great bulk of those reaching the apprenticing age being returned to friends. A suspicion naturally arises as to whether the Committee who recommend applications to the Minister make sufficient inquiry and guard the Government from improper call being made on it. (IPC 1882: 1139)
Thus, it seems that the Sisters of the Good Samaritan in their work at the Catholic Orphan School did implement the compassionate and 192
inclusive attitudes towards poor people as suggested in their narratives and which were prescribed by their institute’s rules.
Irishness and the Sisters’ attitude towards the poor
It has been argued above that the Sisters’ stance towards the poor was compassionate and inclusive. This depiction was evident in their narratives, was enshrined in their institutes’ official statements of principles, and was consistent with public statements about poverty and charity made by the Sydney Catholic clergy and hierarchy. Such a stance was also consistent with Christian biblical teaching. In Chapter
2, Irish attitudes to the causes of poverty and responses to it were discussed and distinguished from the stance which underpinned the
1830s Poor Law legislation in England and Ireland. It is argued below that another influence on the attitude of the Sydney Sisterhoods towards poverty and charity was their Irishness.
As was discussed in Chapter 2, the Irish had an understanding of the structural causes of poverty which differed from the individual- blaming English conceptualisation which was manifest in the poor laws of the 1830s. Thus, for the nineteenth century Irish Sisterhoods the
Catholic ethos towards the poor was reinforced by Irish Catholics’ understanding of poverty. Research on the charitable work of Sisters in 193
Ireland indicates that a compassionate, accepting and inclusive stance was the case there. Luddy stated that the Irish institutes ‘do not appear ever to have refused charity to anyone’ (Luddy 1995: 47).
The four Sisterhoods in Sydney also took their inspiration from the same sources as the Irish institutes, that is from the scriptural attitude to the poor and from the Counter Reformation principles of apostolic action and education. In the case of the two Sydney Sisterhoods founded in
Ireland explicitly to work with the poor (the Sisters of Charity and the
Sisters of Mercy), this inspiration had been fused with their founders’ knowledge of the history of the structural causes of poverty in Ireland.
The other two, Australian-founded institutes (the Sisters of the Good
Samaritan and the Sisters of St Joseph) were also formed to work with the poor. Although not founded in Ireland it is argued here that they nonetheless were quite Irish in character. This was by virtue of their adoption of sections of the Irish institutes’ documents, or through the cultural backgrounds of their members or both. In their Rules, the
Sisters of the Good Samaritan used the sections on charitable work from the Sisters of Charity Rules and Constitutions (McEwen 1989: 5;
Walsh 2001: 52). As Mother Scholastica Gibbons, the Samaritans’ co- founder was herself a member of the Sisters of Charity, this is perhaps not surprising. An analysis of the places of birth of the women in the 194
four Sydney Sisterhoods and of their parents shows that most of the
Sisters engaged in charitable work in Sydney in the period were of Irish rather than English descent.
As noted in previous chapters, Catholics in Sydney were predominantly of Irish background in the nineteenth century (Fitzgerald
1987; Hogan 1987; O’Farrell 1988). The significance of the four Sydney sisterhoods having members of Irish background is that they would have shared an understanding that poverty could have causes other than individual moral failure. Sisters of Irish background would have known about the Famine and the role of the English in Irish poverty, both from family and communal memory. Knowledge of the structural causes of poverty would also have come from various appeals to contribute to the relief of distress in Ireland which were made from New South Wales pulpits and the pages of the Sydney Freeman’s Journal (see for example FJ 24 January 1880: 16; FJ 8 March 1884: 2). The latter also contained appeals for other Irish causes, some of which combined politics and charity such as the meeting to protest against the ‘Coercion’ policy and raise funds for evicted tenants (FJ 14 January 1888: 11).
The following analysis of the cultural backgrounds of the members of the four Sydney Sisterhoods in this period confirms an Irish dominance, also 195
found to be a feature of some women’s religious institutes in America
(Hoy 1997: 261f.; Oates 1998:20).
Analysis of Sisters’ cultural backgrounds
Knowledge of the birthplace of the women who joined the four
Sydney religious institutes was obtained from information in the institutes’ respective members’ registers, augmented by information from other sources in the institutes’ archives when available. These registers also included: date of entry to the institute, date of commencement as a novice, date of profession and date of either death, or departure from the institute. Information on Sisters’ parents (their names, places of birth and father’s occupation) was found to have been less routinely recorded. The records are not complete and it is therefore not possible to draw a very precise picture for each institute or compare or aggregate the data from all four institutes with any statistical legitimacy. Included in the data gathered was information on all women who were Sisters between 1875 and 1900, including those who joined their institutes before this period, and excluding those who left within a year of joining or who did not engage in work outside the convent, being 196
domestic or ‘lay’ Sisters.46 In determining the strength of Irish background, what was examined was the place of birth of the Sisters themselves and, where available, their parents’ place of birth.
Looking at each of the four Sydney institutes in order of establishment in Sydney, it may be expected that the first, the Sisters of
Charity, would have a strong representation of Irish members, being an offshoot of an Irish convent. Of the 302 women who were members of the Sisters of Charity between 1875 and 1900 for whom place of birth is known, 92 were born in Ireland, four were born in England and 198 were born in Australia (with six born elsewhere). Unfortunately the Sisters of
Charity records do not indicate place of birth of parents, so it is not possible to know how many Australian-born sisters had an Irish-born mother and/or father. Thus at the very least almost one third of the
Sisters of Charity were Irish-born. Information on the place of birth of members’ parents is available for some of the other institutes and extrapolating from this it is likely that at least half of the Australian-born
Sisters of Charity had at least one parent born in Ireland. Adding together those Sisters born in Ireland, and the estimated number of
Australian-born Sisters with at least one parent born in Ireland it seems
46 The two Irish-founded institutes had two classes of members – ‘choir’ Sisters and ‘lay’ Sisters. This is discussed in detail in the following chapter, in relation to the Sisters’ payment of dowries. 197
that nearly two-thirds of the Sisters of Charity were within one generation of Ireland.47 Whilst it may be expected that a community of women religious founded from Ireland had Irish members, this may not have been expected of the other three institutes whose first Sydney communities were not made from Irish convents.
The next institute of socially active women religious to commence work in Sydney were the Sisters of the Good Samaritan, founded in
Sydney in 1857 by the English Benedictine Archbishop Polding and
Mother Scholastica Gibbons of the Sisters of Charity. The Good
Samaritans’ records had information on the place of birth of 145 of the
232 women who were members during the period. Of these 145, 28 had been born in Ireland (about one fifth), with 111 being born in Australia.
Of the Australian-born, 68 had at least one parent born in Ireland. So, about two thirds of those for whom the information is known were at most only one generation from the experience of Ireland. A survey by
McGlynn of all Good Samaritan sisters professed between 1885 and
1937, for whom information is available, indicates that ‘277 had at least
47 It is interesting that this institute did not continue to receive Sisters from Ireland after the initial foundation in 1838, that is the mother house in Ireland did not send further Sisters to Sydney, nor did the Sydney Sisters actively recruit in Ireland directly or via agents, as did some of the other institutes (MacGinley 1996a: 288, 9). O’Sullivan discusses the relationship between the Sydney community and their Irish founders (O’Sullivan 1995: 35ff.).
198
one parent born in Ireland, compared with 54 of English parentage and
15 of Scottish parentage. Of these [having Irish parentage], 34 were themselves born in Ireland, three in England and two in Scotland’
(McGlynn 1990: 95).
The third socially active institute to be established in Sydney was the Sisters of Mercy. Although they were an English foundation, coming from Mt. Vernon in Liverpool, an analysis of information contained in the members’ Register indicates that most of its sisters who were members during the period in question did not have English backgrounds. Of the
128 women who were members of the community between 1875 and
1900, information regarding place of birth is available for all but 22. The register indicates that only four were actually born in England. As with the Sisters of Charity and Sisters of the Good Samaritan, most were born in Australia (72) with the next largest number being born in Ireland
(25), this latter comprising nearly a quarter of those for whom the information is known. Additionally, of those born in Australia, some 47 had at least one parent born in Ireland. This makes a total of 72 Sisters of Mercy who were themselves Irish-born or were only one generation away from experience of life in Ireland. This figure constitutes over half of all those who were active members of the community in this period or almost three-quarters of those for whom information is available.
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It is more difficult to interpret the figures for the other Australian- founded institute, the Sisters of St Joseph, because, being a centralised institute with a rural mission, their register of members covered all of
Australia, as well as New Zealand, (not just Sydney or New South
Wales), so it is not possible to identify which Sisters were located in
Sydney during the period. However, of a total of 602 Sisters active in the period from 1866 to 1997, 302 were born in Australia, 235 were born in Ireland (39%), 25 in England, 34 in New Zealand, and six born elsewhere.48 This is the highest percentage of Irish-born Sisters of any of the four institutes. Information on parents’ place of birth is not available, but it is very likely that the high proportion of Irish birth of the
Sisters would also be reflected in the number of Australian-born Sisters having at least one parent born in Ireland.
There is evidence from other sources confirming a strong strain of
Irishness in the Josephite ranks. An analysis of the Adelaide Sisters who joined in the first four years of the institute found that ‘Sixty percent were
Irish, and another thirty percent had at least one Irish parent’ (Tranter
1992: 25). This trend seemed to continue (Tranter 1996: 247f.). Mother
Mary MacKillop herself recruited fifteen new members in Ireland in 1874
48 Report printed from computerised version of Register of Members of the Sisters of St Joseph, (SJA). I did not have direct access to this register because it contained details of current Sisters. I was given access to two reports printed from the computerised record. 200
(Gardiner 1993: 164), and Irish women continued to join the Sisters of St
Joseph. This process was later facilitated by the Irish missionary training school, St Brigid’s, established at Callan in 1883 (MacGinley
1996a: 230).49 Thus the total proportion of Sisters of St Joseph of Irish background would have been at least equal to the proportions in the other three institutes.
The Irish influence on the charitable work of women religious in
Sydney is highlighted when one looks at the backgrounds of the women who held leadership positions in their institutes and were at the helm of various charitable ventures. Many of the Sisters’ charitable institutions had Irishwomen as their founding Superiors. This was true for the two women’s refuges (the House of the Good Shepherd and St Magdalen’s
Retreat), St Vincent’s Hospital, St Joseph’s Consumptive Hospital, the
Manly Industrial School and Orphanage, St Anne’s Orphanage, St
Martha’s Industrial School and the Mater Misericordiae Servant’s Home and Training School (see Appendix 2). The over-representation of Irish- born women in leadership positions in Australian religious institutes has been noted by several commentators, in respect of the Sisters of St
Joseph (Tranter 1992: 25), and across all institutes (MacGinley
49 In 1927 the Josephites established their own Juniorate in Ireland (MacGinley 1996a:289).
201
1996a: 290). Thus it may be seen that the cultural background of the women who were members of the four Sisterhoods in Sydney was predominantly Irish or Irish-Australian rather than English or English-
Australian. Moreover, three of these institutes were co-founded by Irish women, and the fourth by a woman of Scots descent. Thus it may be expected that the Sydney Sisterhoods’ approach to work with the poor was influenced by an understanding of poverty and attitudes to its relief which were not based on English culture, but on Irish conceptualisations and experience. As discussed in Chapter 2, the latter included the experience in Ireland from the 1840s of an English model of public charity which had been imposed with total disregard of very different
Irish recommendations. The Sydney Sisters’ Irish understanding of poverty and charity would also have included knowledge of charitable assistance being provided in Ireland on a discriminatory and conditional basis, as part of the Protestant proselytising agenda which accompanied
English imperialism.
Sectarianism and the perception of need
The Irish background of the Sisters is also relevant to a consideration of their perception of spiritual need. In the nineteenth century, both Catholic and Protestant philanthropists, in Ireland and New
South Wales, saw spiritual needs as having primacy over material 202
needs. Certainly the Sisters of Charity Constitutions state that ‘if however, attention cannot at the same time be paid to both [spiritual and corporal advantage] the first is always to be preferred to the second’ (SC
RC 1912: 136, SCA). The Rules of the Sisters of the Good Samaritan state that ‘they must bear in mind that the first object of their charity is the spiritual benefit of their neighbour’ (SGS R 1878: 50, GSA).
It is argued here however, that for these Irish Catholic Sisters there was a different relationship between spiritual and material needs than that in some New South Wales charities controlled by ‘upper-class’
Protestants of English background.50 For the Sisters, the recognition of individuals’ material needs was not conditional on applicants’ acceptance of the Sisters’ definition of the applicants’ spiritual needs.
As discussed in Chapter 2, Ireland had a tradition of Protestant charity being provided to Catholics conditional on them receiving Protestant religious instruction and their participation in Protestant religious observance. Catholics in New South Wales were also accustomed to religious discrimination in the colonial context. The passing in Britain in
1829 of the ‘Roman Catholic Relief Act ‘ reinforced New South Wales
Catholics' desire to exercise their religious freedom, but this did not always occur (O’Farrell 1977a: 2ff.). In the early nineteenth century
50 Evidence that most of the Sisters were not from the upper social strata of New South Wales society is discussed in Chapter 7. 203
convicts’ attendance at Protestant services was enforced by floggings and other punishments (O’Farrell 1977a: 6; Hogan 1987; E. O’Brien
1922). As discussed below, Catholics in New South Wales were also sometimes refused charitable assistance because of their religion.
Whilst some Protestant charities were intended to serve only
Protestants, others which received government subsidies were supposed to be non-sectarian, as discussed in Chapter 2. An example of anti-Catholic sectarianism in the provision of publicly-funded charity was reported in the Freeman’s Journal. This case involved the refusal of a magistrate to recommend an elderly Catholic man’s application for admission to an asylum in 1880, allegedly telling him to go to his priest for assistance (FJ 27 March 1880: 9). More common was the experience of assistance being provided to Catholics on condition that they participate in Protestant teaching and worship, as in Ireland. This was interpreted by New South Wales Catholics as a deliberate attempt to turn them away from Catholicism (which it seems it sometimes was).
Even when this was not the case, the obvious contempt for Catholics and Catholicism held by some Protestant philanthropists was repugnant to many Catholics. For example, the Freeman’s Journal reported on the annual meeting of the Sydney Ragged Schools at which the Anglican
Bishop denigrated Catholicism - in the course of advocating for freedom of religion in the choice of schools (FJ 6 August 1870: 7). This was the 204
subject of a subsequent editorial: ‘That prelate can never attend a meeting for any charitable purpose without a small fling at Rome’ (FJ 20
August 1870: 8).
Undertakings by charities to respect religious affiliation were not always adhered to in a society where religion was ubiquitous, non-
Catholic denominations were dominant and there was a general anti-
Catholic bias (cf Fitzgerald 1987; Hogan 1987). When this bias was shared by a majority of the prominent persons who comprised the board of management of a charity, it is understandable that respect for the
Catholicism of inmates was not always maintained. The Freeman’s
Journal commented at various times on the religious affiliation and anti-
Catholic sentiments of members of boards of various charities. The
Institution for the Deaf, Dumb and Blind was said to be run by ‘a committee of management which does not contain a single Catholic and which is largely composed of persons quite notorious for their hostility to the Catholic Church and faith’ (FJ 25 April 1874: 8).
The previous year the Freeman’s had commented on the ‘Orange bigots’ on the Board of the Sydney Infirmary and the Board of the
Randwick Asylum for Destitute Children, both of which received substantial government subsidies on the basis that they were non- sectarian (FJ 25 January 1875: 9; FJ 10 May 1873: 9). Both Randwick 205
Children’s Asylum and the Deaf and Dumb Institute were often accused of proselytism of their inmates (for example FJ 5 July 1873: 7; 30
August 1873: 9; 25 April 1874: 8-9; 2 May 1874: 8; 9 October 1875: 11).
When the New South Wales Government formed the State Children’s
Relief Board in 1881 to implement the boarding out policy and thereby
‘empty the barracks’ of the publicly-funded children’s institutions, none of its members was Catholic (FJ 30 April 1881: 13, 37). This was in spite of the fact that Catholic children made up over half of those in the government’s orphan schools at the time the Board was established
(IPC AR 1882: 38-40).
Experiences of Protestant proselytising charity in New South Wales re-opened for Catholics the deep scars left by the Irish experience of poverty and charity. Members of the Catholic lay community and Church hierarchy in New South Wales spoke out against such instances. The
Freeman’s Journal helped maintain Catholics’ consciousness of such practices through reports and editorial comments (for example FJ 25
April 1874: 8; FJ 2 May 1874: 8). In 1880 one of the Sisters of St
Joseph at the Providence wrote to Mother Mary MacKillop that:
we got a baby 12 months old from Fr Carroll to care… Its mother died in the hospital. Father deserted and no alternative but give it to some Protestant Institute or take it, so we did… On the first of May, the doctor gave it three days to live. (Mahoney to Mackillop, 27 May 1880, MMA)
206
The significance of taking in a baby was that at the time the
Providence was a grossly overcrowded, fairly chaotic house caring for elderly women and children from the surrounding slum area.51 All the inhabitants, including the Sisters, were dependent on what food could be scrounged by the Sisters each day. It was far from an ideal setting in which to care for an ill baby. For the Sisters however, this was obviously preferable to the dangers perceived in giving it to a non-Catholic institution.
The desire to assist Catholics in a manner which nurtured rather than harmed their religion was a major reason for the establishment by the Dominican Sisters’ of a Deaf and Dumb School in the 1870s (FJ 25
April 1874: 8; 2 May 1874: 8; 9 May 1874: 8). Most of the Sisters’ charitable institutions were however established because there was inadequate provision to meet material as well as spiritual needs, whether of Protestants, Catholics or any other religious denomination, such was the paucity of provision for the poor. Thus the Sisters’ perception of the needs of the poor included spiritual needs, which included protection from attempted proselytism. Spiritual needs were also related to material needs in the Sisters’ eyes.
51 In April 1880 there were 21 people living in the house and the Sisters were trying to get a bigger place (SSJ Carolan to MacKillop 4, 24 April 1880, MMA). 207
Relationship between spiritual and corporal need
The four Sydney Sisterhoods explicitly stated that meeting individuals’ spiritual needs was the ultimate goal. It is argued here that unlike those Protestant charities which proselytised, the Sisters’ provision of material assistance was generally not conditional on recipients’ acknowledgement of spiritual needs (except, as discussed earlier, for those leading ‘openly scandalous lives’). The perception of
‘Christ in the persons of His poor’ and the knowledge from Irish experience that poverty was not always caused by sin, meant that for the Sisters the relationship between material needs and spiritual needs was not one of causality. In the Sisters’ institutional charities both types of need were addressed simultaneously, unless eternal damnation was an immediate danger, in which case the soul took precedence. In the case of assistance provided to people in their own homes there is evidence to suggest that the institutes generally thought it necessary to relieve material distress first, in order to attempt to meet spiritual needs.
For example, the Rule and Constitution of the Sisters of Mercy, in outlining visitation work with the sick, state that when the conversation turns to procuring relief for the indigence of the sick person’s family ‘ let them [the sisters] promise, as far as depends on them to attend to it, in the manner their state permits; so that, removing all anxiety from the 208
mind of the sick, they may be able with tranquility to give every thought to God alone’ (SM RC 1954: 8, SMA).
Catholic inmates of the Sisters’ institutions were expected to meet their religious obligations, and children in the orphanages and industrial schools had to attend school, which included religious education, and undertake instruction to prepare for reception of the sacraments of Confession, Holy Communion and Confirmation. The children also participated in the various religious and cultural celebrations that occurred throughout the Catholic year such as processions and special services to mark particular occasions, such as
Holy Week and Feast Days such as St Patrick’s Day and those of the saints of special significance to the particular institute providing the service, such as St Joseph, Our Lady of Mercy and so on (for example
FJ 19 April 1873: 9).
The Sisters’ institutional charities often had formal written rules prescribing the requirements for inmates to attend to their spiritual needs, for example the Servants’ Home, the House of the Good
Shepherd and St Magdalen’s Retreat. The Rules pertaining to the latter two were quite stringent, reflecting the fact that these charities were for penitents, that is women who were wanting to turn away from their previous ‘sinful’ lifestyles as prostitutes. It can appear, from the 209
perspective of a hundred years or so later, that this was punitive
(Godden 1987; Luddy 1990; Mark 1996). However an alternative interpretation can be made when one considers the Sisters’ rationale for such practices was to protect the inmates’ privacy and enable them to start afresh, having shed the baggage of their previous lifestyles. This issue is discussed in more detail in the next chapter.52 For example, the Constitutions of the Sisters of Charity state:
that principally and much rather [the institute] makes use of these deeds of charity, as a means of exercising with greater fruit and efficacy works of spiritual mercy to them. (SC C :140, SCA)
Thus the meeting of material needs of the poor was also a means of enhancing spiritual well-being. This is an example of the regenerative purpose of Christian charity (Bowpitt 1998: 679) in which works of charity provided a channel for God’s love to the poor.
The spiritual needs of non-Catholics
Whilst there was a particular concern to meet the material needs of
Catholics and ensure spiritual nurturing via Catholic religious instruction, the Sisters did not let religious differences impede the meeting of material needs of non-Catholics. It is true that a number of the Sisters’ charitable endeavours were developed to cater for Catholics, so that
52 It should be noted here that an historical study of women’s refuges since 1500 concluded that in spite of their moral reform agenda the penitents’ asylums did have a genuine desire to assist women and did in fact expand the options open to them (Cohen 1992: 141,169). 210
they would not be subjected to threats to their religion from Protestant officials. However, the Sisters did not restrict their charity only to
Catholics. The Sisters of Charity for example, aimed to care for all poor people, regardless of denomination. O’Sullivan points out the connection between this and the early upbringing as a Protestant of the
Charity foundress, Mary Aikenhead (O’Sullivan 1995:12). Evidence that this approach was shared by the other institutes is found in the statements of ethos in their official documents, and from other sources considered below. The Sisters’ preparedness to recognise the material needs of poor Protestants was not at the expense of their spiritual needs.
It seems, however, that the Sisters’ did not proselytise Protestants who sought assistance for material needs. This was unlike the situation
Catholics often encountered from non-Catholic charity in New South
Wales and Ireland. For some charitable ventures this aspect of the
Sisters’ charity was well-known. St Vincent’s Hospital was a prime example. It was founded in 1857 to provide for the sick poor, regardless of religious affiliation (O’ Carrigan 1986: 324). Over the quarter century of interest there are many statements to the effect that ‘It is no sectarian charity, for persons of all denominations and countries are admitted within the walls of the institution’ (FJ 8 November 1873: 10). There is no doubt that it operated as a public hospital for the sick poor of Sydney, 211
(except that it did not receive financial support from the public purse). A
Protestant doctor, who was part of the Hospital’s deputation to the
Colonial Secretary seeking financial assistance in November 1875 asserted that ‘the greater part of the patients’ were Protestants
(O’Carrigan 1986: 323). Protestant clergymen were entitled to recommend patients for outpatients’ treatment, even if they were not subscribers:
Every clergyman (of all denominations) in New South Wales is privileged to recommend six outpatients in the year without paying any subscription: he can however subscribe, and obtain the privileges of the other subscribers. (SC SVH AR 1869: 15, SCA)
It should be noted that St Vincent’s was the hospital of choice for the Royal Navy when its ships were berthed at Woolloomooloo and the
Navy publicly acknowledged this. The Admiral attended the annual fundraising ball for St Vincent’s Hospital on at least one occasion (FJ 16
June 1888: 15).
Other charitable institutions run by the Sisters were also open to all, regardless of religion, including the House of the Good Shepherd and St Magdalen’s Retreat: ‘Many a Protestant girl has found shelter within its walls , and no whisper of proselytism has ever been breathed’
(FJ 10 January 1874: 9; 25 September 1875:11; SGS Ad. R. St.
Magdalens’ Retreat, GSA). Similarly, the Mater Misericordiae Servants’
Home and Training School established by the Sisters of Mercy in 1891 212
admitted women ‘irrespective of creed or country’ (MMH AR 1908, n.p.
SMA). Likewise the Catholic Deaf and Dumb School opened by the
Dominican Sisters in 1875 in Newcastle also catered for deaf children regardless of religious affiliation: ‘While the institute is primarily for the benefit of Catholics, the Nuns will admit children that are not Catholics, and train them without interfering with their religious tenets’ (FJ 6 July
1895: 20).
The Sisters of Mercy Guide gives quite explicit instructions that the
Sisters should not try and convert Protestants in the course of their charitable visitation work to individuals’ homes or to those in ‘hospitals, workhouses, prisons, etc’. It states that:
When the Sisters meet Protestants on the visitation, they speak kindly to them. Should they seem desirous to speak on religious subjects, as controversy is generally found more calculated to excite a spirit of contention and love of argument than to make converts, it is more recommended to us to speak on the awful, eternal truths …. (SM G 1866: 38-39; SMA)
When visiting institution inmates and hospital patients the Mercy Sisters were told that:
If Protestants ask instruction, better refer them to the Chaplain, and say how willingly we shall instruct them when they have taken the previous measures that the circumstances require. It maybe well to make known the restrictions under which we are permitted to visit… (SM G 1866: 41; SMA)
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Thus, the Sisters’ prescribed stance towards poor Protestants was to acknowledge and attempt to meet their material needs, but not to exploit their situation by attempting to convert them. This is not to say however that conversions were not welcomed by the Sisters, only that they were not sought by proselytisation.
Conclusion
This chapter commenced the exploration of the character of the charitable work of the four Sydney Sisterhoods by examining the Sisters’ attitudes towards poverty and charity. The Sisters’ narratives suggest that their attitude towards the poor was one of compassion and inclusion, rather than judgment and exclusion. The former stance was in fact prescribed in the institutes’ official rules and was consistent with attitudes expressed by the Sydney Catholic clergy and hierarchy over the period. This position was based on Catholic teaching on the
Christian duty to serve the poor. The Irish cultural backgrounds of the
Sydney Sisterhoods gave them an understanding that poverty was not caused solely by sin or other individual shortcomings. Experiences of proselytising charity in Ireland and New South Wales coloured the
Sisters’ perception of the needs of the poor. Some of the Sisters’ charitable endeavours were commenced so that Catholics’ spiritual needs would be protected from the harm done by proselytising 214
Protestant charity. However, the Sisters also recognized and respected the material and spiritual needs of persons of other faiths. They extended their charity to them and did so without proselytisation.
Whilst the Sisters’ statements about their work are not in themselves confirmation of their actions, evidence from New South
Wales government reports suggests that the Sisters of the Good
Samaritan (in work with orphans and girls at the government reformatory) did in fact act in accordance with the principles espoused in their rules and articulated in narrative accounts of their work. These government documents also reveal that Sisters’ stance towards the poor was relatively more compassionate and inclusive than the dominant, anti-pauperist stance which has been said to have prevailed in late nineteenth century Sydney, as discussed earlier in Chapter 2. The existence in late nineteenth century Sydney of approaches to assisting the poor which differed in terms of the inclusiveness of their stance paralleled the situation in England and the USA. In both the latter two countries some early social work provision, such as settlements, adopted a position at odds with those of the poor law administration and other charitable organisations which prioritised the encouragement of self-reliance (Walton 1975; Parry and Parry 1979; Vicinus 1985;
Forsythe 1995). The next chapter continues the exploration of the 215
Sisters’ charitable work by focusing on the Sisters’ knowledge and understanding of the lives of the poor. 216
CHAPTER 7
‘WHEN SUPPLIES RAN VERY SHORT AND THE PURSE WAS EMPTY’: THE SISTERS’ KNOWLEDGE OF THE NEEDS OF THE POOR
Introduction
The previous chapter analysed the Sisters' stance towards the poor, showing that an accepting and compassionate stance was evident in the Sisters' narratives and was articulated in the rules of their institutes. The inclusive attitude towards the poor expressed by the four
Sisterhoods’ was congruent with that of the Sydney Church hierarchy and clergy in the period. This was based on the scriptural teaching to
‘see Christ in His poor’. It was argued that the Sisterhoods’ ethos concerning treatment of the poor reflected the Irish understanding that poverty had structural causes. An analysis of the Sisters' cultural backgrounds showed that the majority of Sisters were of Irish or
Australian-Irish backgrounds (rather than English or English-Australian), and that Irish women had been in charge of a number of the charitable institutions commenced by the Sisters.
217
The Sisters' compassionate and inclusive attitude was contrasted with the dominant approach to charity in New South Wales at the time, as espoused in government reports. This position was based on an assumption that individual moral shortcomings were the cause of much poverty and that eradication of poverty required moral retraining.
Moreover, such an approach was consistent with reducing and eliminating pauperism, which could result from the indiscriminant provision of assistance. Government documents on the work of the
Sisters of the Good Samaritan suggest that they did implement an inclusive and compassionate stance. That the Sydney Sisters did not prioritise the reduction of pauperism via a punitive and exclusive stance suggests that their relationships with the poor may have been quite different from the relationships which existed between other providers of charity and various groups of the poor in Sydney in this period.
This chapter continues the exploration of the foundations of the
Sisters' relationships with poor people in Sydney. As discussed in
Chapter 3, it has been contended by others that the relationship between women charity workers and the poor in the nineteenth century was predicated on the existence of a significant difference in social class. ‘Ladies’ involved in charitable work in Sydney were found to be ignorant of the realities of the lives of those whom they sought to assist 218
(Godden 1983). The former’s ascribed superiority in class and morality gave them authority over women and children of a lower class position.
This class gap produced relationships which were characterised by condescension (Summers 1979: 43ff.; Swain 1998: 32ff.). Godden found that upper class women philanthropists in Sydney were ‘isolated from much of the social realities of their time’ (Godden 1983: 52).
Godden argued that whilst this isolation was essential to preserve the status which was the source of the ‘ladies’’ authority over poor women and children in Sydney, it also meant the ‘ladies’ were ignorant of the lives of the latter, and did not have a realistic understanding of their situation. In social work terms this amounts to the ‘ladies’ not having had the foundations for an empathic response to the poor.
Godden claims that the charitable work of Catholic Sisters in late nineteenth century Sydney was similar to that of lay ‘lady’ philanthropists because their class positions were alike (Godden 1983: xxf., 74, 110ff.).
However, as discussed in Chapter 3, research on the charitable work of
Sisters in North America has found that some groups of Sisters had a good understanding of the poor based on similarity of their social positions and the knowledge the Sisters gained from living amongst the poor (Hoy 1997, 2002; Anderson 2000). This chapter re-examines the basis of Godden’s claim concerning the ignorance and isolation of the 219
Sisters from the poor. It is argued below that the Sydney Sisters’ relationships with the poor proceeded from a good understanding of the realities of life for poor people. This understanding was based on several features of the Sisters’ situation. First, it will be argued that there was not as great a social distance, in terms of socio-economic position, between Sisters and the poor as Godden suggested.
Secondly, it is argued that the Sisters knew the poor well. Evidence will be given that the Sisters had a first-hand acquaintance with social conditions in Sydney at the time as well as having had a great deal of interaction with the poor on the latter’s own territory. Finally, it will be contended that the Sydney Sisters’ understanding of the poor was facilitated by their own experience of hardship in their convents.
Social class backgrounds of the Sisters
Accounts of the development of the four Sydney Sisterhoods seem to give credence to Godden’s claims (Godden 1983, 1987) that the members of the Sydney Sisterhoods in late nineteenth century were predominantly from upper or upper middle class backgrounds similar to that of lay ‘lady’ philanthropists (O’Sullivan 1995:15ff.; MacGinley
1996a: 82f.). Convent narratives are studded with references to the ladylike qualities of various members, sometimes in descriptions of the individuals concerned, sometimes by reference to their family 220
connections. For example an early member of the Charity community in
Sydney, Miss Teresa Phillips, was described as being ‘elevated in thought and mind, highly spiritual and refined, a lady in every sense of the word’ (SC An. Vol.1: 201, SCA). Another member of the same community, Sister de Sales O’Brien, was related to the Solicitor-General of New South Wales and her father ‘owned so much property that he was listed among the gentry of both Co. Cork and Co. Limerick’
(O’Sullivan 1995:19, 21). An early recruit to the Sydney Mercy community had a brother who was a judge in Brisbane (SM MS.11, ‘Our
Pioneer Nuns’, SMA). Other institutes’ documents also allude to the class backgrounds of individual members. It was said of the early
Sisters of the Good Samaritan that ‘They were ladies of what is now called old-fashioned culture’ (Hanly MS. cited in A Sister of the Good
Samaritan 1972: 69).
In arguing that the Sisters were of the same class as their lay counterparts, Godden used two types of evidence – the family backgrounds of a number of individual Sisters in leadership positions, and the existence of formalised class distinctions within the Catholic women’s religious institutes. However, it is argued here that her conclusion from this evidence that the Sisters as a whole had the same relationship to the poor as did ‘lady’ philanthropists, is not warranted.
221
Looking first at the issue of class distinction within the
Sisterhoods, it is true that there were traditionally two divisions of membership in Catholic women’s religious institutes. This distinction had always been a feature of the older institutes, that is solemn-vow, enclosed orders of nuns. This system of two classes of members was retained by many of the Counter-Reformation, socially active, unenclosed institutes or Sisterhoods. The first category of members was comprised of ‘choir’ Sisters who were usually better educated and were required to provide sizeable dowries to enter the institute. The second category consisted of ‘lay’ Sisters who undertook the domestic work of the convent and did not have to provide a dowry.53 The dowry was basically to maintain the Sister for the rest of her life in the convent.
Standard practice was for the dowry to be invested by the institute with the interest being used to maintain the Sisters in the convent (Clear
1987:70). Only ‘choir’ Sisters could undertake teaching and charitable work, and thus by definition must have come from wealthy families.
However, with the development in the nineteenth century of the newer
‘socially active’ institutes which did not require solemn vows or cloister, this two category membership structure was not always retained.
53 MacGinley discusses the historical development of ‘lay’ Sisters (MacGinley 1996a: 320ff.).
222
Of the four institutes of interest here only the oldest two, both founded in Ireland, had two classes of members, that is, the Sisters of
Charity and the Sisters of Mercy. The two later-founded, Australian institutes, the Josephites and the Sisters of the Good Samaritan, had only one category of membership. The Good Samaritans had the traditional binary pattern for a brief period but are said to have discarded it on the decision of their co-founder Archbishop Polding, after the early deaths of the two lay sisters (Walsh 2001: 74). However, in spite of the abolition of double-tiered membership of the Good Samaritan institute there was still an expectation that a dowry would be paid.
The other Australian-founded institute, the Sisters of St Joseph, on the other hand, were intended from the outset to have only one class of members. As it was originally envisaged that all Sisters of St Joseph would live in poverty, there was no need for a dowry. However the wishes of the institute’s founders were over-ruled by the Vatican, out of concern that there should be some minimum material security for the institute and its members. From 1874 the Rules of the Sisters of St
Joseph included provision for the payment of a dowry for those who could afford it, but it was not an essential requirement (MacGinley
1996a: 171). So, the rules and constitutions of three of the Sydney institutes indicated that new members were expected to bring a dowry.
This would appear to support Godden’s claim concerning the Sisters’ 223
elevated class position and therefore her conclusion that there was a considerable social distance between the Sisters and the poor.
However, there are other considerations relevant to any inference about the Sydney Sisters' social isolation from, and knowledge of, the poor.
Coming from a ‘prominent’ or well-connected family did not necessarily mean that Sisters were separated by a social class gap from the poor, and thereby ignorant of their needs. Some Catholic families who were moderately well-to-do when their daughters entered religious life had had more humble beginnings, having come from Ireland as assisted immigrants or convicts a generation or two before. The best known example of this phenomenon was the exiled 1798 rebel chieftain,
Michael Dwyer, a number of whose descendants entered religious life.
His grandson became a Benedictine priest who rose to the office of
Dean in the Sydney Archdiocese. Female descendants joined the
Benedictine Sisters, the Sisters of Charity and the Sisters of the Good
Samaritan (SC Ad. R. SCA; Trower 1998b; Walsh 2001: 75). The reverse process also occurred. It was possible, especially for the Irish, to be both ‘gentry’, that is coming from a family once in the upper social stratum, and also no longer wealthy, because of the political and economic factors operating in Ireland. Also in an economically unstable colonial society such as nineteenth century New South Wales, dramatic reversals of fortune were quite common. Henry Parkes for example was close to bankruptcy on a number of occasions (Kingston 1993: 251). 224
So, it was possible for an aspiring Sister to have come from a ‘good’ family which had not been consistently wealthy over time.
Two analyses which were undertaken of the socio-economic backgrounds of Sisters in this period are outlined below. The first is of
Sisters’ dowry payments. The second analysis is of the occupations of the Sisters’ fathers. It will be argued that neither analysis supports
Godden’s assertion that the Sisters were from the upper social stratum of New South Wales society, and thus separated from the poor by a great social distance.
Payment of dowries
An analysis of dowry payments shows that not all women who entered the four Sisterhoods in Sydney in this period complied with the requirement that members should bring a sum of money to provide the means for their material support over the rest of their lives. First, it is known from the institutes’ annals, histories and other sources that a small number of women who entered institutes specifically to come to
Australia did not provide a dowry, in spite of coming from ‘well-to-do’ families. Sister M. Baptist De Lacy, one of the original 1838 group of
Sisters of Charity from Ireland who started St Vincent’s Hospital in 1857 was one such (O’Sullivan 1995: 17). There were other sisters of Charity who entered in the early years of the Sydney community who also came 225
without dowries, although being from well-connected families. This included Mother Scholastica Gibbons who subsequently co-founded the
Sisters of the Good Samaritan. Archbishop Polding undertook total responsibility for her upkeep (O’Sullivan 1995: 46).
In analysing the payment of dowries, two sources of data were used. Entries in the account books of payments received from Sisters were cross-referenced with data from the registers of members.54 The cash received column of the account books indicates that Sisters were expected to pay a fee on entering the convent plus regular quarterly payments for board (‘pension’) until final profession several years later, at which time the dowry was paid. The amount of dowry required seems to have varied both from one institute to another and also within institutes.
Traditionally, the older ‘enclosed’ monastic orders required much higher dowries than the ‘new’ simple vow, socially active institutes.
MacGinley reports that the required amount for Dominican Sisters’
54 There were no surviving account books for the Sisters of Charity or the Sisters of St Joseph covering this period. The Sisters of Charity had a cashbook covering a period up to 1864. Most of the Josephite records for the period 1875-1883 were requisitioned by Bishop Reynolds’ Commission of inquiry and never were seen again by the Sisters (Gardiner 1993: 329, note 2). At the time of gathering data for this project other Josephite records were unavailable because they had been required for the process of beatification of Mary MacKillop (personal communication from Sister M. Benedetta rsj, archivist at SJA).
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coming to Australia was £1000 (MacGinley 1996a: 362, Note 66). In contrast, £500 was the minimum sum required by another enclosed group, the Presentation community in Galway (Clear 1987:87).
However, this distinction between the sums required by the two types of institute is not borne out by the usual amount required by the early
(unenclosed) Sisters of Charity in Ireland, which was £800 (O’Sullivan
1995: 23). Sisters of Mercy dowries seemed to vary from place to place and at different points in time, with the amount required in Galway in mid nineteenth century being £375 (Clear 1987: 87) and generally being
£300 or £400 in Charleville (Ryan 1996b: 11 note 25). Clear makes the point that Catherine McAuley, the foundress of the Institute of Mercy did not ever refuse a woman admission to the Sisters of Mercy because of insufficient dowry (Clear 1987:88). This is borne out in a comment made by McAuley where she refers to the ‘light purse’ of a new entrant
(McAuley to Warde 15 December 1840, cited in Neumann 1969: 270;
SMA).
From the analysis discussed below it seems the standard amount of dowry for the institutes in this study was far less than for any of those in Ireland. Moreover, many Sisters in Sydney did not seem to pay this, or any sum at all. The standard entry fee for the Sydney Mercy community seems to have been £100, with the annual amount for board being £26 to £30, generally paid three-monthly. A typical amount for the 227
Sydney Mercy dowry seems to also have been £100, as paid by Miss J.
O’Neill in 1875-76 (SM AB SPC MSA 1866 – 1882: June, July 1875,
Jan. 1876; SMA), by Miss Murphy in 1876-78 (SM AB SPC MSA 1866
– 1882: April, Nov. 1876, Nov. 1877, Feb. 1878; SMA) and by Miss
Brigid Cahill in February 1886 (AB MSA 1879 – 1894: Feb. 1886; SMA).
Two entrants paid higher amounts. In 1881 Miss Heaton paid ‘Dower in full’ of £142 (SM AB MSA 1879 -1894: December 1881; SMA) and Miss
Wardell paid £250 as dowry (SM AB MSA 1879 -1894 February 1888;
SMA), as well as a higher entry fee (SM AB MSA 1879 -1894: August
1884; SMA).
It should be noted that both Miss O’Neill and Miss Murphy paid their dowries in installments. Moreover, not all women whose names appeared in the institutes’ Admission Registers appeared in the account books against payments of ‘pension’ or dowry. This suggests that they were not able to afford the full amount and hence were not particularly wealthy. This, plus the fact that the full dowry was only £100, rather than £300 or more, suggests that the socio-economic status of Mercy
Sisters in Sydney may have been lower than that of their Irish counterparts.
The records of the other Sydney Sisterhoods also indicate that the requirements for entry, pension and dowry payments were not always 228
met. For example, of the women who entered the Good Samaritan institute in 1887, entries for money received from them could be found for fewer than half (SGS Ad. R.; AB PSRef. 1886-87, 1891; GSA).
Again in 1895, of nine sisters who entered the institute, payments for only one (that is, Sister M. Sylvester Harnett) were located in the account book. Even then, this was in the form of a number of small payments (between three guineas and seven pounds) made on her behalf between November 1895 and September 1897 (SGS AB PSC
1894 -1901: Nov. 1895, May 1896, Sept. 1896, Sept. 1897; GSA). Thus there is little evidence that the women who joined the Sisters of the
Good Samaritan in this period were from wealthy backgrounds.
The Sisters of Charity records for the period 1852-1866 show a similar pattern. For example neither Sister M. Joseph O’Farrell or Sister
M. Aloysius Raymond who joined the institute in the early 1850s appeared to bring a dowry, as there are no corresponding entries in the cashbook. For other Sisters of Charity there were cashbook entries corresponding with admission to the institute. For example Mary Ann
Unsworth (Sister M. Alphonsus) and Mary Ann Cunningham (Sister M.
Xavier) who were both admitted in 1857 paid various sums of money on a number of occasions (SC CB May, June, July, August 1857; SCA).
Miss Unsworth seems to have paid £4 in May 1857 and £ 8 -12 - 4 in
July 1857, totaling just under £13. Miss Cunningham paid £7 in May 229
1857, £1-12 – 3 in June and £40 in August of the same year, that is a total of less than £49. Although some pages of the cashbook for late
1857 are missing, the names of neither Sister re-appears in succeeding years. The records for another Sister of Charity, Miss Catherine Carroll
(Sister M. Vincent) are interesting. She entered the Sisters of Charity in
1860, taking final vows in 1863. She had migrated from Kilkenny with her parents some years earlier (SC An. Vol.1: 200f., SCA). The Sisters of Charity cashbook records a number of payments against Miss
Carroll/Sister M. Vincent’s name, made between 1860 and 1865 (two years after final profession). In 1860-61 Miss Carroll made four payments, each of £4 or £5. In April 1862 she paid £ 10, a year later
£15, and two years later £2 (SC CB 1860 – 1865, SCA). This amounts to a total of £45 over nearly five years – well short of what could have been expected. The fact that the final three payments were made in the same month, April, might indicate that the money was a gift, perhaps for a feast day or similar. The total amounts paid by these three Sisters of
Charity, that is, £45, £13 approx., and £50, suggest that these Sisters’ families were not able to pay more. These amounts were not large and seem to have been far less than the £800 paid by women joining the institute in Ireland. Although this evidence from the Sisters of Charity records pertains to a period earlier than the last quarter of the nineteenth century, it does show that the Sisters of Charity were willing to admit women who were not able to pay the usual amount, and 230
therefore may not have come from wealthy backgrounds. It is likely that this willingness continued into the period in question.
Thus, although three of the Sydney institutes officially required that new members pay a dowry when joining, it seems that for the institutes which have financial records surviving from this period, this did not always occur. It may indeed have been a minority practice. As indicated earlier, the fourth institute, the Sisters of St Joseph, for which there are no financial records, did not require dowry payments because their ethos was that the Sisters were to live like the poor they served.
There is no evidence then that the majority of members of the four
Sydney Sisterhoods in this period were from wealthy families. It would seem therefore that there may not have been as large a social class gap between the Sisters and the Sydney poor as Godden claimed. On the other hand, the above amounts of dowry and entrance payments would indicate that some aspiring Sisters would have come from quite financially comfortable backgrounds, but the sums involved are not so large as to have meant that their families were amongst the top social stratum of Sydney society. This is in keeping with the demographic data on the Catholic community in New South Wales in this period which suggests that there were relatively few Catholic families in this elite position. O’Farrell noted that in the early 1900s Irish Catholics were 20-
25 per cent of the population but only constituted 5 to 10 percent of the 231
wealthy (Hogan 1987: 138, 142; O’Farrell 1988: 120). Godden’s claim that the Sisters were of a similar class backgrounds to lay ‘lady’ philanthropists thus appears unwarranted. Such a conclusion is supported by the following analysis of data on the Sisters’ family backgrounds.
Occupations of the Sisters’ fathers.
The analysis of data on fathers’ occupations from the Sisterhoods’ admission registers indicates that across all the institutes, the Sisters were probably mainly from lower middle-class backgrounds, with fathers being farmers, white collar workers or skilled tradesmen, rather than from the higher social echelons of Sydney society.55 This contrasts both with the impression gained from the institutes’ narratives of individual members who were ‘ladies’, and also with the backgrounds of the lay women involved in ‘woman’s sphere’ charity in Sydney in this period (Godden 1983).
For each of the three Sisterhoods for which information is available, the largest category of father’s occupation is ‘farmer’. The Sisters of
Charity had 22% of their members with fathers in this group, compared
55 Data on father’s occupation was available for 227 members of the Sisters of Charity, 82 Sisters of Mercy and 93 Sisters of the Good Samaritan. Information on the occupations of the fathers of Sisters of St Joseph was not available. 232
to 32% of the Sisters of Mercy and 34% of the Sisters of the Good
Samaritan. For these latter two institutes the next largest category was
‘skilled tradesman’, (such as plasterer, mason, butcher, mechanic), having 18% and 19% respectively. The Sisters of Charity had only 3% of members with fathers in this classification. The next main grouping was that of ‘civil servant’ (which included teachers, customs officers,
GPO clerk and so on). The Sisters of Charity had 12% in this class, whilst the Sisters of Mercy had 11%, and the Sisters of the Good
Samaritan had 15%. The next most numerous categories, each having between 2% and 8% in each institute were merchants or storekeepers, hotel keepers, and ‘white collar’ occupations (such as journalist, private secretary). Very few daughters of doctors or solicitors became Sisters.
The Sisters of Charity fathers included only two doctors, and one solicitor. The Sisters of Mercy had one father who was a solicitor, and the Good Samaritans had one doctor father. On the other hand there were very few Sisters in any of these three institutes whose fathers were in unskilled occupations. The Sisters of Mercy - with 6% - seemed to have the largest number from this background.
Unfortunately in attempting to interpret this data, the dominant occupational group, that is ‘farmer’, is difficult to place in a hierarchy of socio-economic standings for the period. This category would have included freehold farmers as well as leaseholders (Zimmerman 2000a: 233
263), and those having very modest holdings as well as very wealthy, large landholders. Zimmerman used more detailed information from the electoral rolls to conclude that the majority of the ‘farmer’ fathers of the women entering religious life in the Maitland diocese between 1867 and
1909 were probably tenant farmers, as were two-thirds of farmers in the
1870–71 New South Wales census (Zimmerman 2000a: 263). As the hundreds of women who joined the four Sydney institutes came from across New South Wales as well as interstate and overseas, seeking such information from the electoral rolls was not feasible in the present study. On the balance of probabilities it is likely that the proportions of owners and tenants amongst the Sydney Sisters whose fathers were farmers was similar to that for the state as a whole.
Whilst little is known of the occupations of the fathers of the Sisters of St Joseph it is likely that they were not wealthier than the fathers of women who entered the other three institutes. Anecdotal evidence indicates that the opposite was probably the case, that is, women who joined the Sisters of St Joseph were from families which were on average poorer than those of the members of other Sisterhoods (Tranter
1992: 24ff.; McKenna 1996 31ff.). Leaving aside questions of the exact status of the ‘farmers’, it seems that the data on occupations of the
Sydney Sisters’ fathers indicates that most of the members of the four
Sydney Sisterhoods in the last quarter of the nineteenth century were of 2 34
‘lower middle-class’ backgrounds, rather than being from either of the extremes of the socio-economic spectrum. This is congruent with the information on dowry payments cited above. It seems therefore that the members of the four ‘socially active’ women’s institutes in this study were not from the top social stratum of society. This is similar to
Zimmerman’s conclusion about the backgrounds of the women who entered religious institutes in the Maitland diocese between 1867 and
1909 (Zimmerman 2000b). She notes the absence of women whose fathers were from the professional classes (Zimmerman 2000b: 198).
This finding may be compared with the situation found in the United
States in the nineteenth century, where the wealthiest women who chose the religious life were found to have joined those institutes whose focus was on boarding school education for the daughters of the elite
(Oates 1995:15).
The information on dowry payments and fathers’ occupations suggests that the Sisters were not the social class equals of the lay
‘lady’ charity workers in Sydney in this period. Godden’s depiction of a great social distance separating the Sisters from the poor in Sydney therefore does not seem to hold. Her argument, that the large social distance between the two predisposed the Sisters to form relationships which were based on social isolation and ignorance, can therefore be questioned (Godden 1983). Evidence outlined below concerning the 235
Sisters’ social contact with the poor in Sydney casts further doubt on
Godden’s inference that isolation and ignorance shaped the Sisters’ working relationships with the poor.
The Sisters’ acquaintance with the poor
Sisters in the four Sydney institutes also were not ignorant of the lives of those they sought to assist for another critical reason. The needs of the poor were apparent to the Sisters because they interacted with them first hand in the course of their daily work. The Sisters had extensive contact with the poor because each of the institutes was founded expressly to undertake such work. In some instances the
Sisters lived under the same roof as those they assisted – including the
House of the Good Shepherd Refuge, all the orphanages and industrial schools, St Vincent’s Hospital (in the early days when convent and hospital were in the same building), and St Joseph’s Providence.
Moreover, all the institutes undertook charitable visitation to the homes of the poor for one purpose or another. For example, the Sisters of
Charity had a particular concern for the nursing of the sick poor at home as well as in hospital (SC RC:139, SCA). It was said of them: ‘The
Sisters of Charity were constant visitors to the lanes and dark corners of the town. They knew every slum in Sydney’ (A Sister of the Good
Samaritan 1972: 60). 236
Such visitation work was an ongoing and integral part of each institute’s mission, a fundamental component of their existence. There are reports of visitation work in episcopal reports, the institutes’ annals, histories, biographies and recollections, as well as in newspapers of the day. However, compared to the Sisters’ institutionally based charitable work, there is little detailed information on this home visitation work.
Running an institution necessitated the keeping of records of those admitted and the keeping of financial records such as account books because of the large sums involved in building and running institutional charities. Non-institutional works of charity did not seem to have the same requirements for record-making and keeping. Whilst there is a reference in a Mercy manuscript to a ‘Visitation Book’ which listed the name and nature of each visit, the book itself does not seem to have survived (SM FESM nd: 2, SMA).
It is known however, that Sisters from all four institutes undertook home visitation of the poor, even when they also operated charitable institutions, and that this work took them into the poorest areas of the city. For example, the Sisters of the Good Samaritan, whose initial work was at the House of the Good Shepherd, and who also ran the government’s Catholic Orphan School, and later the Orphanage and
Industrial School at Manly also undertook home visiting (for example GS 237
An: 5, 44, 81; Hanly n.d., n.p.; GSA). The written recollections of a sister state that:
All over the hills from Pitt Street out to Moore Park we went day by day, and in the other direction to Redfern, Waterloo and Petersham. We were out from 10-12 in the morning and from 2.30 to 4.30 in the afternoon. (Hanly cited in A Sister of the Good Samaritan 1972: 69)
The same source gives an indication of the nature of the visitation work:
We used to do what we could for the sick and poor, and bring supplies of food and medicine from Pitt Street. Then there were the ‘hard cases’ – disagreements to be healed – quarrels to be made up - and endeavours to get sinners to the Sacraments. (Hanly cited in A Sister of the Good Samaritan 1972: 69)
The other institutes’ records also indicate that visitation work was carried out. The Sisters of Charity Annals note that:
Visitation of the sick and poor in their homes has been carried out all through the years by the Sisters in the different districts…. ‘Whatever you do to the least of these you do to me’ was ever present to the minds of the daughters of Mary Aikenhead. (SC An. Vol. 2: 179, SCA)
Similarly, accounts of the work of the Sisters’ of Mercy state: ‘Then there was the visitation of the poor and sick in their homes’ (SM MS 11 ‘Our
Pioneer Nuns’: Sr M. de Sales O’Neill; SMA), and ‘Mother Veronica worked there [Chandos Street school] and did a great deal of good, not only in the school but also among the sick and the poor’ (SM MS 11: 4;
SMA).
238
It was common for the Sisters of each institute to undertake visitation of the poor after they had finished teaching school. The
Sisters of St Joseph with their emphasis on the education of poor children routinely visited the children’s families after school (SSJ R
1867: 9, SJA; Burford 1991: 163). Whilst the Sisters of the other institutes did not routinely visit the children’s homes, they nonetheless had home visitation of the poor and sick as an after-school duty. That this was the case for the Sisters of Charity is evidenced in their annals
(for example, SC An. Vol.1: 105, 151; SCA) and in the biographical notes on Sisters, including those for Mother Joseph Chisolm (SC B n.d.:
30; SCA) and for Sister Clare Duncan, about whom it was written that:
‘Like most of the Sisters in those early days, Sr. M. Clare taught little children and after School hours, visited the poor’ (SC B n.d.: 57, SCA).
Similar reports of charitable visitation being undertaken after school appear in the Sisters of Mercy narratives, which said of the Sisters :
‘after the day’s work was finished in school, when they had partaken of a slight refreshment, …[they] visited the sick and poor of the parish’ (SM
MS 11: 4; SMA).
Reports in the Freeman's Journal also confirm that the Sisters undertook home visitation work. There are regular references to the various institutes’ work in visiting the poor, sick and dying (for example 239
FJ 7 August 1875: 17; 14 August 1875: 13). One example is in the
‘Town News’ section of the paper which speaks of the Good Samaritan
Sisters’
kind attention to the sick of the district, their priceless visits to the afflicted and distressed under whatever forms of misery, their gentle and skilful counsels to the uninstructed or the perplexed and imperilled among the adult population… (FJ 14 May 1870: 9)
Other instances of home visitation work are reported in accounts of
Sisters attending the dying, for example a Mrs Larkin who ‘in her last hours … was soothed by the kind offices of the Sisters of the Good
Shepherd’ (FJ 26 July 1883: 10), and in the obituary of a Mrs Blake ‘the nuns of St Vincent’s were constant in their attendance of her sick bed’
(FJ 19 February 1881:13).
Thus it seems that the Sydney Sisters did in fact undertake works of spiritual and corporal mercy in the homes of poor people as outlined in the rules of their institutes. This means therefore that the Sisters were not socially isolated from the poor but were well acquainted with the reality of their lives. Moreover, the Sisters’ knowledge of the poor was not limited to contact with them in their homes. In the course of home visitation work and other activities such as school teaching, catechetical work and visitation of people in hospitals, prisons and other institutions the Sisters traveled around the city and suburbs. They used 240
public transport or, when it was not available or when convent finances did not permit it to be used, the Sisters traveled on foot. Remarks such as the following are made in respect of each institute: ‘This state of affairs made it necessary for the Sisters to walk for miles on the visitation, instructing the people and consoling the sick’ (SM FESM nd:
8, SMA). The other institutes’ narratives also contain references to the distances Sisters walked. For example in relation to the Sisters of
Charity in the Concord district of Sydney in the late 1890s it was recorded: ‘Nor did the Sisters neglect their professional duty of visiting the poor and the sick. Many a long and weary tramp they had over this extensive parish’ (SC An. Vol.2: 136; SCA).
Even when the Sisters were not undertaking charitable home visitation, they encountered poor people. Convents and schools were located in or near areas where the poor lived in inner Sydney and the suburbs (cf Fitzgerald 1987). The Sisters of the Good Samaritan taught in the Haymarket area, the Sisters of Mercy and of St Joseph operated schools in The Rocks and Millers Point. The Sisters of Charity were at Potts Point and Darlinghurst. In time, with the withdrawal of government funding for denominational schools, each institute extended their work into the inner suburbs of Sydney, such as Pyrmont, Redfern,
Surry Hills, Camperdown, Beaconsfield, Erskineville, Waterloo, 241
Balmain; and beyond to Annandale, Marrickville, Petersham,
Woollahra, Ashfield, Canterbury, Concord and Liverpool.
The Sisters often had to travel from their convents to schools some distance away (‘out schools’) until convents were built nearer these schools, which sometimes did not occur for years. This was the case for all four institutes. The Sisters of Charity walked from their convent at
Woollahra to the school at Paddington from 1883 until the convent was built in 1903 (SC An. Vol. 2: 147; SCA), and from their convent at
Ashfield to the schools at Petersham (SC An. Vol. 2: 84ff.; SCA) and
Concord (SC An. Vol. 2: 134; SCA). The Sisters of the Good Samaritan travelled from their convent in Balmain to the school at West Balmain
(now Rozelle) from 1875 to 1880 (GS An: 89; GSA). They also travelled from the Pitt Street Convent to the school at Forest Lodge from 1880 to
1896, and also from Pitt Street to Marrickville. Usually at least part of the journey was on foot: ‘In those days it took an hour to get from Pitt
Street to Marrickville, and if one missed the 8.15 tram, one had to walk
– there was no other for an hour’ (A Sister of the Good Samaritan, 1972:
75). In 1881 the Sisters of St Joseph walked each day from the
Providence in The Rocks area to the school at Camperdown – a distance of more than four kilometres - until a convent was established there (Burford 1991: 39). Similarly, the Sisters of Mercy walked from their convent at Mt Carmel (now Waterloo) to their Redfern school for 242
two years in the early 1890s (SM MS 11: 4; SMA). The convent account books confirm this travel, there being regular entries for bus, tram and ferry fares (for example ‘Train 15/10d’, ‘Fares 8/-’ (SM AB MSA, March
1880; SMA) and the payment of bootmakers’ accounts (for example
‘Boots £2-60 ‘, (GS AB PSC&R, Dec. 1899, GSA).
On the way to their destinations, the Sisters encountered poor people in their own neighbourhoods. The Sisters of some institutes
(particularly, but not only the Josephites) were out on the streets regularly from absolute necessity seeking donations of cash as well as food and other material assistance to feed those they were sheltering, as well as themselves, and to pay for their schools and other building works (SSJ Barry to MacKillop July 1880, MMA; Maginnis to MacKillop
19 August 1880, MMA; Foale 1989; Burford 1991:157). The Sisters did not always find this begging easy: ‘Sr M. Josephine’s toe is very bad for the last three weeks. Yet she has done a great deal of walking, more than was good for her’ (SSJ Mahoney to Mackillop, 3 November 1880,
MMA). The Sisters of Charity also had to do go out on the streets soliciting donations for their orphanage at Liverpool (SC An. Vo.2: 112,
SCA) as did the Sisters of the Good Samaritan for their penitents’ refuges (see for example Hanly Ms. n.d. n.p., GSA). The rules of the
Sisters of Mercy did not allow for begging. However, their narratives speak of the Sisters being given donations in kind when they were out 243
on the visitation. ‘It was nothing new to see her [Sister M. de Sales
O’Neill] and her companion come home with bundles of things in their big sleeves for the poor’ (SM MS II ‘Our Pioneer Nuns’, SMA).
It can be seen then that the Sisters were not isolated from, or ignorant of, the lives of the poor. The Sisters’ recognition and understanding of the needs of poor people was based on the basic
Christian attitude of compassion. This understanding, enhanced by the knowledge of the role of economic and political structural causes of poverty was incorporated into the Rules of the four Sydney institutes.
The Sisters’ compassionate stance towards the needs of the poor was enhanced by their acquaintance with them via their visitation work, their travels outside their convents and in some cases by living under the same roof as those they assisted. The Sisters’ capacity for empathy with the poor was further increased by the relative lack of social distance between the Sisters and the poorer portion of the Catholic community. It is also argued below that this was augmented by the Sisters' own experience of hardship in their convents.
Hardship in the convents
The Sisters in this study had an understanding of the situation of poor people in Sydney partly because they themselves experienced substandard accommodation, the worry of insufficient means to meet 244
expenses, and at times, hunger. Although all Catholic women religious took a vow of poverty on entering religious life it was not generally intended that they live in destitution. The vow of poverty was intended to promote equal participation in communal living within the convent.
The precise actual meaning of the vow of poverty for life within each institute was determined by the particular constitutions of each
(O’Sullivan 1995: 57). Whilst Clear states that in nineteenth century
Ireland very few nuns lived in hardship (Clear 1987: 71), this was not the case in a number of the socially active communities of Sisters in the
United States (Hoy 1997; Oates 1998). Anderson notes that the vow of poverty also served to soften differences between the Sisters and the range of Catholics they served (Anderson 2000: 7).
The founders of three of the Sydney institutes, that is the Sisters of
Charity, Sisters of Mercy and Sisters of the Good Samaritan were very clear about the necessity for their members to maintain their health in order to be able to carry out the work for which the institutes were founded (see for example SC RC 1912: 54, 79, 131,139; SCA;
O’Sullivan 1995: 74). The constitutions of the Sisters of St Joseph did not contain such a provision. For them, the vow of poverty was literally that. Their institute was founded with the intention that its members should be as poor as those they served, to better relate to them and to be able to go out to teach poor children wherever there was a need, 245
unhindered by the necessity to first secure accommodation and lifestyle of a particular standard (SSJ R 1867:1; SJA; Burford 1988; Tranter
1992; MacGinley 1996a: 159). As stated earlier in relation to dowry payments, after changes to the Josephite rules made in Rome in 1874 the institute was allowed to own property, and Sisters could pay a dowry if they could afford it. However, the institute’s stance that the comfort of the Sisters was always to be a secondary consideration to the needs of the poor was retained. That conventual poverty was the experience of the Sisters of St Joseph in Sydney is apparent from reports in the press, archival narratives and correspondence of the Sisters to Mary MacKillop
(for example Mahoney to MacKillop 18 May 1880, MMA; Carolan to
MacKillop 20 July 1880 and 19 August 1880, MMA). A surprise visit to the ‘Providence’ by Archbishop Vaughan resulted in this letter from him to Mother Mary MacKillop:
I have called at the Providence and was very much pleased. The simplicity and reality of the work they [the Sisters] are doing will produce its effect and the fact of living amongst the poor as the Sisters do is very telling on the minds of people who love charity and self-sacrifice. (Vaughan to Mackillop 4 May 1880, MMA)
However, it is argued here that even the institutes which did not intend that their Sisters should live in penury also experienced far greater communal hardship in Sydney than was planned by their founders. As discussed in the case of the Sisters of Mercy in Chapter 5, this was essentially due to the frontier and sectarian nature of 246
nineteenth century Australian society, the scarce resources of the local
Catholic Church and community and, arguably, the limited understanding that members of the Church hierarchy had concerning the material needs of women religious. As noted earlier the financial situation of the Sisterhoods in Sydney was very different from that in
Ireland, where convents were often built by wealthy women wishing to found a community, or by benefactors, which left the new conventual community in secure accommodation unencumbered by building debts
(Clear 1987: 22ff., 42).
This was not the case with any of the four Sydney institutes. None of the four Sydney communities were founded on the initiative of
Catholic women of means. Neither of the female co-founders of the two
Australian-founded institutes – the Sisters of the Good Samaritan and the Sisters of St Joseph - were wealthy. The former, as a professed
Sister of Charity, was without wealth. Mary MacKillop was also not affluent. Her family had been struggling financially for many years and prior to her foundation of the institute, Mary’s own modest earnings had been a mainstay of her family’s material survival (Thorpe 1974: 174;
O’Brien 1994: 21-36).
The Sydney communities of the two overseas-founded institutes, the Sisters of Charity and the Sisters of Mercy, similarly did not 247
commence from a position of financial strength. Both were offshoots of existing communities who had been asked to send Sisters to the colony by members of the Australian Church hierarchy. This was a very common pattern for the establishment of communities of women religious in nineteenth century Australia. The hierarchy or clergy usually undertook to provide them with accommodation and also to support them financially. This was necessary because the Sisters’ dowries had been invested as part of the funds of their original communities in Dublin and Liverpool: ‘ before they left the mother house each signed a document renouncing all right to their dowry, their maintenance in future being supplied for by the fund for Foreign missionaries’ (SC An Vol.1:
30, SCA). As noted above, some members of the Sisters of Charity who were recruited specifically for the Australian mission had been promised payment of dowry, or the equivalent amount of financial support, from the Australian hierarchy (O’Sullivan 1992: 13ff.;
MacGinley 1996a: 66, 73). As with the Sisters of Mercy who came nearly thirty years later, the eventuating reality was rather different from the Sisters’ expectations (O’Sullivan 1992, 1995). Furthermore, as outlined earlier there is evidence that many Sisters who subsequently joined the Sydney communities did not augment the institutes’ finances by bringing a dowry. 248
As in the case of the Sisters of Mercy, discussed in Chapter 5, problems with inadequate accommodation and with the expenses of operating their communities were experienced by all four Sydney institutes. Often this was worst in the early years after a community was founded, or when the community expanded their sphere of activity. The accommodation problems were arguably most acute for the two communities founded from overseas. As discussed in Chapter 5, it was thirteen years before the Sisters of Mercy were secure in their convent in Miller Street in North Sydney. It was eighteen years before the
Sisters of Charity had secure possession of a convent which was not a danger to health (O’Sullivan 1992: 16). The other two institutes also suffered hardship from overcrowded and substandard accommodation.
The initial accommodation situation of the Sisters of the Good
Samaritan and the Sisters of St Joseph was somewhat different from that of the other two institutes. For both, the commencement of their communities in Sydney and the start of their institutional charitable work co-incided – the Sisters and the poor they served lived under the same roof from the start of their Sydney foundations. This did not mean that there were no problems with accommodation. The Josephites, like the
Mercies and Charities before them were in a number of rented premises, often overcrowded. Their ‘Providence’ in the slum district of 249
The Rocks, which took in poor elderly women and children, was in four different premises in fourteen months.56 The Sisters of the Good
Samaritan seem to have been perhaps less disadvantaged in that they did not have as many changes of address in the early decades after establishment. Their first accommodation had already been granted some years earlier by the government for the House of the Good
Shepherd Refuge57, initially operated by the Sisters of Charity (Walsh
20001: 30ff.). They remained at this location for over 40 years, apart from a period of a year or so in the 1870s when the community had to move out to rented premises because the building collapsed (McEwen
1989: 27-28).
The Good Samaritan’s second community58 at Parramatta also moved into an existing building - the government’s Roman Catholic
Orphan School (McEwen 1989: 9; Walsh 2001: 93ff.). Despite having to move fewer times than the other institutes, the Good Samaritans’ had very poor housing conditions which were a matter of public knowledge
56 These were at the southern end of Gloucester Street, March 1880; ‘Craig Terrace’ in the northern end of the same street from May 1880; ‘Winsbury’ at 79 Kent St from July 1880; ‘Cheshunt’ at 3 Cumberland Place from May 1881. In 1884 a convent and Sydney novitiate were established at Mount St North Sydney. The Providence remained at ‘Cheshunt’ until demolished in 1901 (Burford 1991: 33-37).
57 This was the ‘Debtors’ Prison’ portion of Carter’s Barracks on the site of the present Central Railway station, handed over to Polding in 1849. (GS An: 2; GSA; Walsh 2001: 28; A Sister of the Institute of the Good Samaritan 1972: 61).
58 The community of Sisters at the RCOS, Parramatta did not however constitute an official ‘branch house’ of the institute (Walsh 2001: 92), perhaps because a government building could not be a convent. 250
(FJ 2 January 1875: 9). The House of the Good Shepherd, which was given by the government when the premises were no longer used as barracks and prison, was in a poor state of repair because of dampness
(GS An: 2; GSA). The temporary removal from this ‘poor wretched hovel’ (FJ 2 January 1875: 9) to rented premises was because ‘the walls and ceilings were constantly falling in’ (A Sister of the Institute of the Good Samaritan 1972: 70). The Good Samaritan Sisters at the
Orphan School at Parramatta were as badly, if not worse, off. The abysmal state of the buildings there was documented in the 1873-4
Royal Commission into Public Charities (RCPC Second Report 1874:
92). Overcrowding was a problem for the children and the Sisters. In one of the children’s dormitories the beds were only six inches apart,
Mother Magdalen Adamson had to sleep on a stretcher in her office, all the other sisters slept in one room, the girls’ lavatory had no basins or baths, in spite of requests for such having been made by Mother
Magdalen to the government for four or five years, and there was a foul smell emanating from a nearby sewer (RCPC E 1874: 7-9, 11; Q. 208-
218, 248-274, 295-303, 316-323). These conditions had been known to the government for some time and despite a number of requests from
Mother M. Magdalen, the Committee of the Orphan School, Archbishop
Polding and reports to the Government nothing had been done to 251
remedy them (RCPC E 1874: 7, 10; Q 214-217, 299-303, 316-323 ; FJ
27 June 1874: 9).
The Good Samaritans’ experience of living and working in sub- standard accommodation continued in their Orphanage and Industrial
School at Manly, the house being in poor repair when they bought it.
The leaking roof, coupled with a worn stone flagging floor resulted in pools of water sitting in hollows when it rained. ‘This did not add to the comfort of the Sisters in those early days’ (Hanly n.d., first bundle, n.p.
GSA). As Manly was sparsely settled and still largely bush, there was the additional problem of snake-infested grounds: ‘The Sisters were terrified of all the snakes’. A local priest, Dean Hanly ‘was a noted snake killer’ (Hanly n.d., first bundle, n.p. GSA).
Thus all four institutes had experience of overcrowded, substandard (sometimes semi-derelict) and otherwise difficult living conditions. Several communities of Sisters also underwent frequent removals because of housing insecurity or inadequacy. In their experience of accommodation problems, the Sisters had something in common with those they sought to assist. For all four Sisterhoods however, eventually obtaining adequate accommodation brought with it large loans to be repaid. This was exacerbated by the Sisters' ineligibility for government subsidy for their charitable works, as 252
discussed in Chapter 2. In 1875, the debt remaining on the House of the Good Shepherd, rebuilt in 1871 was over £2000 (FJ 2 January
1875: 9). Even the Good Samaritans’ Manly Orphanage and Industrial
School property commenced with a debt of over £3000 (GS An.: 89;
GSA). Similarly, in the same year, the relocation of the ‘Providence’ of the Sisters of St Joseph to adequate premises produced a debt of
£6,750 (Burford 1991: 37). As discussed in Chapter 5, the Sisters of
Mercy faced a debt of similar magnitude for their North Sydney convent and school buildings. The Sisters of Charity were also in a state of perpetual indebtedness related to the ongoing expansion of St Vincent’s
Hospital, the subsequent establishment of St Joseph’s consumptive hospital and St Anne’s orphanage in the 1880s, the Sacred Heart
Hospice in the 1890s, and the usual school and convent building which was part of the Catholic Church’s planned expansion in New South
Wales.
This pattern of the Sisters constantly opening or taking over schools occurred for all four institutes with increased frequency from the early 1880s. Building a Catholic education system became a priority for the Sydney Church hierarchy following the cessation of government funding to denominational schools in 1880. The comment below on the pace of expansion of the work of the Sisters of Charity could equally have been said in relation to any of the other three institutes: ‘Scarcely 253
were the Sisters settled at Ashfield when the Rev. Dean McCarthy pastor of this district applied to Mother Francis for a staff for the Concord school’ (SC An. Vol. 2: 134; SCA). No sooner were any Sisters established in a new district than they were asked to extend their services into a nearby area. Such growth in the work undertaken invariably entailed modifications to existing buildings or the buying or building of new premises. Although they often had assistance with fundraising, the debt usually remained the Sisters’ responsibility. This was the case for all four institutes. The Sisters’ skills in management and finance are explored in Chapter 9.
Property debts exacerbated the precarious financial basis of the
Sisters’ conventual lives and charitable work, and added to the burden of stress on the Superiors of each institute. The financial position of each of the four institutes was not robust over the last quarter of the nineteenth century, although it generally improved with time. As noted above, the Sisters of St Joseph were always intended to have to struggle to support themselves and those they served, and none of the other three institutes were ‘financially comfortable’. This impinged on the Sisters’ lives in their convent communities. The annals, histories, biographies and recollections in each institute’s archives indicate the
Sisters’ financial difficulties, whilst the surviving account books illustrate 254
in detail the monthly or quarterly struggle to make ends meet.59 For example a statement made in relation to the Mercy community - ‘Many a time Mother M. Ignatius wondered where the next meal was to come from’ (SM FESM nd: 6; SMA) - is similar to those found in the other institutes’ narratives at various points in time. The Good Samaritans’ annals include this comment about one of their communities:
One wet week, the school fees were very low, and Mother M. Cecilia who had been told to pay for everything as she got it was very sad as there was scarcely anything in the pantry on Saturday night. (GS An: 77, GSA)
Another anecdote from the Good Samaritans pertaining to the late
1870s shows the fragility of the Sisters' finances when they opened a school in a new area: The small income which the Sisters derived from school fees, was
supplemented by that from music lessons, French and drawing. The community was, oftentimes, short of means but the Superior’s faith in Divine Providence never failed her. Indeed, when supplies ran very short and the purse was empty, it was not unusual to receive a parcel of groceries, fruit and vegetables or meat sent by some thoughtful person. (GS An.: 66, GSA)
The Mercy archives also record an anecdote of Mother Angela Heaton, Bursar at North Sydney from 1888-1896, which has echoes in the other institutes’ narratives: Her great devotion to St Joseph helped her out of many difficulties. On one occasion a bill had to be met within 24 hours but the purse was empty. She called the Sisters together and
59 As noted earlier, there were no account books covering this period in the archives of the Sisters of Charity or the Sisters of St Joseph. 255
asked if they would make a Black Fast in honour of St Joseph till tea-time. The request was granted. (SM MS II ‘Our Pioneer Nuns’: M. M. Angela Heaton; SMA)
Other institutes also record a reliance on St Joseph in similar circumstances. In the Sisters of Charity account of the development of the branch convent at Woollahra it is said: The payment of the debt incurred, upwards of £4000, was entrusted to St Joseph, to whom the Rectress M.M. Canice had a special devotion. With this intention a hymn was sung each evening at visit, in which each Sister, regardless of voice or musical ability heartily joined. Nor did their great patron disappoint them. (SC An. Vol 2: 82, SCA)
The surviving account books reveal the minutiae of the convents’ hardship and the sources of income used to pay the bills incurred. In some accounting periods the books only balanced because loans were obtained to meet expenses, or some bills went unpaid. The inability to pay accounts is revealed by entries for payments annotated with ‘old account’. For example when the Sisters of the Good Samaritan received what appears to be a windfall of over £400 in May 189660, it was fully expended by entries which included payments of £100 for
‘Barlow, grocer - old account’ and £160 to ‘A. Hordern - old account’
(GS AB PSC May 1896, GSA). Other indications of inadequate income to meet expenses are indicated by income entries such as ‘loan’ or
60 This was entered as received from Sr M. Vincent Waring. It does not appear to have been a dowry payment as she entered the institute in February 1889 and was professed in 1891. It may have been the proceeds of a life insurance policy or have been left to her by her father who died in late October 1894. He is recorded as having been a chief inspector on the railways and Sr M. Vincent’s mother is recorded as having died in 1876 (GS Ad. R, Obituaries, GSA). 256
‘borrowed’ - sometimes qualified by the addition of the name of the source such as ‘from Rev. Mother’ or ‘from Mother House’, ‘from bank’.
For example the Sisters of Mercy community at the Servants’ Home and
Training School at Church Hill borrowed from ‘Bridget Gorman’ £50, ‘for furniture’ in 1894 (AB MMH, January 1894, SMA). It is interesting that this debt was appears not to have been repaid until the third quarter of
1898, and without the interest agreed to in 1894 (SM AB MMH, July -
September 1898, SMA).
The convent account books confirm the stories recorded elsewhere in the archives that school fees and music lessons became a staple source of income.61 For example when the Sisters of Charity convent and school were founded at Woollahra the annals record that as the fees from the primary school were ‘quite inadequate for the support of the community a small High School was opened in the convent’ (SC An.
Vol.2: 79; SCA). Needlework and laundry, especially in the communities attached to residential charities, such as industrial schools and women’s accommodation were also important, though the extent of their contribution to total income varied from one institution to another.
For some institutions, such as the penitents’ refuges they were vital, for
61 The Sisters of Charity were not able to make use of this potential source until a Papal rescript was obtained in 1879, amending their constitutions to permit the operation of a ‘pay school’ (SC An. Vol. I: 228-230, SCA; MacGinley 1996a: 88). The Sisters of St Joseph did not teach piano. 257
others such as the Servants’ Home and Training School they were a relatively minor source of income.
The precariousness of the financial situation of convent 258
communities is emphasised in account book entries detailing other income. The Sisters’ ability to meet expenses was sometimes dependent on the sale of goods or produce. Examples of such
‘incidental’ sales include the Good Samaritans’ sale of ‘dripping’ for 1 shilling (GS AB PSC Nov. 1886, GSA), and milk was sold by the Sisters of Charity (SC CB, Nov., Dec. 1859, SCA). The latter also sold
‘furniture’ and ‘carpet’ (SC CB, July 1854, SCA) and a boiler for eighteen shillings and seven pence (SC CB May 1864, SCA). A number of institutes also brought in money by making altar breads. For example the Sisters of Mercy, North Sydney sold them to the Jesuits at Riverview
(SM AB MSA Feb. 1886, SMA). The Good Samaritans in Pitt Street also sold ‘altar bread’, and in one six month period they made nearly
£54 from this source (GS AC PS Dec 1894, GSA). The contribution of these small amounts to the survival of convent communities underlines the insecurity and subsistence character of the Sisters’ financial position.
The evidence on the Sisters' experience of hardship in their convents shows that, like the poor, the Sisters knew what it was like to be hungry. Convent Superiors would have understood the worry that poor parents experienced of not being able to meet bills and feed those in their care. Such experiences of the Sisters, coupled with their 259
acquaintance with poor people on a daily basis contributed to the foundation of an empathic stance towards the poor.
Conclusion
This chapter has investigated the attitude to social welfare work of the four Sydney Sisterhoods via examining the notion that the relationships between charitable women and the poor in Sydney in the late nineteenth century were characterised by condescension. It has been found by others that for upper class ‘lady’ philanthropists, this attitude sprang from the social class gulf which existed between the two groups, and the ladies’ ignorance of the lives of the poor. This chapter has argued that there is evidence that members of the four Sisterhoods in Sydney were not mainly from the upper social strata of Sydney society and were in fact well-acquainted with the realities of the lives of the poor, through contact with them in the course of their work and from their own experience of hardship in their convents. Researchers elsewhere have found that such factors ‘mitigated against class-based condescension’ (Hoy 1997:7). It has been found by others (Godden
1983; O’Brien 1988) that for upper class ‘lady’ philanthropists, this attitude sprang from the social class gulf which existed between the two groups, and the ladies’ ignorance of the lives of the poor. This chapter has argued that there is evidence that members of the four Sisterhoods 260
in Sydney were not mainly from the upper social strata of Sydney society and were in fact well-acquainted with the realities of the lives of the poor, through contact with them in the course of their work and from their own experience of hardship in their convents. Researchers elsewhere have found that such factors ‘mitigated against class-based condescension’ (Hoy 1997: 7).
The Sydney Sisters’ direct knowledge of the poor and their own experience of hardship in their convents was added to an espoused compassionate and inclusive attitude towards the poor which was based on scriptural teaching augmented with an Irish cultural understanding that poverty could have structural causes. The evidence in this chapter shows that the Sisters’ relationships with the poor of Sydney in the late nineteenth century had a very different foundation from the relationships between the upper class charitable ‘ladies’ and the poor, as noted in the literature discussed in Chapter 3. 62 The following chapter explores the methods of practice used by the Sisters in their work with the poor.
62 In contrast with the ‘ladies’ studied by Godden (1983), who were removed from the poor, the Salvation Army, G.E. Ardill, the St Vincent de Paul Society (O’Brien 1988: 199), some officials of the Benevolent Society (Cummins 1971: 9; Rathbone 1994: 69) and probably the Anglican Sisters of the Church (Ball 2000: 83-86) would also have had similar knowledge of the poor because of their methods of work and lifestyles. 261
CHAPTER 8
‘THE DEVOTED AND EFFICIENT SERVICE OF THE POOR’: THE SISTERS' METHODS OF WORK.
Introduction
This chapter continues the exploration of the Sisters’ social welfare work by considering the methods they used in their various undertakings. In Chapter 6 it was argued that the Sisters’ work with the poor in Sydney was based on a compassionate stance stemming from
Catholic teaching, Irish understanding of the causes of poverty and opposition to proselytising Protestant charity. The Sisters' stance towards the poor was shown to be enshrined in their institutes’ officially approved rules. Chapter 7 continued the exploration of the basis of the
Sisters' charitable work. It was argued there that unlike upper-class
‘lady’ philanthropists in Sydney at the time, the Sisters’ stance towards the poor was not a product of their social isolation from and ignorance of the lives of the latter (cf. Godden 1983). Evidence was presented that the Sisters were well acquainted with the poor and the realities of their daily lives, as were some other charity workers (O’Brien 1988: 199; Ball
2000: 83-85). The Sisters knew the poor from visiting and caring for them in their own homes, from living and working with them in charitable institutions and from encountering them on the streets of Sydney and its 262
suburbs. Moreover, the financial situation of the four women’s religious institutes, as revealed in archival narratives and account books, indicated that the Sisters themselves experienced hardship in their convents. This would have further enhanced their understanding of the lives of the poor and facilitated the Sisters' implementation of the compassionate and inclusive stance prescribed by their institutes.
Evidence from government reports relating to the work of the Sisters of the Good Samaritan suggests that they did in fact treat the poor more compassionately and inclusively than New South Wales government officials thought desirable.
This chapter discusses in greater detail the Sisters’ methods of working with the poor. In doing this there are two aims. One is to continue the exposition of the Sisters’ stance in their charitable work.
The other objective is to argue that the Sisters' work with the poor in late nineteenth century Sydney was proto-professional. The fact that the
Sisterhoods had detailed written prescriptions of methods and techniques for operationalising their charitable ethos suggests that the
Sydney Sisters' work had the hallmarks of neophyte professional social work.
The chapter first considers material concerning the Sisters’ general interactions with the poor, then evidence pertaining to discipline and training in the Sisters’ institutions. The Sisters’ emphasis on 263
educational and vocational training and the development of self-respect show some of the ways in which the Sisters implemented an accepting, non-judgmental stance towards the poor which was not primarily shaped by the principle of ‘less eligibility’. It is also argued that these methods can be seen as being similar to twentieth-century prescriptions for social work practice. Finally, other parallels with professional social work practice are seen in the way that the Sisters organised their visitation work in terms of preparation, reflection, accountability and support.
Prescribed methods of work with the poor
As discussed in Chapter 6, the institutes’ documents, such as their Rule(s), Customs, guides and books of instruction, are a valuable source of information on the ethos which underpinned the Sisters’ espoused approach towards poor people. They also reveal the methods and techniques the Sisters’ were expected to adopt in different types of work with the poor and in some cases the way the work should be organised and administered.63 The very existence of official detailed written instructions shows that the founders and early Sisters did indeed
63 The ‘Rule/s’ and ‘Constitutions’ were the official ‘core’ documents submitted for Papal approval at the time of foundation of each institute. As such they could not be amended except by Papal authority. In contrast, other documents of the institutes, such as ‘Customs’, ‘Minor Regulations’ ‘Guides’ and so on were more detailed guides to the interpretation and application of the core documents. These detailed documents were more easily amended than the Papally approved Rules and Constitutions and often reflected practices which had developed with experience over time.
264
intend that the Sisters should ‘labour seriously in works of charity’ – this work was to be more than the ad hoc actions of individual ‘ladies bountiful’ or of part-time amateurs (cf Lawrence 1965: ix). This prescription of conduct is also an illustration of part of the process of professionalisation in which female emotionality was replaced by codified ‘professional’ responses (Walton 1975: 14; Hearn 1982; Haggis
1998: 171ff.).
The formulation of methods of practice in official documents which were commercially printed64 is also testimony to the intention that this charitable work would be undertaken on a large-scale, via a network of convents, and that it was anticipated that individual convent communities and the institutes themselves would have a long-term existence. Such a prescription of methods and techniques also suggests that the Sisterhoods were (and saw themselves as being) organisations of a substantial size, having a degree of complexity and seriousness of purpose. They indicate that the Sisterhoods were concerned that there should be uniform foundational principles, standards and guidelines used by all communities of their institutes. To the extent that these latter are features of a prototype profession, the bureaucratic structure of Catholic religious institutes can be seen to
64 Postulants and Novices (who were ‘trainee’ Sisters) sometimes had to transcribe their own copies of their institute’s ‘Rules’, particularly in the early days of an institute, when there were too few members to warrant printed copies (Trower 1998: 26). 265
have facilitated the ‘professionalising project’ of the charitable work of the four Sydney Sisterhoods, as discussed in Chapter 3.
There are many commonalities evident in the institutes’ documents, both across types of work and across the four institutes, although there is some variation due to each institute’s specific focus and identity, or the particular model of Papally-approved Rules which were used as a template. It was common practice for a new institute to adapt the Rules and Constitutions of an existing institute or institutes. The Rule of the
Sisters of the Good Samaritan for example contained some sections which were adaptations of the Rule of the Benedictine monks, others were taken from the Sisters of Charity Rule and others from the
Directory of the Visitation Sisters (Trower 1998: 26).
An example of an institute’s particular focus being reflected in its documentation is provided by the Sisters of Mercy documents which state that their focus was tripartite – ‘the instruction of poor girls, visitation of the sick and protection of women of good character’ (SM RC
1833: Ch.1, SMA). More guidance is given however, for carrying out the latter two areas of work than for the former. This contrasts with the documents of the Sisters of St Joseph whose primary purpose was the instruction of poor children. Consequently in the documents of the
Sisters of St Joseph the routines and methods of classroom teaching are 266
specified in great detail (some ten pages) compared with, for example, the much shorter sections on charitable visiting (SSJ I 1870: 36-39, 81-
90, SJA).
As discussed in Chapter 6, the basic principle common to the various institutes’ founding rationales was service to God’s poor via recognising in each ‘the person of Our Lord’ (for example, SGS R 1891:
39, GSA; SC RC 1912: 140, SCA; SSJ R 1867: 1, SJA). This informs many of the institutes’ detailed prescriptions regarding methods of working with the poor. The documents emphasised the need for the
Sisters to engage in this work seriously and diligently, to follow directions by their superiors to carry out any work of charity, and to be prepared to go to any place requested (SM C 1960: 131, SMA; SC RC 1912: Ch. VII,
131, SCA). There are guidelines regarding who is to be assisted, the purpose of work with each group of the poor (the sick, poor children, women, and so on) and statements in varying degrees of specificity as to how the Sisters should behave in particular types of work.
The Sisters’ general demeanour towards the poor
In keeping with the requirement that they were to treat the poor as they would their ‘Divine master’, it was stressed that the Sisters should maintain ‘purity of intention’, that is their actions should be motivated by
‘natural compassion, benevolence or inclination’ (SGS R 1878: 49, GSA). 267
As a consequence we find that the Sisters were expected to have ‘a sweetness and engaging manner of speaking’ (SC RC 1912: 59, SCA); they were to be gentle, and ‘avoid on one hand all reserve and coldness of manner, and on the other hand too great liberty and familiarity (SGS R
1878: 50, GSA). The Sisters of St Joseph were to be ‘moderately grave, yet cheerful’ (SSJ R 1867: 8, SJA). The Sisters of Mercy regulations also prescribed a similar tone (SM CMR 1869: 100, SMA).
The institutes’ guidelines were congruent with the foundational principle of ‘seeing Christ in His poor’. They are also similar to classic professional social work formulations of the twentieth century (for example Biestek 1961). For example, documents of both the Sisters of
Mercy and the Sisters of the Good Samaritan advised the Sisters, when visiting the sick, not to tire them by choosing lengthy prayers (SGS R
1878: 53, 1900: 42, GSA ).
Judgement should be exercised in the length of the prayer, as well as in the choice. The prayers should be well selected, but never long. Those who are very ill or very weak become quickly fatigued, and perhaps even impatient, by long prayers or too much talk. A few calm, soothing, encouraging judicious words will probably produce better results, and be found more to the purpose. (SM G 1888: 35, SMA)
The Sisters of the Good Samaritan were cautioned moreover that in their dealings with the sick poor they should ‘overcome disgust which is inspired by poverty united to disease’ (SGS R 1857: 64, GSA). This is not dissimilar to classic twentieth century social work teaching that it is 268
necessary to maintain a non-judgmental stance with users of social work services, and that the social worker’s verbal and non-verbal behaviour should reflect this (for example Compton and Galloway 1979: 126-140,
168- 178).
Perhaps more unexpected is the guidance given to the Sisters of
Mercy for visiting prisoners:
In speaking to them [prisoners] individually, especially before a trial, it would be prudent to do so at a distance from others, lest even unasked they may confide any acknowledgement to the Sisters that, if overheard by others, may be brought forward to convict them on the trial. (SM G 1888: 42, SMA)
The above instruction reveals a desire to protect prisoners from avoidable additional adversity from the system of law and order, rather than as might be expected, a responsibility to assist such a system against those charged with infringements against it. This stance of the
Sisters of Mercy was probably shaped by Irish attitudes to the operation of English ‘justice’. Such a prescription contrasts markedly with the general tone of the New South Wales Government’s stance towards the treatment of the poor (as discussed in Chapter 2), which assumed dishonesty and imposition and therefore adopted a harsh and punitive approach.
Looking at evidence as to whether the Sisters did in fact act according to the above prescriptions in their various types of charitable 269
work, there is relatively little information on the approach the Sisters took when undertaking charitable visiting of the poor in their homes because, as noted in Chapter 4, there are few records of this work compared to the Sisters’ work in their own charitable institutions. As noted in the previous chapter, records of this work are limited to a few accounts in the Sisterhoods’ narratives, plus some newspaper reports.
It is therefore possible that the Sisters may not have acted in accordance with their institutes’ official prescriptions. On the other hand, there does not seem to be any evidence that the Sisters failed in their commitments in this area. Moreover, the institutes’ own narratives about the Sisters’ conduct in charitable visitation work are congruent with their accounts of other charitable work for which there is independent corroboration. So, although there is no direct evidence that the Sisters' charitable visitation work was conducted as specified, there is evidence from sources external to the institutes that in other types of work the Sisters did act in accordance with their institutes’ prescriptions.
Institutional charity
Turning to the Sisters’ work in the charitable institutions which they ran there is evidence from different sources concerning the relationships between the Sisters and those in their care. In terms of the conduct prescribed in the Sisterhoods’ documents there is a further illustration of 270
the professionalisation process via the codification of responses. There is some variation in emphasis across institutes and across type of institution, but the underlying principle is still that the poor are to be served by the Sisters as if they were serving their divine master. For example, the Sisters of Mercy prescriptions concerning the duties of the
Sister in charge of an orphanage include the requirement that:
[She] should accept it as a precious trust for her Divine Spouse, regarding the orphans as His dear children… ‘If you love Me, feed My lambs’, so that to become the faithful, loving devoted mother of these His dear children is the best proof of her love to Him. (SM G 1888:20, SMA)
Sometimes, how this is to be done is detailed. The Sisters of St Joseph are told that:
The Sisters in the Providence should consider themselves the servants of the poor, and therefore treat the inmates with the most affectionate consideration. They must bear with much, and be mild and patient. No deserving poor person should be refused food and shelter, for the Sisters are only administrators of the bounty which is God’s, who expects that everything should be done for His poor. (SSJ I 1870: 36, SJA)
In terms of evidence about the Sisters’ actual conduct, most of the institutes’ own reports of the Sisters’ work in institutions implies that the
Sisters’ did act in accordance with the official prescriptions. In describing the work of the Sisters of St Joseph at their St Martha’s
Industrial School at Leichhardt, it was said: 271
Nothing was spared to give the children at St Martha’s the very best that could be provided: More importantly, Sr. Regis65 engendered in them a sense of personal self-esteem and well- being which enabled them to take their rightful place in society. (Burford 1991: 153)
There is also some corroboration from outsiders including from newspaper reports that the Sisters’ methods were caring and respectful.
Discipline was one of the aspects of the Sisters’ methods of working with the poor that was noted in such outsider accounts, as well as in the
Sisters’ narratives and evidence they gave to the 1873/1874
Commission of Inquiry into Public Charities and in other government reports. First hand accounts of the Sisters’ work at various institutions were published in the Daily Telegraph (DT) as well as the Freeman's
Journal. For example on the Catholic Orphan School (FJ 10 January
1874: 10; 24 January 1880: 8) and on the Manly Industrial School (DT
16 January 1804: 11).
‘Kind but firm’: the Sisters' approach to discipline
Discipline and training were important components of most nineteenth century charities, and not only those for children. Discipline was necessary for maintaining the orderly operation of institutions having many inmates and was espoused as an essential component of
65 Sr M. Regis O’Hare was an Irish immigrant to Australia. She was assistant, then Superior at St Martha’s from 1888 to 1945 (Burford 1991: 152-4).
272
their training. In the 1834 Poor Law notion of charity, discipline and training were essential for the remediation of the immoral behaviour which was thought to be the cause of poverty. As discussed in Chapter
2, the dominant approach to charity, which was based on the belief that poverty was largely due to individual moral failings, regarded discipline and training as being necessary to overcome the individuals’ shortcomings (and the poverty that this was to thought produce). This, combined with the principle of ‘less eligibility’ which was intended to discourage dependence on charity, resulted in harsh and punitive regimes in many charitable institutions.
In late nineteenth century Sydney the government and the public in general were well aware of the shortcomings of the disciplinary regimes in various public charitable institutions including at the destitute
Children’s Asylum at Randwick and, particularly at the government’s industrial school and reformatory for girls at Biloela.66 At the time of the
1873/4 Public Charities Commission there was a riot at this latter institution, and the Commissioners visited it in the aftermath, interviewing 10 girls and two staff on 26 November 1873 (RCPC E
66 This stood on what is now known as Cockatoo Island, in Sydney Harbour, just off Balmain.
273
1873-4: 295 – 311).67 As Ramsland commented:
The girls roamed within the institution’s walls like wild animals, and like wild animals they were treated. Brutal use was made of corporal punishment and rebellious outbreaks were triggered off by harsh treatment which induced an unmanageable level of group hysteria. (Ramsland 1986: 233)
There was in this period therefore a heightened public awareness of the methods used to maintain discipline in charitable institutions.
The Sisters, and others working with the poor, subscribed to the view that individual economic survival and success in life – whether via employment, or as a wife and mother – required the learning of skills and also the acquisition of particular habits, such as diligence, perseverance, honesty and so on. Evidence concerning the role of education, training and discipline in the Sisters’ charitable work indicates however, that their approach to this differed from that of some other charity providers. It is argued here that discipline and training whilst being central to the Sisters’ work in Sydney, had a particular character which derived from the foundations of the Sisters’ approach to charitable work discussed in Chapters 6 and 7.
If the underlying principle of the four Sisterhoods’ approach to
67 The girls were Mary Ann Williams, Elizabeth Sharply, Elizabeth Eddington, Janet Boyd, Annie Smith, Kate Solomon, Sarah Littlewood, Bessie Moore Dangar, Sarah Bourke and Annie Dooley. The staff were Mrs Margaret Kelly and Mr George Lucas (RCPC E 1873-4: 295 – 311). 274
charity was to treat the poor as they would their ‘Divine master’ then it would be expected that this attitude would also be evident in the institutes’ detailed guidelines for discipline and training. This was generally the case, although the rules for working with former prostitutes seem to be at odds with prescribed methods for working with other groups of the poor, and are discussed separately later in this chapter. As discussed below, the aim of the Sisters’ training and discipline was not to subjugate the poor, and the methods of exercising discipline were not intended to be harsh and punitive. The following prescription from the Sisters of Mercy documents regarding the treatment of women residents of the Houses of Mercy shows that training in domestic work was not part of a punitive regime derived from the principle of ‘less eligibility’ or from an evangelical emphasis on toil and tribulation as preparation for the next life, but rather was oriented to the women residents’ long term material well-being:
And for this charitable object alone are the Sisters allowed to employ the young women to assist them in domestic duties, not as servants, but that they may teach them; and always with due regard to their strength and health, on which these poor girls’ future prospects so much depend (emphasis added) (SM CMR 1869:100, SMA)
Here it is clear that the Sisters were very aware of the economic realities for women. In order to support themselves in subsequent employment the young women needed to be trained but they also needed their
‘strength and health’. Whilst the Sisters shared with the government 275
and other providers of charity in New South Wales the aim of encouraging self-reliance and long-term economic independence, the
Sisters’ focus was not so much on avoiding weakening of the social fabric but on the development of individual integrity. Also in the section of the Mercy Sisters’ Rule on the ‘Admission of Distressed Women’ was the requirement that:
Suitable employment shall be sought for and great care taken to place them in situations for which they are adapted, in order that they may continue such length of time in their service as shall establish a character68 on which they can depend. (McAuley n.d.: 7, SMA)
Prescriptions for practice in other types of institutional work with the poor are also found in the institutes’ documents. In these also, discipline was thought to be necessary for long term well-being. The institutes’ requirements concerning discipline are congruent with those pertaining to the general tone of interaction already discussed - that is gentleness and sensitivity. The following extract from the Sisters of
Mercy Guide show the typical espoused approach. With the young women at the House of Mercy training school:
The manner of the Sisters employed in training the young women should so combine meekness, considerateness, kindness and firmness, as to gain an influence over the young women that will bring them to comply with all directions and foster in them the respect and confidence without which their training cannot be accomplished.
68 ‘Character’ here probably means an employer’s reference. 276
The Sisters should carefully guard against any manifestation of irritability or impatience at the faults or mistakes of the young women. Also against a hurried, impetuous, confused, or domineering manner, so unsuited to those consecrated to God. (emphasis added) (SM G 1888: 60-61, SMA)
We see here that the objective of training was to be achieved by developing self-respect and confidence. The techniques which were prescribed to achieve this can be seen to be not dissimilar to some of those advocated in twentieth century social casework for the development of a professional ‘helping’ relationship (for example
Compton and Galloway 1979: 159-189).
In terms of evidence that the Sisters actually complied with their institutes’ prescriptions there are accounts in their annals, reports in the
Freeman's Journal and other newspapers, and a few recollections of former inmates, which are congruent with the official prescriptions. Of the care provided by the first Sisters at the Manly Industrial School it was said that:
Under whose management, based on divine charity, the hitherto neglected girls became by degrees, susceptible to the best impressions and silently led to good. Formed to tidy habits, gentleness, order and strict cleanliness, instructed in domestic affairs – laundry work, cooking and needlework, - many, who would otherwise have gone to swell the pauper population, became thoroughly efficient and capable of earning an honest livelihood. (emphasis added) (GS An.: 90, GSA)
Thus whilst the regime at the Sisters' charitable institutions may have superficially resembled that of other institutions, the Sisters’ purpose 277
was to foster the development of skills necessary for successful economic independence in the social conditions of the time. The methods prescribed by the institutes to achieve this had some commonality with the approaches later espoused by twentieth century professional social work.
Whilst the ‘objectivity’ of the institutes’ narratives and the
Freeman’s Journal may be queried, evidence given to the 1873/74
Commission of Inquiry into Public Charities illustrates some detailed techniques of discipline and character formation used by the Sisters.
This evidence, and that of outside ‘expert’ witnesses, tends to confirm that the Sisters did exercise ‘kindly’ discipline with a positive outcome.
Evidence given by the Good Samaritan Sister M. Benedict Lawn (who was questioned about the government’s Girls’ Industrial School and
Reformatory at Biloela), is very revealing.
Sister M. Benedict was based at the House of the Good Shepherd
Refuge at the time, and had, for a year and nine months, been visiting
Biloela two mornings a week to give religious instruction. She had also previously worked at the Catholic Orphan School, Parramatta and prior to joining the institute had taught at St Mary’s Catholic denominational school in Sydney. She was therefore experienced in working with the poor in a range of settings (RCPC E 1873/74: 165, Q. 5790). One is 278
able to compare the Sisters’ approach as described below by Sister M.
Benedict with that used at the government’s institution for girls at Biloela and at the Sydney (Protestant) Female Refuge, which is also described in evidence given to the Public Charities Commission. The commissioners’ description of what they found when they visited Biloela in the aftermath of a riot, the evidence of the girls involved, and Sister M.
Benedict’s opinions about the punishments used there are also very revealing of how the government approached the training and discipline of young women. Also evident is a significant contrast between the approaches taken at the two establishments for reformed prostitutes, contrary to the view that the two refuges were similarly punitive (Godden
1987).
Sister M. Benedict’s evidence indicates that the Sisters had an approach which was quite in keeping with late twentieth century theories of child development, psychology and social work practice, in terms of a refusal to stereotype the girls’ and young women with whom they worked, a basic optimistic belief in their potential, an understanding of the importance of increasing self-esteem (‘self-respect’) and the futility of humiliation as a method of shaping behaviour.
Yes a great deal can be done with them [incorrigible girls] - they can be made fine women, I believe excellent women. Poor things, they do not know what they want. All they need is to be brought to think. There is a great absence of self-respect - that is what I notice among them. (RCPC E 1873/74: 165, Q. 5802) 279
Such a position is in keeping with the basic ethos of acceptance and inclusion which was part of the foundation of the Sisters' approach to the poor, as well as being compatible with later ‘professional’ social work principles of respect for the individual and self-determination. Sister M.
Benedict goes on to indicate the actual practice methods that the Sisters used to achieve this:
We must get them to respect themselves, so that they would scorn to degrade themselves by any sin of this kind again. If they are bad, and everybody looks down upon them, they can never be brought to anything I think (RCPC E 1873/74: 167 Q. 5856)
Sister Benedict gives an example of how the Sisters discipline the girls:
She [one of the Sisters] can say, if they do anything wrong “Oh, fie! That is not at all nice to do that.” And that corrects them at once, and they get ashamed of doing things which they otherwise would do (RCPC E 1873/74; 165, Q. 5809)
The Sisters' methods of discipline contrast with those used by government staff at Biloela. There the methods of punishing the girls were harsh, and included caning, putting the girls in solitary confinement in holes in the ground, and locking them up on diets of bread and water for days at a time (RCPC E 1873/74: 166, Q. 5831). Sister M. Benedict rejects these: ‘there is no necessity at all for it [caning]. I think that a little firmness is all that is necessary’ (RCPC E 1873; 167, Q 5846). She adds that the methods of discipline which were being used at Biloela were harmful to the girls: ‘These great punishments must be bad for the 280
girls – to keep them on bread and water for a fortnight must injure their constitutions, which are not formed yet’ (RCPC E 1873/74: 167 Q.
5838).
Thus, compared with the disciplinary methods used at the government’s industrial school for girls, the Sisters’ prescribed approach and their accounts of their actual methods of work with refractory girls does embody far greater acceptance, compassion and an understanding of what is necessary for the girls to function in the community after their release. The Sisters' methods of practice are congruent with their espoused charitable ethos and are compatible with many of the conceptualisations of good ‘professional’ social work practice of a later era. The Sisters’ work fits Walton’s description of women’s contribution to social work as being ‘a sensitive awareness of individual worth … used to relieve and overcome human suffering’
(Walton 1975: 262). The Sisters’ methods of working with women wishing to leave prostitution also contrast with those used at the
Protestant Refuge. These are discussed later in this chapter.
Training and education of the poor
For all four of the institutes in this study, education and training were closely associated with charity. The institutes especially believed 281
in the value of educating females. The section of the Good Samaritan
Rules ‘Of the Works of Charity’ states:
Let the Sisters be convinced that no work of charity can produce greater good to Society, nor promote more effectually the happiness of the poor than the diligent instruction of women, since in whatever state they are destined to live, their example and their admonitions have great weight, and wheresoever a devout woman presides, there generally are found peace and order. (GS R 1878: 48, GSA)
The other three Sisterhoods also included some reference to education in their statements of purpose (SC RC 1912: 139, SCA; SM
CMR 1869: 101, SMA; GS R 1878: 47-8, GSA; SSJ R 1867:12, SJA).
This reflects the Counter-Reformation emphasis on the desirability of education for the masses, and the concern of nineteenth century
’socially active’ religious institutes to enable the poor to achieve economic self-sufficiency. As noted in Chapter 2, the Catholic
Sisterhoods, as well as some charitable laywomen in Ireland had a particular approach to vocational training for the poor which entailed the establishment inter alia, of industries such as lace-making, knitting and wool processing (Glynn 1894; Luddy 1995; Ryan 1996b). Ryan further notes that the Sisters’ industrial schools were very different in approach to the government-run establishments of the same name which were primarily institutions to counter delinquency. In the documents and work of the four Sydney Sisterhoods we see a similar perspective to that of their Irish counterparts in relation to vocational training and also to the importance attributed to general education. 282
The strength of the Sisters’ concern with the education of the poor is obvious from its inclusion in the institutes’ statements of purpose.
This official espousing of the importance of education may have been reinforced by the political climate in Sydney in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, in which anti-Catholic feeling and the push for cessation of funding to denominational schools put schooling in the spotlight. Catholic pride in educational achievement, evident in the public pronouncements of clergy and hierarchy and trumpeted by the
Freeman’s Journal extended to orphanages and industrial schools as well as to the elite colleges catering for children of the wealthiest families. It is noteworthy that in the Freeman’s Journal there were advertisements for the Sisters' charitable institutions such as St Martha’s
Industrial School, the House of the Good Shepherd, the House of Mercy and the Dominicans’ Deaf and Dumb School. These appeared alongside advertisements for elite colleges such as the Jesuits’ St
Ignatius’ College (see for example FJ 13 November 1875: 1; 14 May
1881: 11; 6 July 1895: 20; 1 J anuary 1898: 15).
A component of the educational and training regime at a number of the Sisters’ charitable institutions seems to have been music. There are comments on the inmates’ singing in newspaper reports, former inmates’ recollections and the institutes’ various narratives. A report in 283
the Freeman's Journal of the feast day celebrations for Mother M.
Gertrude Byrne at the Catholic Orphan School indicates that the orphans were taught to sing the High Mass:
the celebrant being the Rev. JJ Garvey, deacon Rev. P Carroll, sub-deacon Rev. PJ Mahony. The Mass music was very nicely sung by the children who were accompanied by the fine band of the institution. (FJ 19 November 1881: 16)
Whilst it is possible to construe the singing of religious music as being a burden imposed on the children, rather than a pleasure, it must be noted that secular singing also was taught. A reporter from the
Sydney Daily Telegraph who visited the Good Samaritans’ Manly
Industrial School commented that:
Above the whirr of the needle came the rich full tones of beautifully trained voices. First arose the solemn rejoicing of a Christmas hymn, and then the lovely harmonies of ‘The Wind in the Harp’, the rich sonorous voices sounding strangely unlike the usual girlish treble (DT 16 January 1804: 11)
When the Sisters of Charity first commenced visiting the brutalized women convicts at the Female Factory at Parramatta in the first half of the nineteenth century, singing was also part of their regime: ‘Another elevating and softening influence was the singing of hymns. Some of the women had very good voices and took great delight in the singing class.’ (SC An. Vol.1: 75, SCA). A former pupil of St Martha’s Industrial school commented that while she was there the St Martha’s girls won singing competitions at the Leichhardt Town Hall (Burford 1991: 152). 284
The Sisters’ methods at the Catholic Orphan School, Parramatta
As discussed in Chapter 6, the Good Samaritan Sisters’ work at the
Catholic Orphan School has the most ‘external’ evidence concerning the
Sisters' methods of working with the poor because it was a public charity and was subject to reports by various government officials. As outlined below, evidence pertaining to the Sisters’ methods of caring for the children is found in evidence given to the Royal Commission into Public
Charities in 1873 by the Good Samaritan Sisters Mother M. Magdalen
Adamson, Sister M. Gertrude Byrne and Sister M. Benedict Lawn, as well as the visiting English experts on child care, the Misses Florence and Rosamond Hill. Their testimony reveals that the Sisters’ work with poor children and their mothers69 was different from that normally found in large orphanages. Subsequent reports to Parliament by the government’s Inspector of Public Charities confirmed the outcome of the
Sisters’distinctive methods.
First, concerning the relationships between Sisters and the children in their care, Florence and Rosamond Hill commented that
69 By government regulation, children could not be admitted to either the Protestant or the Catholic Orphan School if their father was able-bodied, living and his wherabouts were known. As applications from widowed or deserted fathers were not approved, most of the parents of children in the Catholic Orphan School were, therefore mothers, not fathers. 285
the children at the Catholic Orphan School were happy and lively.
Florence Hill said: ‘I liked the look of the children very much. They had not that subdued look which I have so often noticed in orphan schools… all seemed to be very happy’ (RCPC E 1873/74: 290, Q.
8792). The Inspector of Public Charities regularly made similar observations in his annual reports to the Parliament. Four years after
Miss Hill’s evidence to the Commission he noted:
The clean, healthy appearance of the children, their liveliness and the good understanding which exists between them and their guardians, furnish abundant evidence of kindly, sympathetic care. (IPC R 1877: 542)
Three years later he reported: ‘I have always been favourably impressed by the cheerful faces of the children, and the sympathy which seems to connect them with their guardians when visiting this orphanage’ (IPC R 1880: 182). The Sisters made a point of developing this ‘sympathy’ by trying to get to know the children as individuals.
Mother Magdalen said that she and the other Sisters at the School knew each of the nearly 300 children by name and were familiar with their natures (RCPC E 1873/74: 8, Q. 226, 232, 233). When the
Commissioners asked Mother Magdalen her opinion about the maximum number of children that an orphanage should accommodate, her reply was that the maximum was determined by the number that it was possible to know individually. (RCPC E 1873/74:8, Q. 224-6).
Sister M. Benedict also commented on the Sisters’ methods of working 286
with the children at the Orphan School, where she had previously worked.70 She was asked what was done with the children in the evening:
They assembled in the schoolroom after dark – there were fires there in the winter – and there was always one of us there with the children. We play with them and have different amusements for them; and then there is the prayer-bell, and then they go into the church, and then retire, and the nuns walk up and down in their dormitories, saying little prayers until the children go to sleep, and then they are left to nurses. A nurse sleeps near them: they are never alone. (RCPC E 1873/4: 164-5, Q. 5791)
Another apparent feature of the Sisters’ charitable work was the practice of ‘after-care’ or ‘follow-up’ once individuals had left charitable institutions. This practice was prescribed for example in the Sisters of
Mercy guidelines for their Houses of Mercy. The Sister in charge was advised to follow up the young women once they left:
She would do well to encourage them to come to her occasionally after they shall have left, that her advice may support and establish them in their good purposes, and shield them from the dangers that so often beset their paths. (SM G 1888: 63; SMA)
Unfortunately there is little evidence by which to assess the extent to which this prescribed after-care occurred with the Sydney ‘House of
Mercy’. There is however evidence concerning the Catholic Orphan
School, Parramatta. The children apprenticed out from the Catholic
Orphan School were followed-up by the priest of the parish in which they
70 She was being questioned about practices at the government’s Girls’ Industrial School, which she regularly visited to provide religious instruction.
287
were placed (RCPC E 1873/74: 8, Q. 245, 246). In this the Catholic
Orphan School differed from both the Protestant Orphan School and the other big publicly subsidised children’s institution, the Randwick Asylum, neither of which had any such system of follow-up once children were apprenticed out (RCPC Second Report 1873/74: 123, 132). Some children from the Catholic Orphan School obviously also kept in contact with the Sisters, as Mother M. Magdalen and Sister M. Gertrude both referred to visits and letters from their former charges (RCPC E
1873/74: 3 - 4, Q. 86, 87; 11, Q. 353, 355).
When children were unhappy after being apprenticed out they could make application via the parish priest to be returned to the Orphan
School. Mother Magdalen gave evidence concerning one child who had been apprenticed out but subsequently returned. The Public Charities
Commission was concerned to establish the success of the various public children’s charities in terms of the number of children who ‘went wrong’ after being apprenticed out from institutions.71 In answer to this
Mother M. Magdalen stated that:
My book will show. I do not know that any went wrong who were apprenticed last year. One boy ran away after he was apprenticed, and went to his parents. Certainly it was a very
71 A modern-day reader may regard the answers given with some scepticism and indeed wonder at the apparent naivete of asking such a question of those who were to be judged partly on the answers they gave. However, there is no reason to believe that Mother M. Magdalen was anything but honest in her evidence to the Commission.
288
decrepit person he went to, and it was not a nice place for a young child. I do not remember that there was any other case last year. (emphasis added) (RCPC E 1873/74: 3, Q. 85)
Mother M. Magdalen’s evidence shows that she understood the situation from the child’s point of view and that this understanding took priority over enforcing the government’s policy on the ‘apprenticing out’ of children, which, as discussed in Chapter 6, was partly intended to discourage parents from abrogating their responsibilities by placing their children in publicly supported institutions.
Other features of the care of children at the Catholic Orphan
School which were probably not consistent with the government’s principles of ‘less eligibility’ included the children being taken on an annual picnic feast, including a ‘steamer excursion’ to harbourside picnic grounds some distance away (FJ 6 June 1874: 6; 27 October 1883:
16). Such treatment was not limited to the children at the Orphan
School. The Sisters of St Joseph also provided a treat for the children from their ‘Providence’ in the slum district of the Rocks by taking them to the circus (FJ 10 December 1881:15).72 The children at the Good
Samaritans’ Manly Orphanage and Industrial school also went on picnics. It is significant that the children were accompanied by the girls from the elite High School on the same site:
72 The visit to Wilson’s circus ‘was on the invitation of the proprietor’ and the children were conveyed by omnibuses provided by two companies (FJ 10 December 1881: 15). 289
When the orphans were taken out to the bush we all went too, and helped look after them. Shelly beach was a great favourite … The two Sisters M. Bede and Barbara came and we brought our lunch and had a happy time. (Hanly TS n.d.: 21, GSA)
Such outings were consistent with the Sisters' inclusive and non- discriminatory approach to the poor and with their aim of fostering the development of self-respect.
There is some confirmation that the Good Samaritans’ non- discriminatory methods achieved success in terms of the ability of recipients of the Sisters' charity to subsequently participate in society. In keeping with the four Sisterhoods’ prioritising of education the Sisters at the Catholic Orphan School tried to ensure that the children there attained a minimal level of literacy, at a time when schooling was not compulsory. The Sisters would not allow the children to be apprenticed out unless they could read and write (Nolan 1964:109). The Inspector of
Public Charities’ Report for 1882 found that the standard of education at the Catholic Orphan School was higher than for any other publicly funded orphanage (IPC 1882: 6). Further evidence of the successful implementation of the Sisters’ policy is found in the fact that two children formerly from the Orphan School were appointed by the government as public school teachers:
Two lads educated at the Parramatta Catholic orphanage, Mr. Frederick Bates and Mr. Bryan Dale, have qualified themselves to fill the office of teachers under the Department of Public Instruction. Mr. Fred. Bates has been appointed to West 290
Maitland at a salary of £84 per annum, and Mr. Dale has received an appointment at Waterloo at the same salary. (FJ 16 July 1881:15)
The contrast between the dominant attitude to the provision of charity in New South Wales at the time, as evident in the statements of government officials, and on the other hand, the Sisterhoods’ non- discriminatory and inclusive stance is illustrated in an exchange at the
Charity Commission inquiry between one of the commissioners and
Mother M. Magdalen. She was asked by the Commissioners whether she thought that caring for children in large institutions tended to pauperise them. She replied the children at the Catholic Orphan School did not seem to regard themselves as paupers:
I do not see that, some of the children get into good positions and do very well. They do not seem to think themselves paupers. They come here to see me, very respectable, decent young men and women, and doing very well… Numbers of children who were brought up here are comfortable now. (RCPC E 1873/4: 7, Q.207)
It is obvious that the Sisters did not regard the children as paupers either. It seems likely that the Sisters' inclusive attitude, and the methods which sprang from this - which focused on education, understanding and the development of self-respect - rather than those based on the principles of less eligibility which were favoured by the government, produced young adults who were able to live closer to the mainstream of society rather than on the margins. The Sisters of the
Good Samaritan who visited the girls’ reformatory and industrial school, 291
Biloela, also refused to stereotype the girls there or make moral
judgments based on superficialities. At the Public Charities
Commission, Sister M. Benedict was asked about what she thought
about the girls’ very short dresses:
5821 Did you notice that the dress of the girls at Biloela was very scanty? I do not think that they require a great deal of dress there.
5822 Do you not think that they were improperly short? Yes I did; but I thought they had put on one another’s dresses by mistake – so I did not mind that much. (RCPC E 1873/4: 166)
A similar liberality concerning dress - and other matters - was not evident, however, in the rules governing the Sisters’ work with former prostitutes at the House of the Good Shepherd refuge and St Magdalen’s Retreat.
Disciplinary regimes in institutions for penitent women: an anomaly?
The one field of the Sisters’ social welfare work which stands out
as being approached differently from others, in terms of specified
attitude and methods, is work with former prostitutes (‘magdalenes’ or
‘penitents’). Late twentieth century examinations of the Sisters’ methods
of working with this marginalised group seem to indicate that the
espoused principle of ‘recognition of Christ in the persons of His poor’ 292
may have been replaced by some other, because of the methods used by the Sisters. Such rescue work has been portrayed as enforcing
Victorian standards of sexual morality for women (which it undoubtedly was), and doing so in a highly depersonalising and punitive way
(Godden 1987; Luddy 1990; Mark 1996). The Sisters’ approach to working with former prostitutes at the House of the Good Shepherd has been perceived as being basically similar to the work undertaken at its
Protestant counterpart, the Sydney Female Refuge (Godden 1987).
Certainly the methods used at the House of the Good Shepherd seem to have been less ‘caring’ and more harsh than those the Sisters used with other groups of the poor, such as children. It is possible however to interpret the Sisters’ work with penitent women in a different light, looking at statements made by the Sisters and members of the Church hierarchy, some specifics of the Good Shepherd’s operation and its situation in a broader historical context.
Rules at the House of the Good Shepherd - such as the substitution of the women’s own names with names given by the Sisters, a probationary period of two years, having to wear a uniform, a prohibition on the women talking about their lives, being required to do laundry or needlework and a strict, regimented and quasi-monastic pattern of daily activities (GS An.: 7, 8, 175, GSA) - seem to be in sharp contrast with what is known of the operation of other charitable 293
institutions run by the Sisters. It also seems that there is a reasonable case for concluding that in carrying out this particular branch of charitable work, the Sisters did not differ significantly from their counterparts in the nearby Protestant Refuge (Godden 1987). It must also be noted however that practices such as the above were traditional for ‘magdalen asylums’ which had existed in Europe since the sixteenth century (Cohen 1992; Mark 1996). The rules used at the House of the
Good Shepherd had in fact been formulated at its inception in 1848, which was some nine years before the Good Samaritan institute was founded (A Sister of the Good Samaritan 1972: 60).
It can be argued however, that the House of the Good Shepherd
(and from 1887 St Magdalen’s Retreat at Arncliffe), with their highly structured regimes were not as punitive as they seemed. First, as has been noted, the Good Samaritans’ boarding school ‘Rosebank’ at Five
Dock, had rules which were not dissimilar to those operating at the
House of the Good Shepherd. A former student recalled that ‘Our school days were very little different from the novitiate, so strictly were we trained at school’ (Hanly TS n.d.: 18). The Sisters’ own documents speak of the rules at the House of the Good Shepherd being designed to protect residents not to punish them. The prohibition on the women speaking about their past and the replacement of their names was said to be a measure to protect privacy and facilitate the penitents’ efforts to 294
start anew ‘None of their fellow inmates would be aware of their identity unless they chose to disclose it themselves’ (GS An: 5 GSA ). Whilst this has been interpreted as being de-individualising, parallels may also be drawn with later secular social work notions of respect for the dignity of the individual and the maintenance of confidentiality. Another difference between the Catholic and Protestant women’s refuges was in the methods used for facilitating a ‘new life’. It should be noted that whilst being assigned a new name by the Sister in charge of the House of the Good Shepherd may have been de-individualising for the penitent women, it was not as de-humanising as the practice at the Protestant institution, which substituted the penitents’ names with a number
(Godden 1987: 300). Consideration of statements of the local Catholic hierarchy about the refuge and its residents also indicates that they had a compassionate stance. Thus, in terms of the standards of the time, it could be said that the priorities of the Sisters at the House of the Good
Shepherd were humanising.
The publicly expressed attitude of the Sydney Catholic hierarchy in seeing the women as sinners and, by making much of the holiness of the Sisters who cared for them, emphasised the former’s sinful state.
However, the Church’s stance was not punitive and rejecting of the women, but of their previous lifestyles. Cardinal Moran spoke publicly about the duty not to stigmatise these women: 295
If men would upbraid the repentant fallen one, and point the finger of scorn at the repentant children, the Saviour would brand them as hypocrites and as whited sepulchres. The work of God was to lift up the fallen ones, to minister to them, and afford them in their sorrows consolation to their repentant hearts. (FJ 31 March 1888: 15)
In fact, on another occasion, Moran expressed the view that the penitents were even more deserving of public assistance than other poor persons, because of the shame they felt and the social stigma attached to prostitution, because these barred them from opportunities to earn an honest living. It was for this reason Cardinal Moran argued, that they had an even greater call on charity. A report of Moran’s speech at the opening of a bazaar for St Magdalen’s Retreat says:
Others no matter how poor, may each earn for themselves an honest home by their toil and industry. Too often this is denied to the outcast Magdalene. In the depths of her disgrace, the world has set a brand upon her which makes her loathsome to her fellow creatures, and seals up the fountains of human sympathy in her regard…Our Divine Lord … has set an example …(GS An.:118-9, GSA)
As discussed above, the Sisters’ ethos of how to discipline young women was one based on developing self-respect and not demeaning them. The regime at the House of the Good Shepherd may have been strict, but it was not degrading. The evidence given at the 1873/74
Commission of Inquiry into Public Charities reveals some other important differences between the two Sydney Magdalene institutions. The Matron of the Sydney (Protestant) Female Refuge, Mrs Malbon, gave evidence 296
that inmates there could not leave before they had been there for a year because ‘I keep the key so that [they] cannot get out’ (RCPC E 1873/74:
215, Q. 6980). This contrasted with the practice at the House of the
Good Shepherd, as described by Sr M. Benedict:
We have no locks at all upon the doors; we could not manage the girls if we had locks, for they would try to get away.
5801 Mr Metcalf] Do not the girls sometimes run away from the House of the Good Shepherd? Yes there may be some. They get tired and want to go out. They are not compelled to remain, and the superior will not force them, but we go to them and beg of them to remain. (RCPC E 1873/74: 165, Q. 5800, 5801).
So, the Sisters' methods relied on personal influence and persuasion
(that is on their relationships with them), rather than locked doors, to get women to remain at the House of the Good Shepherd. The former methods are similar to the use of ‘the helping relationship’ in later, secular social work.
Certainly the attitude of the Sisters to their work with penitents conveyed in their recollections, annals and histories does not sound punitive, and there is some evidence that the strictness of the regime at the penitents’ institutions was mitigated by the relationships which existed between the Sisters and the residents, and other aspects of life in the refuges. For example, the penitents at St Magdalen’s Retreat were given a ‘treat’ at the end of a five day religious retreat in 1890.
This was arranged by friends of the institution, the member of parliament 297
for Parramattta, Mr Hugh Taylor and his wife and family. After a ‘feast’ the penitent women were entertained with musical items and recitations performed by the Taylors (Gregory 1984: 7).
Sister M. Benedict cited as an example of the success of the
Sisters’ methods at the House of the Good Shepherd, the case of three
‘incorrigible’ girls from the Girls Industrial School. The Superintendent of the latter had asked the Sisters at the House of the Good Shepherd to take them, as they were a corrupting influence on the younger girls at
Biloela and he could not manage them. Sister M. Benedict said:
We took those girls and we had no trouble with them; two turned out very well; one was really a great credit to us, and one has been away at a place and has come home. We expected the Archbishop to come and give confirmation to those two girls and they came to be prepared for the holy sacrament, and we were struck with their goodness. There was the third of those girls, who was not, I believe, so bad as we thought. We thought that she was lost, but I heard a good account of her a few days ago. I heard that she was in a cook-shop at service. (RCPC E 1873/74: 165, Q. 5796)
The fact remains however that the Sisters did seem to approach the poor women at the penitents’ refuges differently from other poor people they cared for, with the rules appearing to be not particularly empathic or compassionate. The difference in the Sisters' methods of working with penitent women can be better understood if it is remembered that the Sisters had a dual focus on spiritual as well as 298
material dimensions of need, and that priority was supposed to be given to the spiritual needs. In order to understand how the Sisters’ saw their work with penitents it is also necessary to abandon a late twentieth- century position of moral-relativism on prostitution, and attempt to view sexual activity outside of marriage through ‘respectable’ nineteenth century eyes.
It has been argued above that the Sisters’ understanding of poverty generally and their duty towards the poor (apart from prostitutes) produced in the Sisters a compassionate and accepting stance based partly on their knowledge that being poor was not a sin, and that poverty was not caused by individual moral failure. For the Sisters, responding to poverty did not require moral reform of the poor individual in order to alleviate their material plight. It was sufficient to respond to material need by giving immediate assistance or ‘relief’, and the use of methods which would foster self-respect, coupled with education or training to facilitate longer term self-sufficiency. Religious instruction or
‘moral training’ may also have been needed, but it was a separate problem, not the cause of their material distress, and could be dealt with in parallel, as it were.
For applicants to the House of the Good Shepherd refuge however, the situation was different. This institution was a home for 299
‘penitents’, that is to say that its material and spiritual purposes were explicit and well-known to the people of Sydney. The women who became inmates were clearly in material need, or they would have had no need to apply for admission. By applying to the refuge they were also acknowledging, at least nominally, a degree of spiritual need. By voluntarily applying to enter the House of the Good Shepherd, women were in effect entering into a contract to participate in the program offered by the Sisters, including a way of life intended to rehabilitate them materially and spiritually. In terms of the criticism that having the women do sewing and laundry work amounted to punishing them for their sins (Mark 1996; Godden 1987), it must be noted that carrying out such work was an economic necessity. The House of the Good
Shepherd received no government subsidy and was totally dependent on donations and income from the work done by the penitent women and the Sisters in the refuge. Their labour was not so much a case of
‘paying for their sins’ but helping to pay for their food and lodgings. It must be noted that the Sisters also worked long hours in the laundry and sewing room, alongside the penitent women (GS An.: 5, GSA; Walsh
2001: 162f.).
In terms of trying to ensure the future material well-being of the women who came into their care, the Sisters provided a ‘certificate of good conduct’ for those who successfully remained there for two years 300
and abided by the rules. The fact that a significant number of women secured employment when they left the House of the Good Shepherd, and later St Magdalen’s Retreat, indicates that people in the community who employed the women accepted the certificates issued by the
Sisters.73 This is understandable given that the Sisters' work and methods at the penitents’ refuges were well-known to the public, not least because of the continuing calls for financial support made from pulpits and in the Freeman’s Journal. For example, in 1874 and 1875 the Freeman’s had notices, reports or other items about the House of the Good Shepherd (usually to do with fundraising of some kind) on at least fourteen occasions.74 It may well be that it was because people knew that the Sisters' regime was strict that they were willing to employ women who had demonstrated that they could work diligently and conduct themselves in accordance with the Sisters' high standards.
In a sense, the Sisters' work with penitents may have been the opposite of the process that has been noted by others as operating in charitable work, which is that the status of those engaged in caring work is correlated with the status of those being cared for (Abel-Smith cited in
73 It was stated that of 2,242 women received into the House of the Good Shepherd since its opening, 935 had gone to situations, 73 had married and 593 had returned to friends (Archbishop Polding cited in FJ 26 November 1870: 8). 74 These were 10 January 1874: 1; 4 July 1874: 1; 18 August 1874: 10; 29 August 1874: 10; 26 September 1874: 10; 10 October 1874: 2; 5 December 1874: 1; 12 December 1874: 1; 2 January 1875: 9; 3 July 1875: 2; 4 September 1875: 11; 11 September 1875: 1; 16 October 1875: 1; 30 October 1875: 1. 301
Walton 1975: 36). In the case of the Sisters’ work with penitent women it seems that some of the high esteem in which the Sisters were held was transferred to the women who successfully completed two years of living and working with them. It therefore remains a moot question as to whether the Sisters' work with former prostitutes was solely about control, as late twentieth century feminist writers have concluded, or alternatively, was about care for the women concerned, as the Sisters’ narratives portrayed it. It is likely that it was both. An analysis of women’s asylums over five centuries concluded that:
We find a blend of elements of humanitarian melioration and social control. The founders of women’s asylums genuinely tried to help women surmount the socio-economic difficulties, yet they also wanted to steer women’s sexual and reproductive behaviour. The asylums provided some women with true havens of escape from abuse or deprivation, but they also constricted women’s freedom of mobility and action… (Cohen 1992: 169)
The simultaneous existence of both control and a genuine concern to help is not a feature peculiar to work with former prostitutes in times past. It remains in much present day social work, most obviously in fields such as family and child welfare, mental health and corrections, and it has been an historical characteristic of social work from its various nineteenth century roots. The work of the Charity Organisation Society is often regarded as the beginning of modern social casework (for example Satyamurti 1989: 90-95). The major role played by authority and control in this work is well-known. However, as has been noted, 302
what distinguished this method of work from that of the poor law administration was ‘a relationship in which concern for the individual was central’ (Satyamurti 1979: 94). It is suggested here that the Sisters' approach to the poor was similar in this respect.
The Sisters as organised charity workers
It has been argued in this thesis that the Sisters had a compassionate and inclusive stance towards the poor. Reports in the
Freeman’s Journal indicate that the four Sydney Sisterhoods were known for their ‘loving care’ and their ‘kind but firm’ discipline in schools and charitable institutions. Another frequently mentioned characteristic of the
Sisters' work with the poor, in both charity and education, was its efficiency. The Second Report of the Public Charities Commission, and subsequent reports of the Inspector of Public Charities, commented on this, as did the clergy and editors of the Freeman’s Journal (RCPC
1873/74 Second Report: 32; FJ 6 June 1874: 8, FJ 13 June 1874: 11;
FJ 30 July 1881: 13; IPC 1880: 2, 183; 1881: 128; 1882: 1139, 1306).
Whilst Chapter 9 focuses on the Sisters' broad skills in management and finance across their charitable undertakings, the section below examines the Sisters' methods of organisation in one area of their charitable work, that is, home visitation of the poor. It will be argued that 303
the institutes’ prescriptions concerning this aspect of work showed many elements similar to those of twentieth century social casework practice and administration. There is evidence of a concern with intra- organisational accountability and the control of individual Sisters vis a vis the work undertaken. The institutes’ provisos can also be seen as attempts to safeguard the credibility and reputation of the Sisterhoods.
As discussed in Chapter 3, as the Sisters ventured into places outside their convents which were often associated in the public mind with unwholesome persons and actions, there was the danger that they would be perceived as morally tainted (Walkowitz 1992).
There is some variation between the four Sydney Sisterhoods in the degree of specificity of the guidelines and rules for how visitation work should be organised. For example, the documents of the Sisters of the
Good Samaritan say very little about the organisation of home visiting compared to those of the Sisters of Mercy. This difference in the level of detail may be a function of the point in time in which each was founded.
When Archbishop Polding co-founded the Sisters of the Good Samaritan and drew up their Rule, he had limited aquaintance with the work of the
‘new’ socially active women’s institutes (MacGinley 1996a: 84). On the other hand, the extremely detailed instructions about methods and organisation of charitable work in the documents of the Sisters of Mercy may be a product of the fact that the institute was founded well after 304
Catherine MacAuley commenced her charitable work at the ‘House of
Mercy’ as a laywoman, and a decade or so after Mary Aikenhead’s
Sisters of Charity commenced their work with the poor in the same city.
So, in drawing up the documents for her new institute, the Mercy foundress already had the benefit of several years of personal experience of carrying out such work as part of a group of similarly motivated women, and she would have known of the methods used by other women, lay and religious, in charitable work in Ireland (Clear 1987,
Luddy 1995). The very detailed Guide for the Religious Called Sisters of
Mercy, drawn up in 1866, was the product of a collective effort by various communities of Mercy Sisters drawing on their experiences in charitable work across Ireland.75
The content of the various Sisterhoods’ instructions on how home visitation work was to be carried out reveals a number of features which may be thought to be characteristic of later, ‘professional’ social work.
As discussed earlier, these documents contain statements about the way the fundamental compassionate and accepting stance was to be operationalised in different fields of work, for example the advice on general demeanour, the necessity not to display any feelings of revulsion, to attend to pressing material concerns before attending to
75 Personal communication from Sr Mary Ryan rsm , archivist for the Sisters of Mercy, Bathurst, December 2001. 305
spiritual well-being, to choose short prayers when visiting the sick, and so on. The themes which emerge from the various guidelines for visitation work also include a concern for efficiency in carrying out this work, structures and mechanisms for accountability, and the maintenance of standards. An ever-present thread running through these documents is the spiritual dimension, with evidence of a concern to nurture the development of the Sisters as women religious via structures and processes of support and protection. As stated above, the documents also reveal a concern to maintain the reputation and respectability of the institute via the regulation of the conduct of their members when outside their convents.
As stated earlier, the Sisters of Mercy documents provide very detailed instructions about how the visitation work was to be organised.
This includes the preparatory work to be done prior to leaving the convent and the Sisters’ obligations after returning, both of which also have a spiritual component. This spiritual component is also seen in the other institutes, even though their prescriptions in some cases have less detail concerning the organisation of the work. It seems that for each institute, home visitation work was to be supervised by a senior Sister, either the Mother Superior, or a Sister specifically assigned to oversee this work. Even when her duties are not described in detail, the supervisory role is implied in various sections of the institutes’ 306
documents. For example the Sisters’ of Charity documents state that the Sisters should ‘be ready to go to any place or to discharge any office
… whithersoever the Superior thinks proper to send them’ (SC RC 1912:
131-2, SCA).
Preparatory work
It is not always clear what the prescribed processes were for finding out who needed visiting by the Sisters, deciding whether a home visit would be undertaken, and assigning the Sisters who were to do it.
As stated earlier the Sisters of St Joseph were expected to routinely visit the homes of children they taught, following up concerns that may have come to their attention at school, such as absences and ill-health (SSJ
R 1867: 9, SJA). There is some suggestion that referral by a priest or some other person known to the Sisters was necessary (SM G 1888:
24-5, SMA), but this is not very evident across all institutes. It is interesting that the Good Samaritans’ documents seem to imply that
Sisters could undertake visitation work of their own volition without being requested by a superior to do so:
The sisters shall not presume to go out on the mission without having previously asked for and obtained the permission of the Mother Superior. They shall at the time of asking such permission make known to her what call they are about to make. (GS R 1878: 49, GSA)
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However an earlier version of the Good Samaritans’ Rules states that Sisters must ‘proceed without delay to the places assigned
(emphasis added)’ which implies that someone else has made the decision and allocated the task (GS R 1857: 63, GSA). Other sections of the later version of the Good Samaritan Rules imply that the Superior gave instructions and that each Sister should ‘employ herself according to the previous directions she has received from the Superioress’ (GS R
1878: 52, GSA) . This suggests a major supervisory role for the Superior in the visitation work.
The documents give further indication that for all four of the Sydney institutes the Sisters' charitable home visiting work was indeed under some degree of central organisation. The Sisters of Charity had guidelines for how the allocation of Sisters to duties should be made.
The supervising Sister should:
choose the more robust and healthy …for business which requires greater bodily labour … those who abound in charity and zeal and seem adapted to the employ, are to be deputed to visit the sick… (SC RC 1912: 137, SCA)
In some institutes the senior Sister was obliged to provide detailed written instructions to the Sisters undertaking the visitation, (SC C
1912:135, SCA; SM G 1888: 25-6, SMA). The Sister who was in charge of visitation in Mercy convents had to: 308
receive the calls and to register them carefully, to prepare the visitation papers and baskets, to apply for the necessary supplies in the time and manner appointed, to economise and judiciously distribute the means of relief committed to her care, to keep the poor stores in perfect order, to endeavour to learn all it may be useful to know regarding the persons we visit – their exact locality, character, dispositions, nature of the instruction they may require, their disease, suffering, wants etc. That she may see how to aid them more effectually, spiritually and temporally, she should open her heart to them all, and be as ready to relieve the distress reported to her by the Sisters as that she witnesses herself. (SM G 1888: 25-6, SMA)
The Mercy Guide also stated that when the Sister in charge of visitation drew up the visitation lists she should, to save Sisters’ time, allocate visits ‘as much as possible in the same direction’ (SM G 1888:
25-6, SMA). Some institutes also had rules about where in the convent the Sisters should rendezvous before setting out. For example the
Good Samaritan Sisters had to rendezvous in the chapel (GS R 1878:
49, GSA). There was some flexibility permitted however. Sisters of the
Good Samaritan and of Mercy were allowed to visit people not on the list in certain circumstances: ‘In urgency if the Senior Sister can ascertain the character of the place and the person to be visited from a reliable person, she may make a visit’ (SM G 1888: 39, SMA). If Sisters of the
Good Samaritan visited others whom they had not named before going out, they had to mention it to the Superior on their return (GS R 1891: 39,
GSA).
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The institutes also stipulated certain arrangements for accountability
and support for Sisters undertaking charitable visitation work. For
example, the Sister of Mercy in charge of visitation had to present to the
Superior, ‘at the appointed time’, the lists she had prepared of calls for
each pair of Sisters. This detailed the relief to be given and, if necessary,
the nature of instruction, as well as the names and addresses of those to
be visited. The Superior then assigned the Sisters to each list of visits
and specified the time at which they were to go. The Sister in charge of
visitation ‘should then seek her [the Superior’s] direction, if she has any
difficulty, or anything out of the ordinary course’ (SM G 1888: 27, SMA).
The Sister in charge of visitation then had to brief the Sisters who were to undertake the work, ensuring that they had ‘timely notice, and the necessary information’ (SM G 1888: 27, SMA). Moreover the former was obliged to: ‘never refer the Sisters going out on the visitation for the necessary information to another Sister who had visited the case before; it is her duty to receive and give it herself’ (SM G 1888: 27, SMA). The
Guide also says that the Sister in charge of visitation should keep a duplicate register ‘for her own guidance, in which she marks the date of each visit, and any other particulars it maybe necessary for her to note…’
(SM G 1888: 27, SMA). The stipulation of these procedures for before the Sisters left the convent suggests that the Sisterhoods’ home visitation work was characterisd by a high degree of bureaucratic organisation. 310
In addition to these bureaucratic mechanisms for support for visitation work, the Sisters also were expected to find spiritual support for their visitation work. For example, the Sisters of the Good
Samaritan, who had to rendezvous in the chapel before going out on visitation work, were instructed that in their prayers they were to:
commend warmly to God this part of their vocation, begging Him to bestow success upon their humble efforts, and for this end they shall strive seriously to render themselves efficient instruments in His divine hands. (GS R 1891: 39-40, GSA)
Duties after returning from visitation work
As with preparation, there were both temporal and spiritual dimensions of the Sisters’ obligations on their return from visitation work.
Sisters were expected to pray on their return to the convent, and if feasible go to the chapel, (for example SM G 1888: 40-41, SMA). When the Sisters of Mercy undertook visitation work, the senior of the two
Sisters was obliged to report back to the Sister in charge ‘on the spiritual and temporal necessities of the case’ (SM CMR 1869: 93, SMA) and the
Sister in charge was to ‘receive with great attention the report they make to her on their return’ (SM G 1888:26, SMA). For some institutes there was rather less written detail than might be expected, in terms of reporting back to a superior. For the Good Samaritans it seems that the
Sisters were only obliged to report to the Superior if they undertook 311
unscheduled visits, or if there was ‘any indiscreet or unnecessary communication with those who were not the object of their visit’ (GS R
1878: 55; GS R 1912: 39 GSA). However the requirement to go to the chapel on return from visitation work may indicate that the most important type accountability was spiritual. For the Sisters of Mercy the purpose was three-fold: ‘to thank Him most fervently for His protection – humble ourselves for the faults we have committed, and supplicate all graces for those we have visited (SM FI 1927: 22., SMA) The Sisters of
Charity archives have a notebook kept by of one of the early members of their Sydney community, which seems to have been used for personal reflection on her performance of her work. Although from an earlier period than that of interest in this thesis, the excerpt illustrates both the foundational principle which underpinned the Sisters’ approach to the poor as discussed in Chapter 6, as well as the way that the
Sisters used this core value of the institute to critically reflect on the way they had carried out their work.
The Poor
‘Amen I say to you, what you do to these, you do to me’
Have I neglected any occasion of serving my Divine Lord in the person of the Poor! Have I sought the occasions! Have I served them as the person of Christ in all lowliness of mind and charity of heart, & zeal of spirit. (SC Cahill MS. c. 1839, SCA)
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Rules of decorous conduct
The institutes also had detailed rules concerning the Sisters’ general conduct in public which to twenty-first century eyes seem quaint, pedantic and unnecessarily restrictive. However it is contended that they were relevant to the proto-professionalism of the Sisters' work.
These particular rules are related to the historical context in which socially active women’s religious institutes developed. It must be recalled that in the nineteenth century, women’s active philanthropy was an expansion of ‘the woman’s sphere’ to the world outside the home and family. The Sisterhoods’ official rules pertaining to behaviour in public are a reminder that at the time the institutes were founded, the ‘socially active’ works their members undertook were seen as novel, and sometimes scandalous behaviour for any respectable woman
(Prochaska 1980; Walkowitz 1992; Luddy 1995). Such a role was also novel for women religious, whose traditional activities had been within the enclosure of the convent (Clear 1987, 1990; MacGinley 1996a).
Service to the poor meant that the Sisters went out to their homes, often in slum areas, and to other places where the poor were to be found, such as prisons, hospitals and asylums. Poor people, and the places where they were found were commonly regarded as sinful or immoral, therefore those who associated with them were also in danger 313
of being perceived as such (Walton 1975:84).76 Catholic women, and certainly nuns, were even more vulnerable to such perceptions (in
England, Ireland and Australia), because of Reformation–inspired attitudes towards religious institutes, and anti-Irish, anti-Catholic sentiment. Consequently, prescriptions as to the general conduct of the
Sisters may be seen as serving the function of protecting individual
Sisters and their institutes from the charge of frivolous or unseemly conduct. The Sisters of the Good Samaritan Rules required that:
On going from one place to another, let them be very attentive to their outward manners. Let them walk together at the same pace, and as far as possible, side by side. Let them warn each other when there is a street to cross; let them avoid speaking in a loud voice, stopping in the street, or looking from one side to another without need; and in all places, and at all times, let them without affectation shew a religious modesty and gravity. (GS R 1878: 54 GSA)
The other institutes also had rules circumscribing the Sisters' conduct when walking outside the convent. (SSJ R 1867: 4, SJA;
SM G 1888: 28-30, SMA). Like the Good Samaritan Sisters, Sisters of Mercy were instructed how they should walk, and the Mercy
Guide even specified how the basket of relief supplies was to be carried, what to do if they were lent an umbrella whilst out on
76 This process of the transfer of social status from client to worker was not limited to women in the nineteenth century. Hugman discusses the same phenomenon as part of the dynamics of power in caring professions in the twentieth century (Hugman 1991: 94-101; Chapter 5 passim). 314
visitation work. The Sisters of Mercy were instructed that if they could not find a particular address they:
should never stand to look about for places they want, or look back in the street, or turn back abruptly; this would be to behave unseemly. They should go on so as to attract as little remark or attention as possible. (SM G 1888: 30, SMA) The Guide even suggests which type of shops it was best to go into in order to ask directions (SM G 1888: 30, SMA).
The existence of written rules governing these ‘superficial’ aspects of the Sisters' public personae fit with Haggis’ argument that nineteenth century women were able to extend their activities into the public sphere because they conformed to, rather than breached, accepted conventions about women’s behaviour (Haggis 1998: 172).
Conclusion
This chapter has considered the Sydney Sisters' methods of working with the poor. It has been argued that these were consistent with the Sisters' taking a proto-professional approach, both in their relationships with poor people and in terms of the organisation and administration of the work. Detailed prescriptions contained in the institutes’ documents were discussed. These prescribed how the institutes’ basic compassionate and accepting ethos was to be operationalised in various types of work. Particular attention has been given to discipline and training in the Sisters' institutional charities 315
because of the availability of evidence on this work. Evidence from the
Sisters' narratives and the accounts of outsiders indicate that in charitable work with the poor, the Sisters’ methods were consistent with their institutes’ espoused ethos.
The Sisters' methods of social welfare work also were shown to be similar to some of the prescriptions of twentieth century ‘professional’ social work. The development of self-esteem and self-discipline as well as vocational skills needed for subsequent economic independence emerge as methods shared by the four Sydney Sisterhoods. The
Sisters' methods in various areas of social welfare work also depended upon the relationships between the Sisters and those in their care. In these respects there were similarities between the Sisters’ methods and later, twentieth century social work.
Consideration of the detailed prescriptions concerning the organisation of home visiting work has also revealed similarities with later bureaucratic forms of social work administration, in terms of a hierarchy of authority and responsibility, accountability and efficiency. The existence of detailed rules concerning the Sisters' appearance and general conduct when out of the convent serves as a reminder that middle-class women’s work outside the domestic sphere in this period was relatively novel. To facilitate acceptance of the Sisters' work, their public behaviour had to be beyond reproach. The next chapter 316
examines another dimension of the ‘professionalising project’ of the
Sydney Sisters’ charitable work by focusing on their exercise of the
‘masculine’ skills of administration and financial management. 317
CHAPTER 9
‘ALTHOUGH AWAY FROM THE WORLD, THE SISTERS KNEW SOMETHING ABOUT MANAGEMENT AND FINANCING’: THE SISTERS AS MANAGERS
Introduction
This chapter examines the Sisters’ skills in administration and financial management. This dimension of the Sisters' work is considered for several reasons. First, the administration of charitable institutions became a significant social concern in late nineteenth century New
South Wales, with greater involvement by women being recommended by a government-appointed commission of inquiry into charities.
Secondly, in this period, ‘social administration’ emerged in England as a distinct entity, which in time became a recognised academic discipline.
Finally, in both historical and contemporary studies of social work and other caring professions, administration and management roles have been a focus of class and gender analyses.
Looking first to the historical context of the Sisters’ work, as discussed in Chapter 2, dissatisfaction with aspects of the management of some charities was one of the reasons for the establishment of the
1873/74 Public Charities Commission (Horsburgh 1977a: 19ff.). As
Godden noted, the Commission recommended that the administration of 318
public charitable institutions (particularly those run by all-male committees) would be improved by the greater involvement of ‘ladies’, to provide an ‘adequate feminine influence’ (Godden 1983: 17ff., 1986:
47f.). However, incompetence in charitable administration continued to be a concern in the nineteenth century and beyond. In the late nineteenth century the reports of the Inspector of Public Charities to the
New South Wales Parliament directly commented upon the ‘efficiency’
(or otherwise) with which various institutions were run. Further official inquiries were held, particularly into the Destitute Children’s Asylum at
Randwick (Horsburgh 1977a). As various scholars have noted, administrative competence has been a particular, ongoing concern in the field of child welfare, (Picton and Boss 1981: 24ff.; van Krieken
1985: 211; Wearing 1998: 25). At the time of writing this thesis the
New South Wales government is responding to serious criticisms of the administration of its child and family welfare arm, the Department of
Community Services.
The significance of administration in social welfare is further demonstrated by the emergence in England, in the late nineteenth-early twentieth century, of ‘social administration’ as an entity. This was the study of social needs and the organisation of appropriate collective responses to them (Titmuss 1973: 41). Social administration developed as an area of academic study, and was one route into professional 319
social work practice. It remained an academic discipline until well after the middle of the twentieth century (see for example Birrell et al 1973).
In the USA the term is still used for a recognised form of social work practice which has its own body of literature (for example the journal
Administration in Social Work). Historically, this form of practice has been associated with men, rather than women.
In social work history, there has been a split on gender lines between administration and direct practice. Some historical accounts of the development of secular professional social work in Australia have stated that in the early days, women ‘preferred’ to be involved in the direct, personal service dimension of social work, and left men to undertake the large scale, organisational and administrative tasks
(Lawrence 1965: viii). This was the case in England also (Brager and
Michael 1969; Scotch 1971, both cited in Hearn 1982: 194), and remains the case today (Hugman 1991: 175; Coulshed and Mullender
2001). This gender division was, moreover, not simply a matter of personal preference, but was a process of masculine control of women’s work via control of the endeavour as a whole (Hearn 1982: 191ff.). This has been recognised and in recent years ‘women and management’ has become an area of burgeoning feminist scholarship in social work
(Grimwood and Popplestone 1993; Ball 1998; Healy 2000). A similar split along gender lines, between the direct provision of a service and 320
administration, has also been noted in educational history. However, as
Burley showed for South Australia (Burley 1994, 1998, 1999), this depiction was based on evidence from government school systems and entirely ignored the substantial management role of women religious in
Catholic schools. Catholic Sisters' pre-eminent roles in the history of nursing and health administration have also recently been proclaimed
(Marshall and Wall 1999; Nelson 2001). It seems timely therefore to examine the Sydney Sisters’ skills in charitable administration.
The gendered development and exercise of skills in administration and management have also been noted in scholarship on women’s history more generally and in the sociology of the professions. As discussed in Chapter 3, the movement of women into professional work has been seen as a process of extending the ‘woman’s sphere’ from the private, domestic realm into territory previously thought of as being
‘masculine’. Management and administration seem to have been areas of the various occupations which have been further away from the
‘dividing fence’ between the domains of the two genders. That is, women’s increasing involvement in professional work did not automatically extend into the managerial roles in those occupations. As noted above in the case of social work, in some professionalising occupations this was because colonisation by men resulted in the masculine domination of administration and management (Hearn 1982: 321
191ff.). This chapter examines the nature of the Sisters’ involvement in this ‘masculine’ activity as part of their work with the poor in Sydney.
The Sisters’ managerial skills emerge as a significant feature of their charitable work. The evidence suggests that the Sisters’ skills in administration and financial management were quite pronounced for women of their time. It is argued below that there are two inter-related features which are central to this thesis’s consideration of the Sydney
Sisters' work as a ‘professionalising project’. One is that the Sisters’ social welfare work was dependent on them being competent managers.
The second is that the Sisters' ability to develop and exercise skills in administration and management was intrinsically tied to their membership of Catholic women’s religious institutes. These formally structured organisations were also all-women communities operating free from daily, on-site masculine authority.
The chapter first reviews evidence of the Sisters’ skills, including the management of charitable institutions, property acquisition and revenue raising. Attention is then given to an example of the Sisters acting in a managerial capacity, and dealing with men in ‘masculine’ territory. The chapter then considers the factors which facilitated the
Sisters' exercise of managerial skills. It is argued that these were to do with the Sisters' location in late nineteenth century Sydney society, and 322
with certain intrinsic features of Catholic women’s religious institutes as formal, hierarchically structured organisations which were also female communities.
As with other aspects of the Sisters' work, sources of data on their skills in finance and management are not as immediately accessible or extensive as might be desired. Most of the Sisters' charities in this period did not seem to have produced Annual Reports, the hospitals being exceptions.77 Information on the Sisters' administration and management has therefore been gathered from the four Sisterhoods’ narratives and other sources available in their archives; from the Sydney Archdiocesan archives; from press reports and relevant secondary sources. The data are not complete or comparable across all four institutes. Account books, which provide valuable information on financial management, were not available for two of the Sisterhoods. It was not therefore possible to undertake systematic quantitative analyses aggregating or comparing all the Sisters' charitable ventures over the period.
77 As none of the Sisters' charities except the Catholic Orphan School was a ‘public charity’ there was no legal requirement to make regular public reports on their operations.
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Evidence of the Sisters' managerial achievements
Evidence of the Sisters’ considerable skills in administration and financial management is found in a number of indices including the size, complexity and long life of their charitable undertakings and of the four religious institutes themselves. During the last quarter of the nineteenth century the four Sisterhoods spread across the Sydney archdiocese, with some extending to country areas, interstate and later, overseas.78
All four institutes are still operating at the time of writing. Their expansion and endurance did not occur without the Sisters having considerable skills in governance, finance and administration.
Given the paucity of the resources available to the Sisters, their managerial feats are quite remarkable. Consider for example, that on 31
December, 1838 Catholic Sisterhoods in Sydney comprised only five newly-arrived Irish Sisters of Charity. By the end of 1900, membership of this religious community was much more numerous and the Sisters
78 By 1900 the Sisters of St Joseph had 198 Sisters in 56 communities across New South Wales, (Burford 1991:70). In 1883 they made foundations in New Zealand (Foale 1989: 227, 229). In 1896 the Sisters of the Good Samaritan had 187 Sisters in NSW, including Nowra and Moruya on the south coast, and at Port Pirie in South Australia (FJ 6 October 1896: 15). The Sisters of Charity made a foundation at Bega on the New South Wales far south coast in 1884 (SC An. Vol. 2: 92, SCA). The Sisters of Mercy did not spread so far from their base communities in Sydney. This is largely because in country areas Mercy communities originating from other places had already been established. In Sydney, Moran brought out to Parramatta a group of Sisters of Mercy from Ireland (McGrath 1988: 11ff.; MacGinley 1996a: 231f.).
324
were operating three public hospitals and an orphanage. Also by the latter date, the Sisters of the Good Samaritan, founded in Sydney less than fifty years before, had two women’s refuges and an orphanage and industrial school. The Sisters of Mercy, whose community had only one professed Sister in the mid 1860s, were running a foundling hospital and a servants’ home and training school at the turn of the century. By this date, the Sisters of St Joseph, who commenced work in the Sydney archdiocese only in 1880, had three charitable institutions. All four
Sisterhoods also had a network of convents and schools that each administered and operated.
The four Sisterhoods purchased, paid for and developed numerous properties to house their work and workers, which required a considerable degree of managerial acumen. The Sisters' documents indicate that they also employed staff and dealt with tradesmen, businesses, and various levels of (masculine) Church and civil authority.
All of this was achieved with virtually no government assistance. Also, most of the Sisters’ charitable institutions had no regular financial support from archdiocesan finances.79 It would have been impossible for the four institutes to have accomplished all they did without
79 There were charity sermons and special collections at mass for individual charities, particularly the House of the Good Shepherd (FJ 10 January 1874: 1; FJ 20 September 1873: 9); and St Vincent’s Hospital (for example, FJ 17 January 1874: 2; FJ 9 February 1878: 16). There was however, no regular support or subsidy from archdiocesan funds. 325
considerable skills in various ‘masculine’ activities associated more with the nineteenth century public world rather than with the domestic sphere of women.
It must be noted however that the Sisters’ expertise in management was not absolute. First, not every Sister was involved in high level administration, this being the responsibility of the office bearers of each institute as a whole, and of the Superiors of individual convent communities. Secondly, even amongst those who did have responsibility for management, expertise was not uniform or constant.
There were instances of poor management which seemed to be aberrations by Sisters who were mostly very competent. There were also some individuals who generally did not perform well the duties of their positions. For some Sisters it took time to acquire the skills needed to manage new ventures under the social, economic and political conditions of the time. An example of the latter was Mother Magdalen
Adamson’s management of the Catholic Orphan School at Parramatta.
In the 1860s the Vicar General of the time found her administration of the Orphanage to be sub-standard in a number of particulars and he asked the Superior General of the institute to intervene to rectify the situation (Kelleher 2000: 312-3). However, as noted in Chapter 8 of this thesis, by the mid 1870s Mother Magdalen’s management was being praised by the Public Charities Commission and government officials 326
(RCPC 1874). Walsh (2001) makes the point that operating the Orphan
School required different skills than did the operation of the House of the
Good Shepherd women’s refuge, which was the only other charitable institution the Sisters of the Good Samaritan had operated. The Orphan
School catered for a different age range, for boys as well as girls, and was a much larger institution. Most significantly, the Sisters were employees of a government which was hostile to Catholics, in a social climate becoming increasingly opposed to the provision of separate denominational institutions. Moreover, she points out that the initial group of three Sisters who went to the Orphan School had each only been professed for a year (Walsh 2001: 92). It took time for these new members of this new Sisterhood to become skilled in managing this institution.
An example of longer term shortcomings in managerial skill is found in the history of the Sisters of St Joseph. The institute experienced ongoing deficient administration and management during the period of Mother Bernard Walsh’s term as Superior General
(Gardiner 1993: 416ff.) and Mother Mary MacKillop herself was not a good manager of money (Foale 1989: 162ff). It is arguable however that the degree of difficulty in the task of developing and administering the
Sisters of St Joseph at the time was great. The institute was distinctive, both in its centrally governed structure, which was a major factor in 327
battles with various bishops (Burford 1988, 1989), and its rapid spread into isolated rural communities across the entire continent. Whilst financial management may not always have been a strength of Mother
Mary MacKillop or her successor as Superior General, other Josephite office holders in the period were more adept at this particular aspect of administration, such as Mother Josephine Carolan, the Superior at the
‘Providence’ (Burford 1991). Moreover, other dimensions of management of the institute and its work, which ensured its continuation and development, were handled with diligence and skill. These included continuously supporting and encouraging members, the expansion and development of the institute, and defending the institute’s autonomy and ideals against a number of threats from powerful Churchmen (Burford
1991; Gardiner 1993). In the following sections evidence is considered which pertains to the four Sisterhoods' various administrative skills in domestic management, institutional administration, property and finance.
Domestic management
At the most basic, ‘domestic‘ level were the management skills needed in providing for the temporal needs of a household – food, shelter, furniture, clothing and other necessities. At its simplest this may appear to equate with the domestic administration required of any late nineteenth century ‘lady of the house’, albeit on a larger scale. The 328
convent account books which have survived indicate that the
Sisterhoods had a high level of accountability regarding items for domestic consumption in convents and in the Sisters' residential charities. The accounts make it possible to see at a glance how much was spent on particular items. The Sisters of the Good Samaritan books contain entries such as ‘coal’, ‘gas’, ‘grocer’, ‘meat’ and so on
(SGS AB PSC 1894 –1901, GSA). The Sisters of Mercy account books detail spending on many different food items consumed, so that it is possible to know for example that in September 1888, the North Sydney convent spent sixteen shillings and ninepence on currants (SM AB MSA
1879 – 1904, SMA).
The calls on the Sisters’ domestic management expertise were heightened when they also had the responsibility of housing, feeding and clothing residents of their institutional charities. This larger scale of operations meant that greater skill was needed in the actual management of resources as well as in the record-keeping that was required to ensure accountability to the community. The institutes had formal requirements pertaining to financial management, which will be discussed later in the chapter. There was one other very important distinction between the domestic management of the Sydney Sisters and that of other middle class women of the time. The Sisters had to find the money needed to meet all the costs of housekeeping for themselves 329
and the poor for whom they cared, as well as ensuring that they used the money judiciously and formally accounted for its expenditure in accordance with accepted book-keeping practices.
Scale and complexity of charitable works
The first indicator of the skill needed to operate the Sisters' charitable endeavours is the growth in size and complexity of their undertakings. As shown in Tables 2 and 3 on the following pages, at the start of the period the four Sydney Sisterhoods between them operated three charitable institutions – the Government’s Catholic Orphan School at Parramatta, the House of the Good Shepherd refuge for former prostitutes, and St Vincent’s Hospital at Darlinghurst.80 By the end of the 1890s the Orphan School was closed 81 but the four institutes were operating children’s orphanages and industrial schools at Liverpool, The
Rocks, Manly, Leichhardt and Kincumber (near Gosford). There was also a foundling hospital at Waitara on Sydney’s northern fringes.
80 The Sisters of the Good Samaritan operated the first two institutions and the Sisters of Charity ran St Vincent’s Hospital. As discussed in Chapter 5, the Sisters of Mercy did not open any institutional charities until 1891. There were no charitable institutions of the Sisters of St Joseph in Sydney at the start of the period as they did not make a foundation in Sydney until 1880.
81 This government decision was unrelated to the Sisters’ management. The Protestant Orphan School was also closed and a system of boarding out or foster care was introduced (Horsburgh 1977b ; Ramsland 1974, 1986; Hughes 1998a). 330
Charities for women included a servants’ home and training school and an additional refuge for former prostitutes. Two more specialist hospitals had also been opened, namely St Joseph’s consumptive hospital and a hospice for the dying. Thus over the quarter century the extent of the charitable work undertaken by the four Sisterhoods had increased in terms of the number and range of institutions they operated.
Table 3
Institutional Charities of the Four Sisterhoods in the Archdiocese of Sydney in 1873
Institution Year Sisterhood Commenced
St Vincent’s Hospital82 1857 Sisters of Charity
House of the Good Shepherd83 1857 Good Samaritan Sisters
Roman Catholic Orphan School84 1859 Good Samaritan Sisters
82 SC An. Vol. 1: 169ff. SCA.
83 The work of the House of the Good Shepherd was initially undertaken by a laywoman with the assistance of Sr. Scholastica Gibbons and other Sisters of Charity. Following the death of two of the Sisters, Polding commenced the Good Samaritan institute (with Scholastica Gibbons as co-founder). Sisters from the new institute began to work there with Sr Scholastica (GS An.: 1ff. GSA).
84 The Roman Catholic Orphan School, Parramata was a government institution operated and staffed by the Sisters of the Good Samaritan as employees, from 1959.
331
Table 4 Institutional Charities of the Four Sisterhoods in the Archdiocese of Sydney in 190085 Name Year Sisterhood commenced
St Vincent’s Hospital 1857 Sisters of Charity (220 beds)
St Joseph’s Providence 1880 Sisters of St Joseph The Rocks (10 women, 68 children)
Manly Industrial School 1881 Good Samaritan Sisters and Orphanage (130 children)
St Magdalen’s Retreat, 1887 Good Samaritan Sisters Arncliffe (128 women)
St Anne’s Orphanage, 1888 Sisters of Charity Liverpool (80 girls)
St Martha’s Industrial School 1888 Sisters of St Joseph Leichhardt (53 girls)
St Joseph’s Hospital, 1889 Sisters of Charity86 Parramatta/Auburn (15 Beds)
Mater Misericordiae Servants’ 1891 Sisters of Mercy Home and Training School
Sacred Heart Hospice, 1890 Sisters of Charity Darlinghurst
Foundling Hospital, Waitara 1898 Sisters of Mercy (40 babies)87
85 Sources: Australasian Catholic Directory for 1900, (SAA); SC An. Vol 2: 111ff., 115ff. 128, 169ff. SCA; SGS An.: 89ff., GSA; Walsh (2001):107, 164; Burford 1991: 151; FJ 26 September 1891: 14; SMH 28 September 1891: 6; AR Foundling Home Waitara, Golden Jubilee Number 1897 – 1947, p.9.
86 St. Joseph’s Hospital was initially commenced at Parramatta in 1889 then relocated to Auburn in 1892 (SC An. Vol. 1: 128). 87 The Foundling Hospital at North Sydney for a few months from December 1897 before relocating to the Waitara property in March 1898. 332
Another indicator of the size of the Sisters’ charitable operations is the number of persons assisted. It is not possible to provide a complete picture of the growth in total numbers of the poor assisted by the four institutes over the entire period because complete records are not available. However the information which is available confirms the large scale of the Sisters’ charitable works and thus the skill in management and administration which was entailed. For example, in
1880 the Sisters of St Joseph cared for 21 poor children and women in their ‘Providence’ home. In 1899 they cared for 204 poor people in three institutions – an almost tenfold increase over nineteen years (SSJ
Mahoney to MacKillop 9 April 1880, MMA; Burford 1991: 70). An increase of similar magnitude is found in the work of other institutes. In
1869 the Sisters of Charity cared for 178 in-patients at St Vincent’s
Hospital and 400 ‘outdoor relief’ patients. In 1899 the figures were 1758 in-patients and 8762 out-patients (although a number of these patients would have been paying, and therefore by definition, not poor) (SC AR
SVH 1869: 3; 1899: 7; SCA).
In 1900 the nine non-hospital residential charities operated by the four Sisterhoods were caring for approximately 600 women and children
(Coghlan 1902: 860-863; Moran MS n.p. 1900, SAA). Thus it may be seen that in terms of the range of works, number of institutions and total 333
numbers of the poor who were assisted, the Sisters’ charitable work with the poor grew and developed significantly over the period. Comparing the Sisters’ charitable endeavours with those of the Protestant Churches and Protestant laywomen, it can be seen that the Sisters’ work was very substantial. Looking at charitable institutions which were official works of other religious denominations, in 1900 there were four Anglican institutions which cared for 160 inmates in total, four Salvation Army institutions caring for 87 and one Wesleyan institution with 22 inmates
(Coghlan 1902: 860ff). The number of inmates of these nine Protestant church institutions totalled 269, compared with the approximately 600 residents in the Sisters’ institutions, plus the patients in the three hospitals run by the Sisters of Charity.
A comparision with institutions run by Protestant women which were not formally affiliated with any denomination shows that the
Sisters’ charitable works were larger and therefore would have entailed greater management effort. For example, the (Protestant) Sydney
Female Refuge for former prostitutes admitted 42 residents and had 31 in residence at the end of 1900. In comparison, the Sisters of the Good
Samaritan admitted 104 women to its two magdalen asylums at Pitt
Street and at Arncliffe, and had 160 inmates at the end of the year
(Coghlan 1902: 860ff). The Protestant Female School of Industry, which trained servants, admitted two women over the year ended December 334
31, 1900 and had a total of 28 residents at that date (Coghlan 1902:
360ff). The comparable figures for the Sisters of Mercy Servants’ Home and Training School were 213 admissions with 36 women in residence at the end of the year (Coghlan 1902: 360ff).
The establishment and operation of charities on such a large scale could not have occurred without competent management by the Sisters.
Prerequisites for expansion of their charitable work to such an extent included having suitable premises, obtaining sufficient money, having adequate personnel resources, maintaining day to day operations, and planning for the future. Meeting all these requirements entailed substantial skills, regarded as being predominantly outside the ‘woman’s sphere’ at the time.
Once the four Sydney Sisterhoods became larger and were operating at a number of different locations, including branch convents and out-schools, besides the charitable institutions, the management tasks became more complex and onerous. The head Superior of each institute was responsible for overseeing the management work undertaken by the Sisters at the various branches. The Sisters’ involvement in property acquisition has been alluded to earlier in this thesis. Chapter 5 discussed the problems of the Sisters of Mercy in obtaining suitable accommodation, and in Chapter 7, the role of property 335
debt and poor accommodation in causing hardship in the four institutes’
Sydney convents was canvassed. Property management was then a vital dimension of the Sisters’ administration.
Property acquisition and management
The Sisters of the four institutes were responsible for finding, acquiring and paying for almost all of the properties which they used as charitable institutions.88 Although the institutes received varying assistance with fundraising from the Catholic and general community to meet the debts on these properties, the ultimate responsibility usually rested with the Sisters themselves. Thus in this period the Sisters of
Charity bought the property for their three hospitals and girls’ orphanage
(SC An. Vol. 2, SCA). The Sisters of St Joseph bought their
‘Providence’ home at the Rocks, St Martha’s industrial school at
Leichhardt and in 1900, a property for a girls’ orphanage at Gore Hill on the North Shore, when the Providence was resumed as part of slum clearance at The Rocks (Burford 1991: 81). These Josephite purchases totalled over £12,000 (SSJ Carolan to MacKillop 19 August 1880, MMA;
88 There were several properties the Sisters did not have to purchase. The Catholic Orphan School and the ‘House of the Good Shepherd’ were government properties (SC An. Vol. 1: 122, SCA; GS An: 10, GSA). The Josephites’ Kincumber orphanage had previously been the local presbytery (Burford 1991: 148), and the property for St Anne’s Orphanage, Liverpool, was originally bequeathed to them, but because the deeds were lost the Sisters had to pay £800 (SC An. Vol.2: 111-112). Apart from the Orphan School, these other properties did however involve considerable subsequent expense for the Sisters, because of the necessity for building works, the purchase of additional property, or both. 336
FJ. 8 October 1881: 15; Burford 1991: 151-4). In the 1880s, the Sisters of the Good Samaritan spent over £9,000 on property for their charitable work. They bought the property for the Manly Industrial School and
Orphanage for £2,500 (with a further £580 spent on ‘improvements’), and Tempe House at Arncliffe, which became St Magdalen’s Retreat, for
£6,000 (GS An: 89-93, GSA).
The institutes’ annals, histories, surviving correspondence and account books attest to the high degree of the Sisters’ own responsibility for the acquisition of property. This responsibility usually included the effort needed to find a suitable property, raise the deposit, borrow large amounts, then the subsequent long hard struggle to pay off the loans.
Few of the Sisters’ property acquisitions were straightforward. Some of the negotiations and manoeuvres to secure what they wanted were complex. Complications commonly included a general wariness of men to do business with women, the reluctance of non-Catholic property owners to sell to Catholic women religious and the involvement of the
Catholic hierarchy and clergy in decisions to purchase property. An example of this is the Sisters of Charity expansion to Melbourne, discussed later in this chapter.
As discussed in Chapter 5, because of anti-Catholic attitudes, deception was needed to purchase the first convent in The Rocks for the 337
Sisters of Mercy. Subterfuge was also required for the purchase of additional property by the Sisters of Charity for St Anne’s Girls’
Orphanage at Liverpool (SC An Vol 2: 113, SCA). The Sisters of St
Joseph had difficulty in obtaining a loan in Sydney to buy a property for their Providence Home at The Rocks and had to resort to applying to a
Queensland bank with whom Sister M. Josephine had previously had dealings (‘St Joseph’s Providence Cumberland Street’, MMA; Burford
1991: 37). Sisters of Mercy narratives and correspondence reveal the complexity of the Mercy Sisters’ dealings over the Monte Sant’Angelo property, which was partly paid for by the sale of the property they had bought previously in that area. It seems that this latter land was subdivided and sold to at least ten different buyers (SM Whiting to
McQuoin 14 July 1879, SMA).
Extent of the Sisters’ role in management
Whilst the Sisters sometimes had the ‘assistance’ of men in matters such as purchasing property, as illustrated in Chapter 5, they did not always find such aid to be helpful. Moreover, even when there was masculine help, the women religious generally bore the final responsibility.89 Evidence of this is found in the institutes’ narratives
89 An exception seems to have been the debt on the House of the Good Shepherd. Dean Sheridan was given the responsibility to clear the debt by Archbishop Polding (FJ 14 August 1875: 13; GS An.: 37, GSA). 338
such as annals, histories, recollections and so on. Details of some of the management tasks carried out by these Sisters are also provided in these sources. For example the Good Samaritan Annals’ account of the establishment of the new refuge, St Magdalen’s Retreat in the mid 1880s states that:
Over several months Mother M. Magdalen was busily occupied in superintending arrangements for the removal. Suitable buildings had to be erected, the existing cottage repaired, and made as conventual as possible. When all was in readiness, the exodus took place, and one hundred ‘children’ left the old home in Pitt Street for fresh fields and pastures new, on the banks of the historic Cook’s River. (GS An.: 115, GSA)
The same source remarks on the skill of Mother Gertrude Byrne who was Superior at St Magdalen’s from its opening in 1887:
then began her colossal task… The laundry, equipped throughout with steam appliances, became famous for its excellence. Machinery, cooking appliances, furniture had to be purchased and debt pressed heavily, since the Sisters were dependent on voluntary subscriptions, bequests and results of the penitents’ work… (GS An.: 115, GSA)
The convent account books and other documents provide further confirmation that financial and property management were the responsibility of the Sisters. Letters from the Sisters of St Joseph in
Sydney to Mother Mary MacKillop in 1880 are replete with financial and 339
property matters. For example, in March 1880, Sr M. Bonaventure
Mahoney wrote: ‘We are busy trying to rent or purchase a Providence.
Sr M. Josephine and I are going out to see the agents’ (SSJ Mahoney to MacKillop 9 April 1880; MMA). A few months later Sister Josephine
Carolan asked Mother Mary for help: ‘I have a bill for Finney…. And they are pressing me for the money’ (SSJ Carolan to MacKillop 20 July
1880; MMA). The following month she was again concerned with finances for the ‘Providence’: ‘ I do not think it would be wise to borrow from the Marists. They are our best friends here’ (SSJ Carolan to
MacKillop 19 August 1880; MMA).
Entries in the institutes’ account books indicate that the Sisters took out loans from banks, building societies, solicitors and private individuals, sometimes owing money to a number of sources at the one time. For example the Sisters of Mercy account books include entries for the Oriental, the Mercantile and the Joint Stock banks (SM AB MSA
1879 – 1904, Nov. 1883, July 1885, Dec. 1889; SMA). They obtained substantial loans from Dangar and Gedye solicitors as well as several small loans (SM AB MSA 1879 – 1904, Nov 1894; SM AB MMSHTS
1892 – 1905, Jan. 1894; SMA. The Sisters of the Good Samaritan also borrowed from a number of sources including the Australian Mutual
Provident Society, the London Bank, St Joseph’s Building Society, and solicitors Ellis and Makinson, and Caird and Maxwell (GS AC PSC 1894 340
– 1901, Sept. 1894, Dec. 1894, June 1896, Sept. 1896; GSA). There are also less frequent entries for interest received from investments, for example the Sisters of Mercy received income from ‘building society shares’ in February and July 1885 (SM AC MSA 1879 –1904, Feb.
1885, July 1885). There are account book entries for expenditure on rates and insurance as well as payments to building contractors, tradesmen and suppliers of food and other domestic items. Invoices itemising materials such as nails, hinges, pieces of glass and so on are found with some account books.90 This suggests that when the Sisters' records state that a particular named Superior was responsible for building work, extensions and so on, she did in fact oversee the work.
Reminder letters for overdue accounts, and account book entries for payments of ‘old accounts’ suggest also that the Sisters negotiated with their creditors. This situation regarding financial dealings was not unique to the Sydney Sisters in this period. The Sisters of Mercy in
Melbourne were good at finance (Campion 1987: 40-45) and the expertise of the Dominican Sisters in South Australia extended to investment in shares (Burley 1999: 278-9).
As indicated earlier, the most accessible evidence of how the
Sisters actually ran their charitable institutions relates to the Catholic
90 Account from Mr Thomas Fanning 210 Rose St Darlington, dated Dec. 5 1893, (located in back of GS AB PS 1894 – 1901, GSA).
341
Orphan School, Parramatta. As a government-funded charity, public records were kept, and the institution was subject to reports to
Parliament.
Management of the Roman Catholic Orphan School, Parramatta
Confirmation of the Sisters’ expertise in the management of the
Catholic Orphan School is found in official government sources of the
1870s and 80s. The Second Report of the 1873-4 Commission of inquiry into Public Charities states that:
The management of the School, which entirely rests with Mrs Adamson 91, the matron, is in our opinion, able and most economical. The officers assisting her are, with the exception of the schoolmaster, ladies of a religious house…Added to the efforts thus made to individualize the children, there appeared to us a vigour in the administration of the school which had a most beneficial effect on the children. (RCPC Second Report 1874: 93)
Mother Magdalen was replaced as Matron of the Orphan School by Mother Gertrude Byrne in 1876 (Walsh 2001: 94), but the high standard of management seems to have continued, as attested in the annual reports to Parliament by the Inspector of Public Charities. As noted earlier, these reports regularly commended the Catholic Orphan School for its management – both in terms of the care of the children, and the efficiency of its administration, in spite of the gross deficiencies
91 Outside Catholic circles, the Sisters were publicly known by their secular surnames, and were accorded the status of married women. 342
in the buildings which the government had repeatedly failed to remedy.
The positive evaluation of the Sisters’ administration continued until the institution’s closure in 1886. In 1877 the Inspector said: ‘I have formed a very favourable opinion of the administrative ability of its local management.’ (IPC AR 1877: 5). Three years later he commented:
The Roman Catholic Orphan School management deserves special mention for the very excellent results obtained at very small expense. The average cost at this Institution and at the Randwick Asylum is startling by contrast. (IPC AR 1880:152)
Two years later the Inspector noted: The internal management of the Roman Catholic Orphanage continues excellent; the Inspector’s Report (Department of Public Instruction) on educational progress for the year is the best given to any of the Juvenile Charitable Institutions; and the health of the children was so good as to leave little to be desired. (IPC AR 1882: 6)
The excellence of the Sisters’ administration continued even after the government’s new policy of boarding out had substantially reduced the number of children in residence. In the report for 1884, the comment is made of the Sisters: ‘Under the most discouraging circumstances they exhibited untiring zeal, and have relaxed no effort in maintaining the institution in an efficient condition’ (AR IPC 1884: 33).
The evidence given by Mother M. Magdalen to the 1873/4 Public
Charities Commission illustrates her mastery of the many-faceted tasks involved in the management of a government institution for 300 children. 343
As well as the responsibilities inherent in oversighting the children’s care, education, and placement, Mother M. Magdalen’s evidence reveals her expertise as a manager and administrator of the government’s regulations. Her replies to questions from the
Commissioners shows her to be a woman au fait with every aspect of the day to day operation of the institution, including for example that the official weight of the meat ration was the uncooked weight, with no allowance ‘for bone or the loss on cooking’, (RCPC E 1873/74: 6, Q.
184). It is not likely that many heads of charitable institutions would have been so well-acquainted with the regulations concerning such domestic minutiae. In the following evidence relating to problems with supplies she reveals her ability to deal with incompetent and intransigent officials:
…For some time they [the rations] were not the same; we were not allowed so liberal a supply as they were allowed in the other school [the Protestant Orphan School], and I had to overdraw, and they tried to make me pay £100 out of my own pocket for what I overdrew. Then Mr Walker went over the matter, and saw how the case stood, and I sent to the Protestant Orphan School and got their lists, and I said if they would give me the same I would guarantee not to exceed the allowance. (RCPC E 1873/74: 3, Q. 79)
This excerpt reveals Mother Magdalen’s initiative, assertiveness and persistence, with the government officials, which was backed up by her impeccable record-keeping. She was able to deal with male bureaucracy confidently, based on her extensive knowledge and 344
experience in management and her political acumen. As noted earlier in this chapter her administrative competence was not high when she first became Matron of the Catholic Orphan School. It is argued later that there were factors which aided her (and other Sister-managers) to develop these skills. One was the fact that her management was based on direct involvement in the day-to-day provision of service and interaction with the poor, that is, she did not manage from a distance.
The second factor was the organisational structure, and the all-women communal nature, of the Sisterhoods.
Raising finance
As noted earlier, the absence of funding for the Sisters’ charitable works from the government or Archdiocese necessitated the institutes’ finding their own finance. The Sisters’ were directly involved in efforts to bring in money to sustain their charitable works. These included activities lying in the traditional domain of women religious, such as teaching music, putting on school concerts, making and gathering goods for bazaars and so on. Whilst the Sisters were often assisted by laypeople in the latter activities, the Sisters also played a major and active part in these. This is indicated in a letter from the Mercy Superior to one of the Sydney Sisters temporarily staying with the Brisbane Mercy community: 345
We are so overwhelmed with Bazaar and other business that I have delayed till this moment. … You must be sure to bring back the boxes we lent to Rev. M. Bridget as we want them particularly just now, and the things she promised will still be in time for the Bazaar which has had to be postponed to November…
P.S. The Harp and St Patrick are being raffled, one at Madden’s, the other at Beatties so Sister M. Joseph and Aloysius are in the midst of tickets…( McQuoin to Real 25 October 1878, SMA)
As noted in Chapter 7, the Sisters were also directly involved in other income-earning activities such as making altar breads, and the
‘sale of dripping’ (GS AB PSC Nov. 1886, GSA). For example in
December 1899 the Good Samaritans’ Pitt St Convent and Refuge had a total income of almost £180. Of this, school fees comprised nearly
£77, and ‘altar breads and habits’ (probably shrouds) just over £9 (GS
AB PSC 1894 - 1901, GSA). 92 The books of the Sisters of Mercy also record payment for altar bread, from the Jesuits at Riverview (for example SM AB MSA 1879 – 1904, Jan. 1884, Feb. 1886; SMA).
The Sisters were also crucially involved in earning income in larger scale commercial activities such as laundry and needlework. This was the case for the House of the Good Shepherd, St Magdalen’s Retreat at
Tempe, and St Martha’s and Manly Industrial Schools. These brought in money from laundry, needlework and lace-making which often
92 The Dominican Sisters at Maitland also made ‘brown habits’ or shrouds (MacGinley, 27 March 1998, personal communication).
346
constituted a substantial component of the income of the particular charitable institution. St Martha’s Industrial School, run by the Sisters of
St Joseph at Leichhardt, for example often undertook contract work to supply trousseaux, including for the well-known Sydney store, Mark
Foy’s (FJ 13 August 1898: 9; Burford 1991: 152,3). St Martha’s regularly advertised in the Freeman’s Journal for orders for ‘plain and fancy needlework’ (for example FJ 24 June 1893: 3). The Good
Samaritan’s Manly Industrial School and orphanage also undertook trousseaux sewing and knitting as well as having laundry contracts with most of the hotels at Manly (Hanly TS: 13, GSA).
Unfortunately, it is not possible to do a detailed analysis of the sources of income for all the Sisters’ charitable institutions.93 In 1900 St
Martha’s Industrial Home is recorded as having had a total revenue of
£2,373 of which £407 came from subscriptions and £1,966 from ‘Other
Sources’, with nothing of course from ‘Government Aid’ (Coghlan 1902:
860ff). There are no figures given for the Sisters of the Good
Samaritan’s industrial school at Manly and their two penitents’ refuges.
93 The Government’s Statistical Register records only four categories for ‘Revenue’, that is ‘Government Aid’, ‘Subscriptions and Donations’, ‘Other Sources’ and ‘Total’ (Coghlan 1902, No. 42: 460ff). ‘Other Sources’ would include income from the commercial work of the inmates but might also have included income from fundraising activities, such as balls, bazaars, concerts and so on which would not have been classed as either ‘Subscriptions’ or ‘Donations’. 347
Nor do the account books of the House of the Good Shepherd give yearly totals. However some half-yearly summaries are given in the latter, from which extrapolations may be made. For example in the half- year ended 31st December 1894, the Pitt St Convent and Refuge had a total income of £1,490. School fees comprised £306, needlework and washing £284, altar breads and habits £98, and ‘pensions’ (board) from residents £239 (GS AB PSC 1894 – 1901, Dec. 1894, GSA).
In operating such business ventures the Sydney Sisters were meeting the exigencies of their economic situation. As discussed in
Chapter 8, by providing training and work for the poor in convent industries the Sisters were also continuing the tradition of the women’s religious institutes in Ireland (Glynn 1894; Luddy 1995; Ryan 1996b).
As previously noted, both of the Sisters’ Sydney industrial schools had
Irish women as their first superiors, as did the House of the Good
Shepherd, St Magdalen’s Retreat at Arncliffe and the Servants’ Home and Training School.94
94 St Martha’s was run by Sr Regis O’Hare who emigrated from Ireland the year prior to joining the institute (Burford 1991: 153). The Sisters of Mercy’s Servants’ Home and Training School was under the management of Mother Xavier Hannigan who was Irish. The Sisters of the Good Samaritan industrial school and orphanage at Manly, was run by Sr Elizabeth O’Toole who was from Ireland, as were other staff including Sr Benedict Lawn (GS Ob., GSA). The penitents’ refuges were also under the control of Irish women for significant periods - Mother Scholastica Gibbons at the House of the Good Shepherd and Mother Gertrude Byrne at St Magdalen’s Retreat at Arncliffe. 348
There is, therefore, evidence that the Sisters of the four institutes were competent managers of finance, property, business and charitable administration on a large scale. They carried out these ‘masculine’ activities and in the course of so doing dealt with individual men such as property owners, estate agents, solicitors, bank managers, clients of the institutions’ laundry and sewing businesses, builders, churchmen and lay supporters. These activities were integrally related to the Sisters' undertaking of various types of work with the poor.
The Sisters were probably unusual amongst charity workers of their time because of the multiplicity of roles they performed. As noted in
Chapter 3, middle and upper class women in Sydney in this period were usually involved in fewer facets of charitable activity – usually either as fundraisers or members of committees (either of ‘ladies’ committees which assisted all-male management committees, or of committees of management in their own right) (Godden 1986: 42ff.). They were not usually involved in the ongoing provision of assistance in a direct person-to-person relationship with the poor. Such work was done by paid employees of a lower social standing. (Godden 1983: 10-13,85).
It is likely that many gentlemen who were involved in charity in Sydney at the time also had narrower roles than the Sisters had. Thus, those doing the day-to-day running of charities were paid employees of lower social standing than the ‘ladies’ and ‘gentlemen’ on the committees. The 349
pattern of stratification of roles by social class was also found in England
(Walton 1975; Parry and Parry 1979; Hearn 1982).
Some late nineteenth century New South Wales charities seems to have been structured on gender lines, as well as by social class, although there has been relatively little research done, compared with the United Kingdom. Godden’s work (1982, 1983, 1986, 1987) on women and philanthropy in Sydney is probably the main body of work on this. As noted in Chapter 3, she found that in the 1880s there was a surge of feminine involvement in charity as part of the expansion of
‘woman’s sphere’ philanthropy. However she found that this was slowed by developments in the 1890s including: the replacement of the ideal of the ‘lady’ with that of the ‘mother’; the overshadowing of class- related female moral authority by scientifically-based ‘expertise’ and the inadequacy of traditional charity as a response to the widespread poverty of the 1890s economic recession. Thus, in Sydney by the end of the 1890s the administration of charity was dominated by men.
This gendered pattern of men predominating in senior managerial roles, with women in the main occupying direct service roles continues to be apparent in present day social welfare services (Grimwood and
Popplestone 1993; Ball 1998; Healy 2000a; Coulshed and Mullender
2001). It must be noted however that the history of this development 350
was not simple or uniform across various services. In the U.K., as
Walton (1975) noted, complex processes and patterns of stratification were also evident. For example in Poor Law administration, gender and class structures were inter-mixed (for various reasons) so that women
Poor Law guardians were usually from a higher social class than were their male counterparts (Walton 1975: 31f.).
Within the Sydney Sisters’ charities, roles were not stratified by gender (of course). Nor does social class seem to have been a significant factor, perhaps because the rules of the institutes, which included the vow of poverty, effectively overrode these secular society dimensions of difference. This is not to say that the Sisterhoods were not stratified, but that that they were structured on a different basis. The important point regarding the Sisters’ charities is that the Sisters played multiple roles. The Sisters in managerial and administrative positions were not separated by social class or gender from those providing the
‘direct service’. Moreover, many Sisters who were managers were also involved in the day-to-day, direct provision of services, interacting with the poor. The following section examines the impact of this combination of roles. The remainder of the chapter analyses the way social structural factors and the character of the religious institutes affected the
Sisters’ development and exercise of the ‘masculine’ skills of management. 351
First-hand knowledge and management
Contemporary analyses of the caring professions have noted the effect of the separation of management from direct practice with clients or service users (Satyamurti 1981; Hugman 1991; Wearing 1998). This has been seen to be closely related to the exercise of power and control within the organisation (Hugman 1991: 71ff.). This hierarchical separation has been found to have both constraining and facilitating effects on the work of practitioners. The constraints are associated with the practitioner’s subordination to the power of the manager, whilst the latter’s distance from the working relationship with the client may provide an opportunity for discretionary action by the practitioner (Lipsky 1980).
In contrast, in examining management in the Sydney Sisters’ charities there is an often striking lack of distance between some managers and the direct interpersonal work of the charity. It is argued here that this contributed to the Sisters’ administrative competence, including their efficiency. The Sisters were not managing ‘at a distance’ from the actual work undertaken. They were engaged face-to-face in their institutes’ work with the poor, and in the hands-on commercial activities which some of their charitable institutions undertook. There were a number of Sister-managers who were involved in ‘direct 352
practice’. These included Mother Magdalen Adamson of the Catholic
Orphan School, Mother Elizabeth O’Toole at the Manly Industrial School and Orphanage, Mother Veronica O’Brien at St Vincent’s Hospital and
Mother M. Gertrude Byrne at St Magdalen’s Retreat.
As noted above, as well as keeping the books of the Catholic
Orphan School and dealing with a string of male officials, (for example
RCPC E 14 June 1873: 1-11) Mother M. Magdalen was the storekeeper (RCPC E 14 June 1873: 2), did the dispensing of simple medicines (RCPC E 14 June 1873: 9) and did the cutting out for the making of the children’s clothing (RCPC E 14 June 1873: 10). At the
Manly Industrial School, Mother M. Elizabeth O’Toole, was the sole worker in the laundry from its commencement in 1881 until 1884. She rose at 4am each morning to light the laundry boilers. She sorted and recorded items to be washed, taught in the classroom and trained the choir which sang at Mass each week (Hanly MS,. n.p. GSA; McEwen
1989: 92). Mother Gertrude Byrne who ran the commercial laundry business at St Magdalen’s Retreat also counselled the women residents who were troubled or unhappy (Hanly MS third bundle, GSA).
So, the Sisters who managed charitable institutions were also involved in the basic day to day operations of their work with the poor.
They themselves implemented the administrative decisions they made. 353
Thus, the Sisters' management was informed by first-hand knowledge of that which they were managing, just as their response to the needs of poor people was informed by direct, personal knowledge of the reality of their daily lives. The Sisters' administration contrasted with that of many
‘public charities’ of the time, in which those who made the decisions were members of boards or committees, relatively remote from the daily operation of the charity. A similar point has been made about the prowess of Sisters in South Australia in educational administration. Their administrative competence was partly due to their involvement as teachers in the classrooms (Burley 1991: 81). The following section of the chapter argues that the Sisters’ skills were related to various structural features of their situation and to their membership of a particular type of women-only organisation.
Structural forces
Feminist historical scholarship and professionalisation theory have rightly accorded a central role to gender as an influential factor in women’s movement into professional work. As discussed in Chapter 3,
Hugman (1991) and Witz (1992) have shown that professionalisation also involved other structural forces such as race and social class. It is argued below that the Sydney Sisters' extensive involvement and skills in the administration and management of their charitable works was closely tied to these and other structural forces and processes, which 354
were inter-related. It is also contended that membership of Catholic women’s religious institutes was particularly important for the Sisters’ development and exercise of these ‘masculine’ skills.
Economics
Material resources were crucial to the operation and continued existence of nineteenth century charities. Women who wanted to start charitable ventures needed to have independent wealth or substantial male patronage. For example Octavia Hill’s housing schemes in
England were made possible only because of a bequest from Ruskin
(Walton 1975: 22 ). As discussed in earlier chapters, none of the four
Sisterhoods in Sydney started in an ideal financial position. For all four institutes, the cost of securing adequate accommodation for convents had to be met by the Sisters themselves. This meant that each
Sisterhood had to find ways to finance itself, support its members and finance its work with the poor, in the absence of any government support for their ‘sectarian’ charities. Another structural aspect of the Sisters’
New South Wales social context which impinged on the financial resources available to the Sisters was the lack of wealth of the New
South Wales Catholic community and institutional Church. As noted in
Chapter 5, whilst Irish Catholics were 20 to 25 percent of the population of Australia, they comprised less than 10 percent of the wealthy
(McConville 1979: 55ff.; O’Farrell 1988: 120). Catholics were over- 355
represented amongst the poorest sectors of the population and under- represented at the opposite end of the scale.
The social agenda in late nineteenth century New South Wales - of building secular government services, including schools; plus the
Catholic Church’s empire building mission - meant that the cessation of government funding for denominational schools in the early 1880s exacerbated the financial demands on the Catholic community. The decision by the Church hierarchy to provide Catholic education for the growing population of Catholic children resulted in enormous pressure to keep opening and therefore building or buying new premises for schools, and convents for the Sisters who would operate them (O’Farrell
1977a: 187ff.). As discussed previously, this increased the Sisters’ financial burden. The Sisters base-line financial position, the building of a secular state apparatus and the demands of an imperialistic Church, together with the political climate, meant that the Sisters had to be very good managers in order for their communities to survive and their works to grow. The scarcity of their resources which resulted from these various structural factors can be regarded as factors which ‘pushed’ the
Sisters to be good managers. A number of other factors facilitated the
Sisters’ development of these skills in a more positive way. One of these was the Irish cultural influence on women’s roles.
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Irish culture, women and business
In the professionalisation literature of the United Kingdom, races and cultures other than white British have usually been found to be associated with lower paid, lower status roles (Hugman 1991).
However, for the Sydney Sisters there may have been another race- related dynamic operating. Whilst Irish Catholics were relatively socially disadvantaged in NSW society, there was a tradition of Irish women being in the workforce ( Ó Tuathaigh 1979; O’Farrell 1988:153; Lee cited in Campbell 1991: 34). Many middle-class women in Ireland were involved in business, especially prior to the Great Famine. Mary
Aikenhead and Catherine McAuley, the foundresses of the first two Irish institutes to make foundations in Australia, both had experience in business (Luddy 1995; MacGinley 1996a). That such expertise continued to be exercised by other Irish women religious is apparent in the previously noted widespread involvement of Sisters in establishing and running ‘convent industries’ for the benefit of poor villages in Ireland
(Glynn 1894; Luddy 1995; Ryan 1996b).
An aptitude for business has also been identified amongst Irish women convicts and assisted immigrants to Australia. Haines cites research which indicates that a number of Irish immigrant women who grasped new opportunities not available in Ireland subsequently 357
prospered in Australia (Haines 1996: 167). The involvement of Irish
Catholic women in business in Australia has been noted to have continued into the twentieth century, with Irish and Catholic women constituting the highest proportion of women who were employers or self-employed in the censuses of 1921 and 1933 (MacGinley 1996a:
338).
It seems therefore that the Sydney Sisters acquired and exercised skills in administration and financial management because the socio- economic context of their work in Sydney meant that there was no-one else to take financial responsibility for them and their works. Added to these elements of the situation of the Sisters in Sydney may well have been a Irish cultural element favourable to women’s involvement in business and financial management. It is argued below that a major contributor to the Sisters’ competence in administration and management was the character of the Sisterhoods.
The Sisterhoods and the Church
One reason why the Sydney women religious were so involved in management is basically that there was an expectation – by them and the Church - that they would be. It was both their right and their responsibility as members of Catholic women’s religious institutes to 358
manage their organisations and the ‘socially active’ work they undertook. For the members of the four Sydney Sisterhoods, significant factors in this expectation were the position of the institutes within the Church and the institutes’ formal structures and processes of governance and the women-only communal lifestyle.
Firstly, there was an expectation that the Sisters should be heavily involved in management and finance. The position of women’s institutes within the Church, as well as the Sisterhoods’ internal arrangements, were formally codified and officially recognised by the
Church hierarchy. Catholic nuns and Sisters traditionally had charge of their own institutes and were responsible for financing and organising their own operation and that of whatever works they undertook. Catholic women’s religious institutes were financially autonomous entities.95
There were however some attempts by members of the Australian
Church hierarchy and clergy to limit the independence of the
Sisterhoods. As noted in Chapter 5, this was partly attributable to a combination of the state of flux in interpreting canon law in relation to simple vow, unenclosed institutes as well as the social, economic and political context of the Church in Australia (MacGinley 1992, 1994,
95 For a full account of the origins and development of Catholic women’s religious communities see MacGinley (1996a) and McNamara (1996). 359
1996a Chs. 4-8 passim). However, even when members of the Church hierarchy and clergy sought to control communities of women religious, whether in a minor degree or more fully, as in the case of the Sisters of
St Joseph (in several dioceses other than Sydney) (Burford 1988, 1989;
Gardiner 1993), the women religious were expected to pay their own way. Other aspects of women’s religious institutes also facilitated the
Sisters’ competence as managers.
It has been argued by others that Catholic women religious were able to be involved in the ‘masculine’ domain of professional work because their taking of vows effectively freed them from many of the cultural gender norms which constrained other women. Nuns and
Sisters have been perceived as effectively constituting a ‘third gender’
(Marshall and Wall 1999; Nelson 2001). The following section examines the way that the Sydney Sisterhoods, as women’s organisations, enabled their members to move beyond the prevailing gender norms relating to participation in management and finance.
The Sisterhoods as structured women’s organisations
Within the four women’s religious institutes, the narratives contain accounts of the outstanding managerial skills of some Superiors and
Sisters-in-charge of particular charitable institutions. However, the 360
Sisters’ skills in administration and financial should perhaps be considered as ‘corporate’ achievements, rather than as the products of virtuosity. That is, they were a product of a particular type of hierarchically structured bureaucratic organisation which had a distinctive structure and ethos. Importantly, the Sisterhoods were also comprised entirely of women living communally.
The four groups of women religious in Sydney had formal governance structures and processes which were specified in their institutes’ rules and constitutions. These included descriptions of the roles and duties of office bearers. Women wishing to join the
Sisterhoods had to undergo a lengthy and structured period of training
(‘postulancy’ and ‘noviciate’) with admission to full membership
(‘profession’) being dependent on a positive evaluation by the novice mistress, and ratification by a meeting of all eligible members of the institute.96 The Sisters’ skills were developed, retained and passed on via the institutes’ formal internal structures and associated processes.
The Sisters were able to be ‘proto-professional’ in their management because their institutes’ structures and processes were ‘proto- professional’. As Anderson noted of Sisters in Chicago in the same
96 The training period for new Sisters was a minimum of two years. This was equivalent to the length of the first professional social work courses introduced in Australia in the 1930s (Lawrence 1965, 1976).
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period ‘a hierarchical structure emphasised continuity of female solidarity … formal hierarchy and sisterhood organized the lives and outlooks of individual sisters ’ (Anderson 2000: 65).
As noted in Chapters 6 and 8, the rules and constitutions of the
Sisterhoods were designed to ensure the temporal and spiritual survival of the institutes and their members, as well as guide the work they undertook. These rules and constitutions also detailed the structures and processes of governance and administration of each institute, and the rules for the training and spiritual formation of members. The role, duties and required abilities of each office-holder in the institute were specified, as were the processes for consultation and accountability. As discussed in Chapter 3, the literature on the development of the caring professions notes the important role of hierarchical structure in the professionalisation process (Hearn 1982; Hugman 1991; Witz 1992).
However, it also has been noted elsewhere that Catholic women’s religious institutes, following the traditions of Benedictine monasticism, were democratic in that the communities of women elected their leader by secret ballot, and major decisions were taken to the ‘Chapter’, in which every ‘professed’ member participated (Clear 1987: 76; Burley
1999: 279).97
97 There were however several instances of departures from these procedures amongst the four institutes in Sydney during the period under consideration, which 3 62
It is argued here that these organisational features of hierarchy and democracy were significant factors in the development and exercise of the Sydney Sisters’ skills in administration and finance.
Duties of office-bearers
As stated above, the role, duties and skills required of each office bearer were codified in the Sisterhoods’ rules and constitutions.
Studying these documents was part of the training for new members. In terms of organisational functioning, this meant that all the Sisters knew what was required of the individual installed in these positions. In modern day parlance, these positions had ‘duty statements’. One would expect that this might have facilitated the selection of candidates who were thought to have had the skills required (or who were thought to have been capable of developing them).
Each of the Sydney Sisterhoods usually had four positions of authority - a Superior (or ‘Head Superior’ or ‘Mother General’), a
‘Mother Assistant’, a ‘Novice Mistress’ and a ‘Bursar’, ‘Procuratrix’ or
‘Sister Ministress’ responsible for purchases, paying of bills and account
were usually associated with some action by a member of the male Church hierarchy. By and large, the Sisters did exercise governance of their institutes in accordance with the rules. Some instances in which official procedures were not followed were related 363
keeping.98 Branch convents were usually under the authority of a local superior. Office bearers’ responsibilities were a mix of ‘task’ and
‘maintenance’ functions (Hooyman 1979: 468ff.). That is, they were concerned with both the ‘external’ work of the Sisterhoods, and with developing and maintaining the ‘internal health’ of the organisation, including the well-being of its individual members.
The Head Superior was responsible for the spiritual and material well-being of the institute itself and of its individual members: ‘A superior general coordinated a rule of life for all houses, which would enshrine their aspirations and guarantee their continuity’ (McNamara 1996: 603).
As well as oversighting the governance of the institute by ensuring members’ obedience to the institutes’rules, the Superior was charged with ensuring the well-being of the community and of individual Sisters:
She is bound then as “Mother” carefully to preserve true peace and concord amongst her religious daughters taking away from amongst them everything that might hinder it, and always ready and pleasant in receiving them, patient in listening, and anxious to console her afflicted children; but especially let her be faithful and secret in everything which they have confided to her. (GS R 1878: 65, GSA)
to confusion or differing interpretations of some institutes’ constitutions, such as with the Sisters of St Joseph (Burford 1991; Gardiner 1993; MacGinley 1996a). 98 Although some Rules and Constitutions state that the Superior was to ‘appoint’ Sisters to these positions, it seems that the Chapter may have had some say in the decision – perhaps it was to ratify the Superior’s choices. For example, even though the Sisters of Mercy Rules use the word ‘appointment’, the written documents on the Sisters’ backgrounds speak of them being ‘elected’.
364
The other Sisterhoods outlined a similar role for the Superior: ‘She shall tenderly comfort and support those who are in trouble…. It is of the utmost importance that the Mother Superior manifest a cordial interest in all that concerns the Sisters’ (SM G: 369, SMA). As part of this role of maintaining unity and providing support, the head Superior had to maintain contact with Sisters in branch convents. (for example SC RC
1912: 143-147). This was especially important for the Sisters of St
Joseph who had small communities in often remote rural areas across
Australia (Burford 1988: 37). However, the Superiors of the other three
Sisterhoods also carried out this task.
The other office bearers in the institutes also had set duties. The
Mother Assistant’s role was to generally assist the Superior99, and the
Novice Mistress was responsible for conducting the structured training period for new members. This role was vital in socialising new members into the life of the institute (McNamara 1996: 603). The financial responsibilities and required skills of the ‘Bursar,’ ‘Procuratrix’ or ‘Sister
Ministress’ are illustrated in the following excerpt from the Rules of the
Sisters of the Good Samaritan:
The Mother Procuratrix should be well-informed in domestic matters, prudent and economical, and by her affability apt to
99 The Sisters of St Joseph did not have a separate position of Mother Assistant, but several ‘consultors’ to the ‘Guardian General’ as their head superior was officially titled, plus a head in each state, titled a ‘Provincial’. The ‘local’ superior of each convent was titled the ‘Little Sister’ (MacGinley 1996a : 159).
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procure the esteem and respect of all with whom she may have business to transact…..She shall, ordinarily, be responsible for all the accounts in connection with the Convent. The Procuratrix shall keep account of all that she receives and spends, which account she shall submit quarterly to the Council.100 Her books shall, of course, be always open to the Mother Superioress, and she shall keep them so posted up that the Superioress may at any time know how the accounts stand. (GS R 1878: 70-71, GSA)
The Superior was usually obliged to consult a small group of advisers on a regular basis. The Sisters of Mercy specified that the
Superior should assemble her Council ‘on the first Wednesday of each month’ (SM G 1888 : 382, SMA). The Good Samaritans specified that such consultation should occur ‘on a fixed day in the first week of the first month in each quarter’. The purpose of these consultations of the
Superior with her advisers was:
to examine accounts and to treat of the most expedient means for promoting the spiritual and temporal welfare of the Community. She shall listen to their opinion, and shall not be offended if it be different from her own but shall show herself disposed to embrace their opinion when she shall be convinced by their reasons. (GS R 1878: 71 GSA) 101
The fact that the rules for governance of the institutes were
100 For the Sisters of the Good Samaritan, the Council consisted of the four office holders plus the ‘Deans’. There was to be one Dean appointed by the Superior for every six Sisters (GS R 1878 Part III, GSA), which in 1891 was changed to one ‘Consultor’ for every fifteen Sisters (Trower 1998: 35-6). Other institutes had a smaller advisory group - usually the Mother Assistant, the Novice Mistress and the Bursar.
101 Both the Mercy and Good Samaritan documents use virtually identical wording in this section (SM G 1888 : 382, SMA).
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codified, known and accepted by all members meant that that they did not have to be formulated or negotiated every time a new Superior was elected or major decisions needed to be made. Thus, the rules and constitutions of the sisterhoods facilitated their efficient and effective operation as organisations. The women who were members of the institutes, who elected the Superior and made decisions in Chapter, knew the structures and processes of governance and other rules of administration and so on, because they had lived under them and formally learnt them during the period of their noviciate. Only fully- trained or ‘professed’ sisters participated in a Chapter. This meant that by the time Sisters were eligible to go to Chapter they had been active members of their institute for several years and they were able to make decisions based on knowledge and experience of the institute’s rules, of its operation and knowledge of the candidates for office.102
Much of what has been said above regarding the Sydney
Sisterhoods as organisations is based on their official prescriptive documents. Their narratives and other documentary records indicate that by and large they did operate in accordance with their rules and procedures for governance. The surviving correspondence between
Sisters reveals some of the detail of how this occurred. One feature of
102 The period of noviciate was two years for the Sydney Sisters of Mercy, two and a half years for the Sisters of Charity (SM Register, SMA; SC Database of members, SCA). 367
the operation of the institutes as organisations which emerges in the correspondence is the way in which ‘task’ and ‘maintenance’ activities were combined in these women-only organisations.
These letters show that the Sisters were women who lived and worked in sororial, communal relationships, as well as being skilled and efficient managers and administrators.
Women’s communities
It has been argued that the four Sydney Sisterhoods fostered the development and exercise of Sisters’ skills in management and administration partly because the institutes were self-contained and highly structured organisations, with autonomy sanctioned by canon law. The Sisterhoods required their members to be good managers, and their formal organisational structures and processes facilitated this.
It is argued here that another aspect which was significant in the Sisters’ exercise of skills in governance, finance and administration is that they were all-women organisations. It is likely that it was not merely the institutes’ organisational structures, specified duties and set procedures which facilitated the acquisition and exercise of ‘masculine’ skills, but also the all-female communal environment, free from on-site, daily oversighting by men. Research on other nineteenth century women’s work has found such an environment to have been conducive to the 368
development of women’s skills and confidence (Vicinus 1985;
Walkowitz 1992; Woollacott 1998; Anderson 2000; Nelson 2001).
It is not argued that the four Sydney institutes were ‘facilitative’ communities for all women members all of the time. It is unrealistic to assume that there were no tensions or conflict, or that the women’s communities were equally supportive of all Sisters. As Hearn (1982:
193) noted, female authority could also be quite authoritarian. The surviving correspondence between Sisters discussed below does indicate however the ways that conventual living in a women-only organisation could support individual women members in carrying out their prescribed management roles as well as their other work. 103 As has been noted of Sisters elsewhere: ‘Formal hierarchy and Sisterhood organized the lives and outlooks of individual Sisters. Their letters and journals show affection among women whose paths crossed many times’ (Anderson 2000: 65). The Sydney Sisters’ correspondence reveals that support and encouragement, as well as new ideas and approaches, also were given and received by women religious from communities which were geographically distant from each other.
Sometimes this was by visiting, sometimes by writing. For example
Sisters of Mercy from Sydney stayed with other Mercy communities in
103 The archives of the Sisters of Mercy and the Sisters of St Joseph were the main sources of correspondence. 369
Bathurst and Brisbane as well as corresponding with them and with
Sisters in several convents in England (SM Letters, SMA). The
Sisterhoods also showed hospitality to Sisters of other institutes when they were newly arrived in Sydney or when they were travelling (Hellwig
2001: 102ff. ; Walsh 2001: 222).
The correspondence of the Sydney Mercy Superior, Mother M.
Ignatius, indicates that there was a great deal of travel by her and other
Sisters around the various Mercy convents in Sydney – St Patrick’s at
Church Hill, Mount Carmel (at Waterloo in the inner western suburbs), Monte sant’Angelo on the North Shore, Macdonaldtown near Newtown, Parramatta and, later, to convents at more distant locations (SM Letters, SMA). In the pre-telephone era, 104 communication between convents was either in person, by the Superior visiting Sisters in branch convent communities (or vice versa), or by letter. Obviously personal visits were sometimes a more efficient means of communication between convents within Sydney than were letters.
The surviving correspondence of members of the Sydney institutes reveals something of the Sisters’ expertise in the various facets of
104 It is known however that the Sisters of the Good Samaritan did have the telephone connected at St Magdalen’s Retreat at Arncliffe in 1894 to faciltitate the laundry business which was disadvantaged by the Retreat’s distance from the city, compared to its former location at the House of the Good Shepherd in Pitt St., central Sydney (Gregory 1984). 370
administration and management and of the multi-faceted relationships which existed between members. The existence of business acumen, authority, leadership and co-ordination within the institutes are evident, as is the process of the transfer of skills and encouragement and support for their development. The letters seem to have served several purposes. First, they were tools of administration and management.
They relayed information, instructions and requests concerned with the management of the Sisterhoods’ internal and external affairs. Secondly, they were also a means by which the women religious could support and encourage one another. A third function was that, in an organisation which was intended to have a life longer than that of its individual members, and which was ‘inter-generational’ in that it had members of different ages, this correspondence served as a model of
‘how’ to administer a women’s religious community and manage its various works. The recipients of letters from the superiors were Sisters who were, or might in the future be, in positions of authority and leadership. The following note from Mother M. Ignatius McQuoin, to a
Sister at a branch convent reveals the former’s skill in managing the organisation of which she was head:
My dearest Sister M. Angela,
Just a line for yourself as the enclosed is “bono publico” to tell you to read or let read all at Monte, the Circular letter, then send it to St. Patrick’s; let them forward it to [Mount] Carmel, thence Macdonaldtown, the [Servants’?] Home and Lane Cove. Let this be done as quickly as possible so that 371
there may be no jealousy. I know all will go on well if each one practises the little advice I have given you, yourself will have to exercise patience with yourself and others but all for the glory of God and your own Perfection.
Your fond Mother M. Ignatius (McQuoin to n.k. n.d. SMA105)
This letter shows Mother M. Ignatius’ exercise of a number of the skills needed by the head of an hierarchical organisation. She shows an awareness of her responsibility as head of the institute to maintain its operation and the morale of its members. Mother Ignatius is delegating to the recipient of the letter the responsibility for dissemination of information across an organisation having branches in various locations
‘Monte …St Patrick’s, Carmel, thence Macdonaldtown, the Home and
Lane Cove’. She also gives the reason for her request ‘so that there may be no jealousy’, that is, in order to maintain unity and harmony within the organisation as a whole. Mother Ignatius, as the Sisters'
Superior, also gave them an instruction to ‘practise the little advice I have given you’, but she again gives the reason for this as well as expressing confidence in the outcome of the Sisters’ efforts: ‘I know all will go on well’. Mother Ignatius also shows an empathic understanding of the situation of the letter’s recipient, that she ‘will have to exercise
105 The recipient was probably Sister M. Angela Heaton who held the position of Bursar from 1888 to 1896. (SM MS ‘Government of Monte Sant’Angelo’, SMA). As the Servants’ Home and Training School commenced in September 1891 and Mother Ignatius died in April 1893 the letter must have been written in the intervening period. 372
patience with herself and others’. She finishes with an encouraging reminder that these efforts will be worth it, ‘all for the glory of God and your own Perfection’. This latter statement would have been quite powerful as these phrases reflect the object and spirit of the Sisters of
Mercy (SM G 1866: 1, SMA). The letter is an example of the way in which the Sister-managers attended to both ‘task’ and ‘maintenance’ functions in the administration of their institutes . Direct instructions are given, but Mother Ignatius also ‘uses the relationship’ between herself and the recipient, as well as drawing on the Sisters' commitment to the fundamental aims of their institute.
Mother Ignatius also seems to have written to Sisters on their feast days and the anniversaries of their entering the institute, as well as at other times, offering encouragement and support, as shown in this letter:
and fear not the little trials and crosses you may meet: let them serve as stepping stones to mount the ladder of perfection. Give my love to the other dear Sisters and tell Sr. M. Margaret that her namesake at St Ethelburga’s106 sends her love and hopes she prays for her. Now I must say goodbye and God bless you
Ever your loving Mother in JC M. Ignatius (McQuoin to n.k. 17 September 1877, SMA)
This letter combines the ‘spiritual’ dimension of support which one might expect from a religious Superior with a message similar to that 373
which could have been found in letters between any women friends or relatives of the time: ‘Give my love to the other dear Sisters’. However, when Mother Ignatius writes ‘tell Sr. M. Margaret that her namesake at
St Ethelburga’s sends her love and hopes she prays for her’ she is not merely passing on good wishes from one person to another, as friends would do, but is re-affirming bonds between women in two communities of Sisters of Mercy on opposite sides of the world, which is also an implicit reminder of their membership of a larger organisation.
Letters from the early Sydney Sisters of St Joseph back to Mother
Mary MacKillop in Adelaide also show that they had a very warm relationship with her, telling her of their feelings as well as reporting on various aspects of their charitable work:
What do you think, dear Mother, but I have been out begging with Sr Ignatius. I’ll not forget that day for some time. Sr M. Ignatius [Griffen] is an excellent beggar. I tell Sr M. Josephine that I do not think I have the vocation for the begging part … (Barry to MacKillop July 1880, MMA).
Another letter from the Mercy Superior to a Sister at the Parramatta convent combines elements of governance, administration the mutuality of friendship:
My dear Child, I missed writing to my little Parramatta branch for Easter Sunday having been ill all the week. I came over here on
106 St Ethelburga’s convent of Mercy was located in Mt Vernon, Liverpool, England, and was the community from which Mother Ignatius and her companions came in 1865 to make the Mercy foundation in Sydney (MacGinley 1996a: 131). 374
Saturday and found your little note but could not sit down to write.
Give my fond love and Easter blessing to your companions. I hope to pay you a visit shortly and long for you to see our lovely ‘Monte sant’Angelo’ which far surpasses our expectations. I have to begin to build and in three months remove all the Sisters down to St. Joseph’s. The old Convent and part of the ground is sold for a good round sum - the rest is to be disposed of in a fortnight. We keep possession of the place till 1st August. 107
The changes have begun. Sisters M. Aloysius and Austin have crossed corners and Sister M. de Sales and Xavier will have a move tomorrow. I have had one of my bad bilious attacks and don’t feel quite recovered yet - am staying in town for a few days.
You had better get your tickets printed at once – 400 at 2/- wherever you like. O’Connor would perhaps be the best.108
Sister M. Magdalene’s brother was to call to see her today. I hope he found her at home. I congratulate you on your successes. Ask good Revd. Father to come over to N. Shore and see both places before we remove.
Now good bye and God bless you. Your devoted Mother in J.C. M. Ignatius All the Sisters unite in love to all (SM McQuoin to n.k. 14 April 1879, SMA)
This is also a multi-purpose letter. It is an update on the institutes’ real estate dealings. There is information about the impending move to
107 In 1873 the Sisters bought land and a cottage for a convent and school in West Street, St. Leonards, which they sold in order to buy the Miller Street property, which became known as ‘Monte Sant’Angelo’, in 1878.
108 Probably for a fundraising concert at the Sisters’ Parramatta infants’ school. The Monte Sant’Angelo account books for May 1879 show an entry ‘Parramatta concert - £36’ (SM AB MSA, SMA). 375
the new premises at North Sydney and changes in personnel within the institute. Direct advice about the organisation of a forthcoming fundraising concert at Parramatta is also given - ‘You had better get your tickets printed at once – 400 at 2/- wherever you like. O’Connor perhaps would be the best.’ There is expressed the motherly warmth, which the institutes’ Rules specify for the Superior - ‘Give my fond love and Easter blessing to your companions.’ There is also the informality and familiarity of friendship – ‘I have had one of my bad bilious attacks and don’t feel quite recovered yet’ and, ‘Sister M. Magdalene’s brother was to call to see her today. I hope he found her at home.’ This correspondence reminds us that the Sisters were women of their time and that the relationships between them were not always dissimilar to those existing between their lay contemporaries. In the Sisterhoods, professional codification was inter-twined with feminine affection.
Conclusion
In this chapter, evidence of the Sisters’ possession and exercise of skills in administration and management was found in the considerable growth in the size of their institutes and of the charitable works they undertook over the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The Sisters were skilled in domestic management, charitable administration, 376
property acquisition, business and finance. In the course of these activities, which were an integral part of their charitable work, they also dealt with men in various public capacities, as well as being involved in the day to day direct provision of services to the poor. This multiplicity of roles was not usual for women of the time and is not common in human service organisations of the present day.
If the Sisters’ charitable work as a whole was a process of women
‘expanding their sphere’ by venturing into the public, male world, then their administrative and management activities can be regarded as going more deeply into ‘masculine territory’. It has been argued in this chapter that a number of inter-related factors and processes impinged upon this. Structural features of New South Wales society - economic, social and political - meant that the Sisters were ‘pushed’ into being competent managers because relatively few material resources were available to them (from government subsidy, the institutional church and the Catholic laity). On the other hand, it has been argued that certain of the institutes’ characteristics facilitated the Sisters’ development and exercise of skills in administration and management. The Sisterhoods’ position in the Catholic Church gave them an expectation of autonomy
(in spite of some episcopal challenges to this). Other internal features of the institutes as organisations helped the Sisters operate in the
‘masculine’ domain of management and administration. These can be 377
seen as instances of the processes identified by others as facilitating professionalisation and women’s entry into professional work.
The fact that the Sisterhoods were formally structured organisations entailing both democracy and hierarchy facilitated the
Sisters’ administration and management. There were set procedures for governance and administration, and detailed duty statements for office bearers. The democratic election of a Superior by those who knew both the candidates and the requirements of the position may have increased the likelihood of getting the most competent person, and of the Sisters respecting her authority. This would have aided the management of the organisation and its various undertakings.
The other significant internal feature of the Sisterhoods which affected the Sisters’ management skills was the fact that they were all- women communities. Not only were the Sisters free from the constraining presence of masculine domination in their daily lives, but the intergenerational female convent culture meant that knowledge and skills could be passed on through formal and informal channels. Direct teaching of skills, modelling, and affectionate relationships were used by the Sister-managers. Surviving correspondence shows that the Sisters’ management style combined the ‘task’ and ‘maintenance’ functions seen as being central to effective team work in present day human 378
services. This concurs with other research that women were empowered and validated by working within all-women communities ‘of like-minded and similarly focused women’ (Smyth 1999: 249; Vicinus
1985).
The codification of roles and conduct in the Sisterhoods’ rules can be seen as an example of the process of ‘de-feminisation’ identified in professionalisation theory, as discussed in Chapter 3. Marshall and
Wall (1999) have spoken of Catholic women religious being able to be involved as managers and administrators in the ‘masculine’ world because their taking of religious vows rendered them a ‘third gender’
(Marshall and Wall 1999). Hearn outlined a similar process in women’s entry into professional occupations when female ‘emotionality’ was replaced by prescribed, codified ‘professional’ conduct (Hearn 1982:
194). Such a process seems to contrast with the affectionate relationships between the Sisters, which were a source of support in their carrying out of the ‘masculine’ tasks of management. It seems therefore that there may not have been total ‘de-feminisation’ in the
Sisterhoods. It is noteworthy that in the occupations that Hearn studied, ‘de-feminisation’ permitted their colonisation by men, who filled managerial positions and gained authority over women workers. This was part of the professionalisation process (Hearn 1982: 194ff.). With the Sydney Sisterhoods, whilst codification and ‘de-feministation’ helped 379
the Sisters to be ‘proto-professional’ it could not enable male colonisation of organisations whose membership was, by definition, restricted to women. Although the Sisters conducted and managed their own social welfare work, it did not develop into ‘professional’ social work. 380
CHAPTER 10
CONCLUSION
Introduction
This thesis has examined the social welfare work of four Catholic
Sisterhoods in Sydney in the late nineteenth century. The work of
Catholic women religious is largely missing from Australian women’s history and the history of social welfare in Australia. The present investigation seeks to add to knowledge of women’s agency in
Australian society and to extend the knowledge of Australian social work history by looking beyond the accepted ‘birth’ of professional, secular social work in the late 1920s. In other countries, social work history includes its various nineteenth century antecedents, many of which had a religious component. This thesis has argued that the social welfare work of the four Sydney Sisterhoods studied had a number of characteristics which constituted it as ‘proto-professional’. In spite of this, the Sisters’ social welfare work did not ‘evolve’ into secular, professional social work. It is contended below that the factors which contributed to the Sisters’ ability to operate as ‘proto-professionals’ in late nineteenth century Sydney also operated to prevent their approach from becoming a foundation for the development of the social work profession. Other structural forces also played a part in this. The 381
central theme of this thesis, that the Sisters’ work with the poor was proto-type social work, therefore has significance for several inter- related bodies of knowledge and theory. The most immediate is the history of social work and social welfare in Australia. The others are those concerned with the expansion of the ‘woman’s sphere’, and professionalisation theory.
Thesis summary
The aim of the thesis was to understand what the Sisters were attempting to do in their work with the poor of Sydney and how they went about it. The emphasis was on understanding the Sisters’ work from their own perspective. A qualitative, inductive approach was thus used in which the data were drawn mainly from the four Sisterhoods’ narratives and other archival documents. Because this was a study of social welfare, priority was given to understanding the values which underpinned the Sisters’ work and also to the structural forces which shaped it (Dickey 1987b: 83; Gavreau and Christie cited in Hutchinson
2000: 237-8). An important component of the methodology was the development of ‘cultural empathy’, that is, of an understanding of the
‘historical horizons’ of the Sisters. The Sisters’ documents were therefore supplemented with primary and secondary material from other sources. These contributed to an understanding of the Sisters’ historical 382
context and of the factors which impinged upon the choices they made in undertaking their social welfare work. These external documents thus served the methodological purpose of triangulation. External evidence of the Sisters’ actions in several areas of work showed that they did carry out their espoused intentions towards certain groups of the poor in these areas of work. In other areas of work, statements of prescribed attitudes and duties are not, however, taken as evidence of the Sisters’ actions in practice.
It must be emphasised moreover, that as this thesis was an interpretive study of four groups of Catholic Sisters in a particular historical location, there was no intention to discover ‘universal truths’ pertaining to the social welfare work of all Catholic women religious or to test particular theoretical propositions. The thesis contributes to a number of unfolding stories, including those about the history of
Australian social work, about women’s work in the public realm, and about the development of the caring professions. It is envisaged that further research - for example on other groups of women religious, looking at other times and places – will further develop these stories.
The thesis has argued that the Sisters’ approach to their work with the poor bore many similarities to later, secular, professional social work. These included an espoused approach which was inclusive and 383
accepting (Chapter 6); knowledge and understanding of the daily lives of the poor (Chapter 7); and some similarities to twentieth century methods of work (Chapter 8). In undertaking this work the Sisters were extending the boundaries of the nineteenth century ‘woman’s sphere’ beyond the private and domestic into the public world dominated by men, which, as discussed in Chapter 3, has been shown to be a key element of professionalisation in social work and other ‘caring professions’. Chapter 9 showed the Sisters operating even further into the masculine realm via their extensive involvement in administration and financial management. In carrying out various types of direct, one- to-one work with the poor as well as short-term and long-term administration and financial management, the Sisters were not part-time amateurs. They were also unusual for social welfare workers of their time, and later. In doing both interpersonal work and administration, the
Sisters were combining two dimensions of social work which were, and largely remain, separated on gender lines. This chapter first canvasses the reasons why the Sisters’ social welfare work did not form a basis for
‘professional’ social work in Sydney. It goes on to discuss the significance of the thesis for social work, including the history of social work in Australia and for theory on the ‘woman’s sphere’ and professionalisation.
384
Why the Sisters’ approach was not a foundation for professional social work
The Sisters’ work shows that a religious motivation and ethos co- existed with a form of working with the poor that had many of the hallmarks of later secular social work (as did various forms of early social work in Britain and the USA in the latter part of the nineteenth century). The thesis suggests that there is a complex, inter-related matrix of reasons why the Sisters’ work did not ‘evolve’ into the secular, professional form. Some relate to the broader historical context, that is, to major developments in Australian social history; some factors are associated with the Sisters’ location in Sydney society. Other reasons pertain more to the characteristics of the Sisterhoods and of the local
Catholic Church.
In the history of the development of British social work, the nineteenth century antecedents were able to develop into secular twentieth century social work. It has been suggested by others that one of the keys to the early stages of this process was the convergence of religious and secular approaches, facilitated by a resurgence in liberal
Anglicanism, as exemplified in the inclusive, regenerative approach of
Barnett’s settlement work (Bowpitt 1998). Such a process did not occur in Sydney. In the period being considered, there was no similar 385
convergence between the Sisters’ approach to the poor and that of any influential non-Catholic forces in New South Wales. The societal dynamics were entirely different. There was no possibility of any rapprochement, via shared theological ground, between the Sisters and those in a position to promote an alternative response to poverty. This was partly because the Sisters’ Catholicism was quite distant from the evangelical Protestantism and the growing secularism which were dominant in Sydney in the period. Moreover, in Sydney, Catholicity was accompanied by Irishness, which was anathema to the English-oriented ruling social elite.
In Britain some of the strongest nineteenth century roots of social work had their beginnings in opposition to Poor Law administration, for example Octavia Hill’s housing schemes, the Charity Organisation
Society and the settlement movement (Woodrofe 1962; Walton 1975;
Parry and Parry 1979; Satyamurti 1979; Bowpitt 1998; Manthorpe
2002). As discussed in Chapter 2, much public charity in New South
Wales shared a similar ethos to the 1834 Poor Law, in terms of the perceived individualised causes of poverty and in the approach to its relief (that is, it was parsimonious and punitive). However, there was in
New South Wales no comparable legislative provision or poor law apparatus to act as a focus for criticism and thus as a catalyst for the development of alternatives. This, plus the widespread nineteenth 386
century belief that poverty was less of a problem in the ‘new’ land, contributed to there being not as much impetus for the development of alternative approaches to working with the poor. In one sense, social reform in relation to charity in New South Wales was limited because there was less to reform. The social reform which did occur in Australia as opposed to Britain took a different route, the main impetus being towards the development of ‘a wage earners’ welfare state’ rather than in relation to charity or social welfare which was based on personal relationships (Roe 1976; Castles 1985; Garton 1994). The Sisters’ approach, along with that of other providers of charity, was outside this groundswell.
Another difference between the situation in NSW and that in Britain was to do with gender. As noted in Chapter 3, a key feature in the
British social work history was the involvement of both men and women in its various antecedents, including the support given by men to major female activists who were instrumental in developing certain branches of early social work. As discussed by theorists of professionalisation, the fact that men as well as women were involved in these different strands of early social work also facilitated their growth and development as professional occupations (Hearn 1982; Hugman 1991). The gendered social processes operating in relation to the Sisters’ work in Sydney were not the same as those in Britain. As Hearn (1982) discussed, the 387
development and codification of self-control within a professionalising occupation, which amounted to ‘defeminisation’, also facilitated male colonisation. In this process, more men entered the occupation and were able to rise to senior positions, controlling the women workers in the ‘lower ranks’, and facilitating the process of making it ‘more professional’ (Hearn 1982: 194). On the other hand, the Sisterhoods’ codification of self-control did not, and could not, lead to the entry of men because the Sisterhoods were organisations with very narrow entry criteria – they were only open to Catholic women. Thus if British social work developed into its professional form via the entry of men, it is obvious that the Sisters’ social welfare work in Sydney could not be a foundation for professional social work precisely because men were excluded.
The thesis has argued that one of the core reasons why the Sisters were able to combine multiple roles in their work with the poor and go so far into ‘masculine territory’ was because they were members of women’s religious institutes – that is organisations which had a particular ethos and structure, as well as official Church sanction. It has been argued in the thesis that the Sisters’ position in the Catholic
Church - as women having a legitimate, respected and valued role beyond the domestic sphere - aided their work in social welfare in late nineteenth century Sydney. On the other hand, it is suggested here that 388
the Sisters’ location and status also hindered their social welfare work from becoming a foundation for professional social work. It has been shown in the thesis that the manner and requisite intensity of the Sisters’ embrace of religious life was central to their approach to working with the poor. This could not be copied easily by others in Sydney at the time, unless they themselves joined women’s religious institutes. Thus adoption of the Sisters’ model of social welfare was possible only by becoming a Sister, something which men could not do.
Another factor precluding the development of the Sisters’ approach to social welfare was the local Church hierarchy’s prioritisation of education as the main vehicle for its mission of building a religious empire. Whilst the Sisters’ charitable work did continue and increase, their focus was increasingly on the expansion of education. A prime mechanism for this process which undoubtedly restricted the development of the Sisters’ social welfare was the demand on available resources, discussed in Chapters 5, 7 and 9. Sectarianism and secularisation prevented the Sisters from accessing government money for their charities and for Catholic schools. For the Church hierarchy and the Sisterhoods, the priority became the building and staffing of schools. This process was exemplified in the difficulties of the
Sisters of Mercy in establishing their core charitable work, discussed in
Chapter 5. Thus in New South Wales in the late nineteenth century, the 389
requirements for membership of the Sisterhoods (which were gendered) and various facets of religion, including government policy and Catholic imperialism, impeded the development and wider adoption of the Sisters’ approach to working with the poor. The following sections discuss the significance of the thesis for knowledge and theory about social work, ‘the woman’s sphere’ and professionalisation.
Significance for Australian social work history
This investigation of the Sisters’ work adds to the knowledge of the diversity of nineteenth century social welfare work in Australia. First, in showing that the Sisters’ social welfare work had many of the features of twentieth century social work, the thesis challenges the ‘terra nullius’ version of the history of social work in this country. That is, the notion that when ‘professional’ social work began in Australia in the 1930s it had been preceded only by ill-informed and part-time efforts. Secondly, the thesis shows how a specific theological interpretation of Christian charity, allied to a different cultural understanding of the causes of poverty, as well as close acquaintance with the poor, shaped an approach to social welfare which pre-figured many features of the later professional form and which diverged from the dominant approach of the time.
390
The thesis has shown the central role of religion as a motivating and shaping force in the work of one significant group of social welfare providers in Sydney. Whilst the importance of religion in responses made to the poor in the nineteenth century has previously been documented by others, this thesis has illustrated how adherence to a particular religious position - combined with a particular form of women’s religious organisation, in a society divided on religious sectarian lines – could shape the provision of charity.
In demonstrating that the Sisters articulated an inclusive and compassionate stance to the poor, the thesis has challenged the view that the major dynamic of nineteenth century charity in New South
Wales was class-based social control founded on an assumption that poverty was due to individual moral failure. As discussed in Chapter 2, others have alluded to the existence of ‘divergent’ approaches to charity in nineteenth century Sydney (Dickey 1987b; O’Brien 1988; Garton
1994; Stannage 1994) and this thesis has illuminated one approach which was taken by a numerically significant group of women. Further, the thesis questions the position taken by Godden (1983) that ignorance, based on social isolation from the poor, shaped the work undertaken by the Sisters. The task has still to be completed of exploring the ways in which others, who have been identified as being
‘close’ to the poor (O’Brien 1988: 199; Ball 2000: 83-85) practised 391
charity which differed from the dominant approach as described in the literature discussed in Chapters 2 and 3.
The thesis has contributed to an understanding of the diversity of the antecedents of social work in Australia. In particular, it has delineated one route by which religion was able to shape an approach to social welfare work. In exploring the Sisters’ approach to charity, the thesis also contributes to what has been identified by others as a neglected dimension in Australian social history, that is the contribution of Irish cultural influences (O’Farrell 1986: 224f.). As demonstrated in
Chapter 7, the four Sydney Sisterhoods were largely Irish in character.
The thesis has argued that the Sisters’ espoused religious-based compassionate stance towards the poor was augmented by an understanding from Irish experience that poverty was not necessarily the result of individual moral failure. Irish norms concerning women and public life also seem likely to have facilitated the Sisters’ undertaking of work in the ‘masculine’ domains of administration, business and finance.
The thesis thus highlights an early form of organised social welfare which was dominated by a group which was doubly ‘different’ in New
South Wales society, being both women and Irish Catholic.
392
Female leadership in Australian social work
In the ‘accepted’ history of Australian social work, early women
‘pioneers’ largely are depicted as being reliant on male patronage in the process of furthering the development of the profession. The men who helped social work training to become established in New South Wales were mostly in the academy or were medical practitioners (Lawrence
1976: 7). Marchant (1985) challenged this account, and depicted some different roots for Sydney social work which were more unequivocally under female control and showed evidence of a significant role for women’s networks, which also featured strongly in late nineteenth century ‘woman’s sphere’ philanthropy in the same city
(Godden 1983). This thesis, in revealing the character and extent of the
Sisters’ social welfare work, the strong administrative and managerial role they played in their various endeavours and their relative autonomy in doing so, has indicated that a different configuration of gender roles and gender relationships existed in this branch of nineteenth century
‘social work’.
The thesis has shown that there were early Australian women
‘social workers’ who were in charge of the development and management of extensive social welfare services, as well as being involved in direct, ‘personal’ social service work, and the ‘training’ of new 393
workers. This combination was bound up with the Sisters’ accepted role and status within the Church as members of recognised religious institutes, with the Church’s empire-building agenda, and with the effects of both of these on the material demands upon the four Sydney
Sisterhoods. In identifying the intertwining of these factors in the
Sisters’ social welfare work, the thesis makes a contribution to theory on women’s entry into work in the public domain and on the development of the caring professions.
Significance for contemporary social work
Looking beyond Australian social work history, the thesis has significance for contemporary social work concerns. It shows that there can be common ground between ‘professional’ secular social work principles and practices on the one hand and other value systems which are based quite explicitly on values from a different source. This may be used to inform current deliberations, for example the possibility of a universal code of ethics for social work (Hugman 2001). The thesis also indicates that an understanding of the role of religion has a place in professionalisation theory. 394
Contribution to theory on women and professionalisation
It has been argued in this thesis that the Sisters were proto- professional in their social welfare work and that they went deeply into
‘masculine territory’ in doing so. The literature reviewed in Chapter 3 identified a number of factors which facilitated women’s transcending of existing gender boundaries to undertake work in the public or
‘masculine’ sphere. These included a religious motivation (which served as a socially acceptable rationale for women’s involvement beyond the conventional, domestic domain); living in an all-female community having a strong commitment to a shared ethos; and the adoption of codified ‘professional’ mentalities and responses in lieu of
‘female emotionality’ (Hearn 1982). In demonstrating that the four
Sydney Sisterhoods entailed all of these factors, the thesis confirms existing theory.
The thesis also shows that the Sisters were able to extend the boundaries of women’s action in working with the poor further than most laywomen could because they effectively became a ‘third gender’
(through vows of chastity, and also because their codification of conduct rendered their emotionality less ‘feminine’ and more ‘masculine’). The
Sisters thus had a great degree of autonomy, space and permission to 395
act, including in the ‘masculine’ domains of management and finance.
This independence was not unbounded however, and as demonstrated in Chapter 5, masculine power could hinder as well as promote the
Sisters’ work. It seems that the powerful role of gender in the professionalisation process is supported by the fact that in excluding men from membership of the Sisterhoods, professionalisation via male colonisation was precluded.
The thesis also suggests that the professionalisation process may be impeded when one aspect of work (such as social welfare) is part of a larger ‘profession’, in this case, Catholic female religious life. It seems that membership of this latter ‘profession’, which already had occupational closure, impeded the separate professionalisation of part of that ‘profession’s’ work. In simple terms, the Sisters’ social welfare work was not separable from their lives as consecrated women religious. Thus, it seems that a major source of the Sisters’ potency, which was their lives as members of Catholic women’s religious institutes, also limited the possibility that their approach to social welfare could become ‘professional’ social work in New South Wales.
This thesis has therefore shown that religion can be a powerful structural factor in professionalisation, along with those forces previously identified by others, that is, gender, social class and state sponsorship 396
(in the form of bureaucratic, hierarchical organisations) (Walton 1975;
Parry and Parry 1979; Hearn 1982; Hugman 1991; Witz 1992). The
Sisters’ social welfare work was not sponsored by the state (apart from at the Catholic Orphan School), partly because state bureaucracies were themselves in their infancy in the period, responsible government having commenced only in the 1850s. In the absence of state sponsorship for the Sisters’ ‘professionalising project’ in social welfare, the thesis suggests that religion served as a substitute ‘sponsor’, but only up to a point.
The contribution of religion to the professionalisation of the Sisters’ work was both as a source of a set of principles underpinning and guiding the Sisters’ stance towards the poor, and also via the institutional Church’s support for a particular form of women’s organisation. In sanctioning the Sisterhoods, which were formally structured, and incorporated features which aided professionalisation,
(such as hierarchy and democracy) religion was in a sense replacing the state. As discussed earlier in the thesis and above, these features enabled the Sisterhoods to be more ‘professional’ by codifying and standardising the Sisters’ conduct towards the poor.
Importantly, the thesis also shows however, that codification or
‘defeminisation’ of behaviour could co-exist with some elements of 397
female culture and relationships, such as ties of affection between the
Sisters, as discussed in Chapter 9. These also seem to have aided the
Sisters’ professionalism by providing support, by transmitting each institute’s particular history and spiritual character, as well as through promoting the transfer of skills and knowledge between the Sisters.
As noted in Chapter 3, others have commented on the role of
British imperialism, combined with religion, in facilitating Victorian era women’s entry into missionary and charity work (Godden 1986; Haggis
1998; Swain 2001). The nineteenth century concern to ‘civilise’ less- developed peoples also extended to the white inhabitants of the
Australian colonies, and was perhaps further intensified when those populations included those in patently ‘uncivilised’ frontier communities, or large numbers of the descendants of transported criminals. This mission was undoubtedly part of the Sydney Sisters’ role, but they were primarily acting as agents of Catholic empire-building and strengthening, both geographically and spiritually. Thus, the thesis suggests that professionalisation theory needs to accommodate imperialism in the religious domain as well as the civil.
398
Conclusion
This thesis has demonstrated the proto-professionalism of the social welfare work of a group of women who were principled, well- organised and extremely committed to the service of the poor. It has highlighted the shaping of an approach to social welfare based on particular religious values, combined with a structural understanding of the causes of poverty. The difference between the Sisters’ approach and the stance espoused by the state serves as a reminder of the power which can result from commitment to a code of principles which are clearly operationalised into methods of work and informed by knowledge of the daily lives of the poor.
In addition, this exposition of the work of four Sisterhoods in late nineteenth century Sydney shows how a particular form of women’s communal organisation served as a vehicle for the exercise of women’s agency. Codification of behaviour, plus a structure which incorporated hierarchical organisation, as well as democratic principles and sororial support from a community of like-minded women, helped render the
Sisters’ work as proto-professional. The social welfare work of the
Sisters deserves to be acknowledged in the history of social work in
Australia. 399
APPENDIX 1
Schedule of editions of the Freeman’s Journal included in data collection
1870 All weekly editions
1873 All
1874 All, except April 4, which was missing
1875 All
1876 Jan. 1, 8, 15, 22, 29; Feb. 5, 12, 19, 26; Mar. 4, 11.
1878 All of Jan.; all of Feb.; all of Mar.; Apr. 6, 13; May 18, 25; all of June, July, August, Sept., Oct., Nov. Dec.
1880 All
1881 All
1882 All
1883 All
1884 All
1886 All of Jan.; Feb. 6; all of June; all of July; all of Aug.; all of Sept.; Oct. 2, 9
1888 All
1890 Feb. 15; May 17; Aug. 16; Nov. 15, 22, 29; Dec. 20
1891 Mar. 7; Apr. 25; June 6; Aug 8; Sept. 5; Oct.10
1893 Mar. 25; June 24; Sept. 23; Oct. 7; Dec. 23
1895 Jan. 5; Apr. 6, 27; May 11; July 6; Sept. 28; Dec. 14 400
1897 Mar. 6; June 5; Sept. 11; Dec. 11
1898 Jan. 1, 8, 15; Feb. 26; Mar. 12, 19, 26; Apr.2, 9, 16, 23, 30; May 7, 21, 28; June 18, 25; July 2, 9, 16; Aug. 6, 13, 20, 27; Sept. 3, 10, 17, 24; Oct. 1, 8, 15, 22, 29; Nov. 5, 12, 19, 26; Dec. 3, 10, 17, 24, 31.
1900 Jan. 6, 13, 20, 27; Feb. 24; Mar. 24; May 26; July 21; Sept. 22; Nov. 24; Dec.1
401
APPENDIX 2
Birthplace of First Sisters in Charge of Charitable Institutions
Institution Sister in Charge Birthplace
House of the Good Scholastica Gibbons Kinsale, Shepherd* Co. Cork Ireland
Manly Industrial School Elizabeth O’Toole Ireland and Orphanage**
Mater Misericordiae Xavier Hannigan Ireland Servants’ Home and Training School***
Roman Catholic Magdalen Adamson Manchester, Orphan School, England Parramatta**
St Anne’s Girls’ Bonaventure Lafferty Ireland Orphanage, Liverpool*
St Magdalen’s Retreat, Gertrude Byrne Tipperary, Arncliffe** Ireland
St Martha’s Regis O’Hare Co. Clare, Industrial School, Ireland Leichhardt****
St Vincent’s Baptist de Lacy Cork, Hospital* Ireland 402
Sources
* SC An. Vol. 1: 123, 172 , SCA; SC An. Vol. 2: 111, SCA; SC Membership database: 1, 2, 13; SCA.
** SGS An.: 1, 10, 90, 115, GSA; SGS Register of Members, Obituaries of Sisters; GSA.
*** SM MS 1 ’House of Mercy 1891 – 1919’, n.p., SMA; SMA Database of Sisters’ Backgrounds, SMA.
**** SSJ Report from Database of Members SJA; Burford 1991: 153.
403
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Archival Sources
1.1 Archives of the Sisters of Charity, Potts Point, N.S.W.
1.2 Archives of the Sisters of the Good Samaritan, Glebe,
N.S.W.
1.3 Archives of the Sisters of Mercy, North Sydney
1.4 Archives of the Sisters of St Joseph, North Sydney
1.5 Mary MacKillop Archives, North Sydney
1.6 Sydney Archdiocesan Archives
2. New South Wales Government Papers
3. Other Works 404
1. Archival Sources
1.1 Archives of the Sisters of Charity, Potts Point, Sydney
Annals of the Irish Sisters of Charity in Australia Vol. 1 1838 – 1882. PBH 174/1.
Biographies of the Sisters. Alphabetical.
Annals of the Irish Sisters of Charity in Australia Vol. 2 1882-1938. PBH 174/2.
Cahill, Sister M. John, rsc. c. 1839. MS. Notebook. PBH 102/4.
Cash Book, Sisters of Charity 1852 –1866. PBH 102/12.
Davis, Sister M. Gertrude, rsc. 1908. MS. Annals of the Sisters of Charity in Australia, 1838 - 1857. H103/5.
De Lacy, Sister M. Baptist, rsc. MS. Annals, 1839 – 1856, H 102/1685.
Letters
O’Farrell to McGuigan, 24 Feb., 1888. MS. letter. A525.1/1-5.
Carr to McGuigan, 5 April, 1888. MS. letter. A525.1/7-9.
McGuigan to Carr, 11 April, 1888. MS. copy of letter.
A525.1/11-13. 405
Carr to McGuigan, 18 April, 1888. MS. letter. A 525.1/15-17.
Donaghy to McGuigan, 20 July, 1888. MS. letter. A525.1/19-21.
McGuigan to Carr, 6 Sept., 1888. MS. copy of letter.
A525.1/27.
Carr to McGuigan, 10 Sept., 1888. MS. letter. A525.1/29-31.
Carr to McGuigan, 7 Nov., 1888. MS. letter. A525.1/33-35.
Carr to McGuigan , 19 Dec., 1888. MS. letter. A525.1/37-39.
Carr to McGuigan , 11 Jan., 1889. MS. letter. A525.1/41-43.
Moran to McGuigan, 30 Jan., 1889. MS. letter. A525.1/45.
McGuigan to Carr, 11 Feb., 1889. MS. letter. A525.1/47-49.
Carr to McGuigan, 27 March, 1889. MS. letter. A525.1/51-53.
Morrison to McGuigan, 26 Sept.,1899. MS. letter. A525.1/59-
61.
McGuigan and Council to Morrison n.d.1899. MS. copy of letter.
Daly to McGuigan , 27 Sept., 1899. MS. letter. A525.1/67-69.
Membership database, (printout from Register of Members)
Rules and Constitutions of the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity, canonically erected in Dublin, Approved by the Holy See. A.D. 1833. (English version). Rome 1912. PBA102/6.
St Anne’s Orphanage, Liverpool, Typescript. (Based on information in H 225.1/9-15 and PBH 174/2)
406
St Joseph’s Consumptive Hospital , Pennant St., Parramatta. Annual Reports, 1886, 1887, 1888, 1889, 1890, 1891-2. Series 300/1.
St Joseph’s Hospital and Sanatorium, Alice St., Auburn, Annual Reports, 1894, 1895,1896, 1898, 1902. Series 300/1.
St Vincent’s Hospital (Sydney) Annual Reports, 1857,1859, 1867, 1877, 1880, 1882-85, 1888, 1891, 1894, 1897, 1899, 1907. Series 304/1.
Sisters who entered the Sisters of Charity, Sydney until 1900 (Printout of information from the Register of Admissions, Congregational Bursar. 1838 –to date). Series 5/3
1.2 Archives of the Sisters of the Good Samaritan of the Order of St Benedict
Admission Register (1881 - 1910), Manly Industrial School and Orphanage. 109/3/2.
Admission Register Roman Catholic Orphan School, Parramatta 1877 – 1884. 109/3/1.
Admission Register St Magdalen’s Refuge, Tempe, 1887 – 1982. 109/3/1.
Admission Register House of the Good Shepherd, Pitt Street Sydney 1879 – 1901. 109/3/2.
407
Account Book, Receipts and Expenditure Pitt St Refuge 1886- 87, 1891. 125/3/14.
Account Book, Receipts and Expenditure Pitt St Convent and Refuge 1894–1901 and St Scholastica’s Glebe, 1934 – 42. 125/3/26.
Account Book, Receipts and Expenditure Pitt St, 1895–March 1901, also St Scholastica’s, 1905 –1906. 125/3/13.
Annals of the Sisters of the Good Samaritan 1857 – 1938, 109/7/1 – 5.
Customs 1891. n.p., n.pub., Box 7B at 101/4/2.
Customs : Sisters of the Good Samaritan. Sydney 1900 , H. Johnson, 29 Jamieson Street. Box 7B at 101/4/2.
Hanly, Sister Mary Dorothea, sgs MS. n.d. Memoirs. Box 5a/10, at 101/2/3.
Hanly, Sister Mary Dorothea, sgs TS. n.d. Memoirs. Box 5a/10, at 101/2/3.
Obituaries of Sisters (alphabetical)
Polding, John Bede. Rules for the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, 1857. Box 7A at 101/4/1.
Register of Members of the Sisters of the Good Samaritan of the Order of St Benedict 1857 – to date. A19/2/4.
408
Report on St Magdalen’s Retreat, 1894. Box 8 at 108/2/3.
Rules of the Institute of the Oblate Sisters of the Good Samaritan of the Order of St Benedict, 1878. Sydney, Cunninghame and Co. Box 7A at 101/4/1.
Rules of the Institute of the Oblate Sisters of the Good Samaritan, 1891. Sydney: Cunninghame and Co. Box 7A at 101/4/1.
Smith, Sister Mary de Sales, sgs. Annals of the Sisters of the Good Samaritan 1857 – 1938, 109/7/1 – 5.
Visitors Book, Roman Catholic Orphan School, Parramatta 1863-1886. 109/4/1.
1.3 Archives of the Sisters of Mercy, North Sydney
Account of the Voyage of the [Dominican] Sisters from St Mary’s Convent, Kingstown on the Mission to Maitland, Australia 1867. Series 14, Item 3, Box 25/ F2.
Account Book Mater Misericordiae Home, Lang Street, Church Hill, 1892 – 1905. Location 7E.
Account Book, Monte Sant’ Angelo, 1879 –1894. Location 7E.
Account Book, Monte Sant’Angelo, 1895 – 1904. Location 7E.
409
Account Book, St Patrick’s and Monte Sant’Angelo, 1866 – 1882. Location 7E.
Biographies of the Early Sisters. Series 14, Item 6, Box 25/F5.
The Customs and Minor Regulations of the Religious called Sisters of Mercy in the Parent House, Baggot Street, and its Branch Houses. (1869). J. M. O’Toole, Dublin. Box 186. Database of Sisters’ backgrounds, (printout, based on Register of Members). At Filing Cabinet C1, Drawer 2/D.
Donnellan, I. M. (1931). The Sisters of Mercy, Monte Sant’ Angelo. Printed and Published at St. Vincent’s Boys’ Home, Westmead, N.S.W. Series 14, Item 5, Box 25/ F4.
Familiar Instructions of Rev. Mother McAuley. 1927. Vincentian Press, St Louis. Bookshelf 7E and 7F.
‘Foundation and Establishment of the Congregation of Mercy, Monte Sant’Angelo, North Sydney’, (n.d.) (FESM). Series 14, Item 8, Box 25/F7.
Guide for the Religious called Sisters of Mercy, Amplified by Quotations, Instructions, &c, Parts I. & II. (1866), Printed for the Community, Robson & Son, Pancras Road, London. Bookshelf 7E and 7F.
Guide for the Religious called Sisters of Mercy, Amplified by Quotations, Instructions, &c, Parts I, II & III. (1888), Robson & Son, Great Northern Printing Works, Pancras, N.W. London. Bookshelf 7E and 7F. 410
Letters of Mother M. Ignatius McQuoin to Sisters. (Numbered typescript versions also found in Price (1987))
McQuoin to N.K. 17 Sept. 1877. Series 14, Item 56, Box 99/F10. Letter 16. McQuoin to Real, 25 Oct. 1878. Series 14, Item 56, Box 99/F10. Letter 21. McQuoin to N.K 11 April 1888, Series 14, Item 56, Box 99/F10. Letter 50. McQuoin to Heaton, n.d., Series 14, Item 56, Box 99/F10. Letter 76. McQuoin to N.K. 14 April 1879, Series 14, Item 56, Box 99/F10. Letter 25. McQuoin to N.K. 23 Oct. 1879, Series 14, Item 56, Box 99/F10. Letter 27.
Other Letters
McLaughlan to Heaton, 24 Sept. 1883. Series 14, item 56, Box 99/F10 Letter 86. Whiting to McQuoin , 14 July, 1879. Series 14, Item 59, Box 99 /F13, Letter 78.
McAuley, M. C. n.d. Holy Rule , photocopy of MS. by Mother Catherine McAuley. Box 185.
McQuoin, M. I. n.d. ‘Early History of the Foundation from Liverpool to Sydney 15 November 1865’. MS. Series 14, Item 60, Box 99/ F14. 411
Manuscript I (MS. I), n.d. Series 14, Item 1, Box 3/F15.
Manuscript II (MS. II), c. 1963, (‘compiled by Sr M. Sebastian O’Brien whose memory could be relied upon, Sr M. Sebastian O’Brien died 4/11/67’, according to ‘Sr. M. Cleophas, Congregational Archivist, 1987). Series 14, Item 6, Box25/F5.
The Mater Misericordiae Home, (1891) (Photocopy of a pamphlet), Series 14, Item 20, Box25/F19.
The Mater Misericordiae Home, 17 Lang St. Church Hill, Report for 1908. Series 14, Item 20, Box25/F19.
‘Mother M. Ignatius McQuoin’, written by Sr. M. Marcellus Baragry [sic]. Typescript, Series 14, Item 1, Box 25/F18.
Neumann, Sr M. Ignatia, RSM (ed.) (1969). Letters of Catherine McAuley 1827 – 1841. Helicon Press Inc., Baltimore, Maryland. Bookshelf 7E and 7F.
Price, S. (1987). Foundress of the Sisters of Mercy North Sydney: Mother Ignatius McQuoin Letters and History. Sisters of Mercy, North Sydney.
Purcell, Sr M. Teresa (edited by the Sisters of Mercy, Albany, N.Y.) (1952). Retreat Instructions of Mother Mary Catherine McAuley. Bookshelf 7E and 7F.
412
Report Book, St Patrick’s Girls’ School, Church Hill , 1896 – 1930. Location 7E
Rule of the Sisters of Mercy, handwritten by the Foundress, Catherine McAuley, 1833. ‘Preserved in the archives of: Convent of the Mother of Mercy, Carysfort Park, Blackrock, Co. Dublin. Ireland’ (MS. Copy). Box 185.
The Rule and Constitutions of the Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy Dublin. (1954). Printed by M. H. McGill and Son Ltd, Dublin. Box 186.
1.4 Archives of the Sisters of St Joseph, North Sydney
A Book of Instructions for the Use of the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart. Approved by Bishop Shiel on 17th December 1868. Printed by J.J. Cronin, Southern Cross Office, Adelaide. Archives 2, Box 060, File 3.
Register of Members of the Sisters of St Joseph, 1866 onwards. Archives 2, C. G 4.
Register, St Joseph’s Providence and Institution for the Protection of Homeless and Destitute Children. Archives 2, C. G 1.
413
Report from database of members from 1866 to 1997, printed 17 Dec. 1997. Based on Register of Members of the Sisters of St Joseph, 1866 – to date. Archives 2, C. G 4.
Report from database of members printed on 17 Dec. 1997: of early Sisters, date of birth, date of profession, with handwritten additions of father’s occupation (photocopy). Based on Register of Members of the Sisters of St Joseph, 1866 – to date. Archives 2, C. G 4.
The Rule, A Book of the Rules, Instructions etc for the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart. 1867, Printed at the Chaplet office, Adelaide (photocopy). Archives 2, Folio 60, Vol. 6.
Rules and Constitution of the Institute of St Joseph. 1874. Archives 2, Folio 60, Vol. 1 414
1.5 Mary MacKillop Archives, North Sydney
Carolan, Sr M. Josephine (n.d.), ‘Memoirs’. F 1880 V. 2 N15.
Letters to Mother Mary MacKillop from the Sisters in Sydney (transcribed photocopies)
Ahern to MacKillop, July 1 1880. St Joseph’s Providence New South Wales File (SJPNF) V. 3.
Barry to MacKillop, July 1880. F1880V. 2 N7A.
Carolan to MacKillop, March 19, 20, 26, 29, 31, 1880; April 2, 9, 10, 11, 24, 27, 1880. SJPNF V.1
May 18, 1880; June 13,15, 16, 24, 30, 1880; July 6, 1880. SJPFV. 2
July 20, 1880; August 19, 26, 30, 1880; September 15, 25, 1880; October 11, 23, 28, 1880; November 2, 8, 13, 22, 27, 28, 1880; December 14, 1880. March 25, 30 1881. SJPFN V. 3.
Griffen to MacKillop April 24, 1880 1880. SJPNF V.1. September 15, 1880. SJPNFV. 3. 415
Maginnis to Mackillop n.d. July 1880. SJPNF V.2; August 22, 1880; September 24, 1880; November 14, 1880; December 12, 1880. SJPNF V.3.
Mahoney to MacKillop April 9, 11, 1880. SJPNF V. 1. May 9, 27, 1880. SJPNFV. August 19, 1880; November 3, 9, 1880; December 4, 23, 1880. SJPNFV. 3
Other Letters
MacKillop (Annie) to MacKillop (M. Mary), June 16 1880. MacKillop Family File.
Vaughan to MacKillop, May 4 1880. F1880V. 316
Material compiled by the archivist
Correspondence relating to St Joseph’s providence – excerpts, typed with additional handwritten notes (photocopy).
Burford, K. (1992). ‘Mary MacKillop’s Presence in the Rocks Area’ typescript (photocopy).
St Joseph’s Providence, Cumberland Street, typescript, photocopy. AP/87. 416
1.6 Sydney Archdiocesan Archives, St. Mary’s, Sydney
Australasian Catholic Directory (ACD), 1886, 1887, 1889, 1890, 1891, 1892, 1893, 1894,1895, 1896,1897, 1898,1899,1900. SAA Library shelves.
Catholic Almanac 1860, 1861. SAA Library shelves.
Catholic Directory for the Archdiocese of Sydney (CD) , 1869, 1872, 1873, 1876, 1877, 1878,1880, 1882, 1884, 1885, 1886, 1887, 1889, 1890, 1891 1892. SAA Library shelves.
‘Foundation dates of institutions & Short History of Institutions (typed from originals in Moran Box)’. Unit U, bay 1, Shelf 6, Box 28.
Moran n.d. ‘Fuller notes on Charitable Institutions in Sydney Archdiocese by Cardinal Patrick Francis Moran.’ Unit U, Bay 1, Shelf 6, Box 28.
Moran, P.F. (1890). ‘The Church and Social Progress, Lecture in St Patrick’s Hall, Perth, Wednesday, 3rd February, 1887’. In P.F. Moran Occasional Papers, Brown and Nolan, Nassau St. Dublin. SAA Library shelves, 090.268/MOR.
417
Moran, P.F. (1901). ‘Notes by Cardinal Patrick Francis Moran on parishes and charitable institutions ’, 1901. Unit U, Bay 1, Shelf 6, Box 28.
‘Papers mainly to do with Catholic Church Buildings, Schools, etc and with Sydney Archdiocese parishes, institutions etc, mainly in Cardinal P.F. Moran’s handwriting’. Unit U, bay 1, Shelf 6, Box 28.
Sheridan, Fr. J. F. (n.d.). ‘Dean Sheridan, the Account of his Life by Himself’. Unit N, Bay 1, Shelf 6, Box 29.
Vaughan, R.B. (1881). Occasional Addresses delivered in Sydney by Archbishop Vaughan. Edward Flanagan, Dublin. SAA Library shelves, 090.268/VAU.
2. New South Wales Government Papers
Coghlan, T. (1902). New South Wales Statistical Register for 1900 and Previous Years. William Applegate Gullick, Government Printer, Sydney.
Inspector of Public Charities, 1876 Report, J. L. C. 1876-7, Vol. 2 7, Part 1: 929ff. 1877 Report, J. L. C. 1877- 8, Vol. 28: 537ff. 1878 Report, J. L. C. 1878-9, Vol. 29, Part 1: 1089ff. 1879 Report, J. L. C.1878-9, Vol. 29, Part 3: 1017ff. 1880 Report, J. L. C. 1881 Vol. 32, Part 2: 155ff. 418
1881 Report, V.& P. L. A. Vol. 2: 1015ff. 1882 Report, J. L. C. 1883–4, Vol. 36 Part 3: 1301ff 1883 Report, J. L. C. 1883–4, Vol. 36 Part 3:1357 1884 Report, J. L. C. 1885-6, Vol. 40, Part 3: 673ff. 1885 Report, J. L. C. 1885-6,Vol. 40, Part 3, 737 ff. 1886 Report, J. L. C. 1887-8 Vol. 43, Part 4: 393ff (also at V. & P. L. A. 1887-8, Vol. 4: 691ff).
Returns of Orphans, Reformatory and Industrial Schools. 1871, V. & P. L.A. 1871-72, Vol. 2: 444 - 458 1872 , V. & P. L.A. 1872-73, Vol. 2: 1236-1239 1873, V. & P. L.A. 1873-4 Vol. 5: 225-233
Royal Commission to inquire into and report upon the working and management of the Public Charities of the Colony. 1873-4. First Report: Sydney Infirmary. (1873). Thomas Richards Government Printer, Sydney, and also at V. & P. L. A. 1873/74, Vol. 6.
Royal Commission to inquire into and report upon the working and management of the Public Charities of the Colony. Minutes of Evidence, Sydney. V. & P. L. A. 1873/74, Vol. 6.
Royal Commission to inquire into and report upon the working and management of the Public Charities of the Colony Second Report: Other Charities. (1874). Thomas Richards Government Printer, Sydney, and also at V. & P. L. A. 1873/74, Vol. 6.
419
Royal Commission into Public Charities 1898. First Report (institutions for blind, deaf and dumb), V. & P. L. A. 1898 (first session), Vol. 3: 1245-1340.
Royal Commission into Public Charities 1898. Second Report (Benevolent Society of New South Wales), V. & P. L. A. (second session), Vol. 3: 397-544.
Royal Commission into Public Charities 1898. Third Report (other benevolent societies), V. & P. L. A.
Royal Commission into Public Charities 1898. Fourth Report (Hospitals), V. & P. L. A. 1899 (third session), Vol. 5: 465-720.
Royal Commission into Public Charities 1898 Fifth Report (Summary), V. & P. L. A. 1899 (third session), Vol. 5: 721-754.
State Children’s Relief Department, Report of the President:
April 1882. Sydney. Thomas Richards, Government Printer. April 1883. Sydney. Thomas Richards, Government Printer. April 1884. Sydney. Thomas Richards, Government Printer. April 1885. Sydney. Thomas Richards, Government Printer. April 1886. Sydney. Thomas Richards, Government Printer. April 1887. Sydney. Charles Potter, Government Printer. April 1888. Sydney. Charles Potter, Government Printer. April 1889. Sydney. Charles Potter, Government Printer. April 1890. Sydney. Charles Potter, Government Printer. April 1891. Sydney. Charles Potter, Government Printer. 420
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