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The Early Days of the Community of the Holy Name

The Early Days of the Community of the Holy Name

Sister Elizabeth Gwen was working in the C.H.N. Archives in 2007 when she came across the following article, written by Sister Christina in 1932. The article was published in the St Peter's Eastern Hill paper 'Apostrophe', after being passed on by Sister Valmai. The events detailed here occurred during the 1890s.

It is very hard to remember facts about the beginning of Sister Esther’s work at the Mission House at 30 Little Lonsdale Street. I remember the day she arrived in Melbourne off the French steamer, coming to my mother’s house at “Cora Lynn”, Fitzroy Street, St. Kilda, brought by a friend of ours, Mrs. J. Mackay, who worked with her (Sister Esther) in the London slums with the Oxford Mission.

The Mission House at that time was run by St. Paul’s (now St. Paul’s Cathedral) parish. A Bible-woman, Mrs Davis, lived there with her two children, a growing-up son and daughter, and a Miss Mitchell worked there, not in residence. She was a niece of Sir Edward Mitchell, a very delicate woman and not very suitable for the work. She used to teach in St. Peter’s Sunday School and do district visiting and visited the Children’s Hospital &c.

The Mother (Sister Esther then) was called upon by Mrs Darlot, who lived a few doors from my mother’s house, and welcomed her, and invited her to dine with her and talk over things and later introduced her to the Council and Canon Handfield – who were very delighted to meet her but thought her very frail and fragile to undertake such hard work, but promised her all the support and loyalty that such a strong Council could give her – and well and faithfully they fulfilled that promise. They never “let her down” – Canon Handfield supported her every suggestion to the last fence, true gentleman that he was. Then trouble began.

Mrs Davis got notice to leave, and the ladies of St. Paul’s made very generous arrangements for her departure, fixing her up in a little business in South Yarra and asking her to come to the Mission House and show Sister Esther around, which she did with a very bad grace. Sister Esther was quite willing that Miss Mitchell should work with her, but after a fair trial found it, for many reasons, impossible to work with her, and as she was young and very pretty, and the poor people as well as influential people liked her, felt very angry with Sister Esther. Canon Handfield also liked Miss Mitchell, so Sister Esther had to go to him and explain the reason (a drug fiend) and although he never gave Miss Mitchell away, he stood by Sister Esther loyally defending her against all comers. After that she was looking about for some likely girls to help her, and train them for the work and as she often came to my home and I used to help a little at St. Martin’s, Hawksburn she asked me if I would come and help her for a time – I had no idea of joining her – and Sister Ellen who was doing her training at the Children’s was attracted by Miss Mitchell and Sister Esther and met her at the Mission House and she asked her to come and help her at the Mission as soon as she was through her training at the hospital. Sister Ellen was delighted to join as, from the very first, she adored Sister Esther.

I used to go to the Mission House on Sundays and help. They began having a service every Sunday evening and I used to go round and collect the people and stand at the door and give them books, &c., and show them to a seat. A Mr Pearce, the Superintendent of St Peter’s Sunday School used to take the service. He had a good singing voice and led the singing while the Mother played. It was a queer collection of derelicts we gathered in and not always a well-behaved lot.

Gradually things shaped for better order. Sister Ellen arrived and I finally made up my mind to join too, so I renounced my “glad rags” and was clothed in the queerest garments any girl was ever asked to don, a bonnet out of someone’s rag bag, an old black dress belonging to someone’s grandmother and a cloak full of grease spots, worn by the little Mother at Wantage. Thank goodness I could laugh at myself. Sister Ellen wore her nurse’s dress and was quite decent. Bye and bye I was allowed to go to Buckley & Nunn’s and got fitted for decent clothes and caps and collars and was accepted as a probationer and allowed to live at the rat-infested Mission House in a room with no door to it, only a curtain and a window looking out on a Chinaman’s yard and a stable, and on the opposite side a house of ill-fame, where they used to throw kerosene lamps at each other and squeal like sirens all night. But it was all in a day’s work. The work then began to take shape. We used to visit the Melbourne Hospital, the Eye and Ear, the Homeopathic Hospital, Carlton Refuge, and the Melbourne Gaol every Wednesday afternoon, and the factories.

We had a Busy Bee Club at the Mission House held every Tuesday. The girls from the factories used to come straight from work and we provided tea for them, for which they paid threepence each. They had meat pies, scones, bread and butter, tea and pastry. Then after tea people came and gave them instruction or entertainment. Sometimes nurses from the Children’s Hospital came and showed them how to bandage, how to make a bed or change sheets. Nurse Jane (Miss Power) from the Eye and Ear gave them lectures and Dr Hamilton Russell played the piano and Dr Guthriel (?) played too, good music. Every evening we had either a boys’ class or a girls’ class; we taught the girls sewing and the boys drawing and then they had games for an hour.

We had different ladies come to help us. A Miss Campbell and a Miss Clapperton used to teach the girls singing and action songs, and did it well. Sister Esther used to have a Mothers’ Meeting in St Mark’s Parish. On Mondays we had one at the Mission Hall at which Miss Woolley and Mrs Teague used to come and give the girls sewing ready for Thursday night, and cut out for the mothers. Afterwards Canon Handfield used to come and give the mothers a short address and Miss Woolley played a hymn.

On Tuesday mornings Canon Handfield came and gave instruction to Sister Ellen and me and set papers for us to do for the following week, and answered any questions we liked to ask him. After class we had dinner and in the afternoon went house-to-house visiting. Each had their own district to do. Often when I returned Sister Ellen and the Mother would have eight or nine people in the room attending to broken heads or sore legs or fingers, or giving them some medicine to relieve a pain – fancied or otherwise. We only had the one room for everything, running classes, curing souls, mending broken hearts and limbs, feeding the hungry – and our own dining room. We just had a screen put round to hide us from the gaze of all. It was a very happy time.

One time the rats were so bad, something had to be done. As Canon Handfield was preaching one Sunday evening we saw the ceiling sag a bit, it was only hessian and paper, and two nice plump rats fell at his feet and scampered through the hall. The dear man never turned a hair, but the women screamed and stampeded. A Mrs Dearlove, a very fat old lady cleared the seats like a young race horse. Sister Esther shoved the rats out and made for order amongst the congregation. Then we laid poison or something and after a time the smell was unbearable so we got a cottage at Sandringham belonging to some of the Mother’s relations and the Mother used to come up to town every day to see about things. Sister Ellen and I had a good time – the caretaker of the cottage was an old sailor and lived on the place and did all our cooking and hard jobs. Canon and Mrs Drought joined us and we had a very jolly time. Canon Drought was curate at St Peter’s at the time.

Many of the Trinity College students used to come and help us then at the Mission House. I can only remember the names of a few – Evelyn Snodgrass, George Pringle, Joe Tyssen, Fr. Grabham. They used to take services for us and when we had the Soup Kitchen they used to come and ladle out soup for over three hundred men. Things were in a very bad state then and men were starving. Bishop and Mrs Goe, Lady Clarke, the Misses Godfrey, Mrs Ellery, Mrs Talbot Brett, Mrs Dunbar Hooper, Miss Woolley, Mrs Darlot and many more all used to come and give us good help at the Soup Kitchen. Sister Ellen and I used to go to the Victoria Market at an unearthly hour in the morning accompanied by one or other of the Wolfe Pack with their hand-barrow and bring back meat and vegetables for the soup, and many other provisions. Mrs Wolfe used to cut up all the vegetables in the back yard and Sister Ellen had all the four big boilers boiling before six o’clock.

I’m afraid I wasn’t enthusiastic about the 4 o’clock rising, but Sister always brought me a cup of tea to waken me up. When I was up I was alright.

The men were all off the premises about 4 o’clock p.m. They came in the front door and went out the back, with policemen at each door to keep law and order as sometimes they would come round again to the front and come in again. We also had a “jug department” – the children used to come for their share, with jugs and billy cans. Big bedroom jugs they were, too, and we had about 50 dozen small loaves, or more, made a certain size, so that each could have their proper allowance.

The next thing was Rescue Work. Sister Esther asked Mrs Davis to take me round the slums and to find out about the children living there and if we could do anything. You must remember that only the ladies of benevolent societies ever visited there before we came. One night Mrs Davis took me to a midnight meeting in, or off, Little Bourke Street. Gospel Hall, I think it was called. It was the weirdest kind of place, women off the street coming in, nearly always drunk, or stupid with opium. They were given strong coffee and something to eat and every now and then a voice called out, “Will a Sister lead in a word of prayer.” I was so terrified that they would ask me, I felt inclined to cut and run, but thought better of it – and a Miss Booth got down and offered a word of prayer and afterwards handed round strong peppermint lozenges (!!) to the erring Sisters. Then we all sang hymns and someone got up and asked, “Who will sign the pledge?” I noticed a half-witted lad who frequented the Mission House, and the boys called Cyclops, as he only could see out of one eye. He was trying his hardest to get a girl up to the penitent form, a girl who spent her days in and out of Melbourne Gaol and in between got drunk, sniffed or rather took snuff or opium. Sister Esther said, “I don’t think we can work on their lives,” so I paid no more midnight visits to the Gospel Hall and saw very little of Mrs Davis after that visit. Sister Esther said we must think out a better way than that.

After nine months pretty severe training, and final examination, given to us at St Peter’s Schoolroom – pretty stiff papers they were – Sister Ellen and I were ordained Deaconesses at St Peter’s Church - a beautiful service. The choir consisted of young gentlemen from Trinity College, a big crowd of them. Sister Esther was scared that I wouldn’t get through as I had influenza and was running a temperature of 103. I don’t remember much about it, my head kept me busy. After the service many people shook hands with us, and reporters came back to the Mission House with us. I was sent straight home to my mother and stayed in bed for a week. After that people asked us to speak at drawing room meetings and Guild meetings. I dreaded that part of the work, and got out of it whenever I could, as I knew I would only make blunders. Sister Esther, always ready to help, used to say, “Don’t say much, just smile at them – you can do that all right.” That’s just as far as I ever got in that direction.

Then we talked about having a home for girls – as any girl we got hold of we had to take them to the Geelong Refuge. We went by boat to Geelong and then by bus to the refuge; it meant a whole day’s journey as the boat didn’t return until late in the evening. So Sister Esther got permission from the Council to look out for some suitable land, or house, that she thought would do. After many visits to agents and trips to look at places, we decided on Cheltenham. I think it was Mrs Aubrey Bowen who gave the money to buy the land and also helped with the building. The first building could only accommodate 10 girls; it was opened free of debt. Next the Children’s Home was thought of. From then on, you all know more about it than I do – the new Mission House, &c.

[Here Sister Christina’s paper finishes.]