Abridged from an article by Mary Clare Holland fcJ,
originally printed in Signum.

Disappointed but faithful to carry out the advice given, Madame set off for Belgium on 19 October 1830. The time, however, was not propitious for a foundation there. Revolution had already broken out in the Kingdom of the United Netherlands, so she decided to go to England. In view of this contingency, she had taken as her travelling companion a young sister, Mere Julie Guillemet, whose qualification for the role was that she had been learning English for two months and, though she had no oral practice, she had mastered all the rules of grammar! They visited a certain Belgian priest, Fr Bruson, who warned them against such an undertaking saying that it would cost a small fortune to set up a foundation in England. Under gentle but firm pressure he gave them the name of a Belgian priest who was working in London to whom they could refer. Therefore, rather dampened in spirits, they took ship from Ostend on 19 November 1830. The Channel worked up one of its worst storms so that the boat took two days to make the crossing, and when they landed in London the city was enveloped in one of its best November fogs. They might have been discouraged but God seemed to be with them. An unknown gentleman had paid for their room in Ostend and for their passage; and again, when they had driven around London for three hours, in a fruitless search, a lady appeared and directed them to their destination. What was their surprise to discover that it was to the French mission of the Abe Caron in Somers Town that they had come. This made things easier because the language difficulty which they had feared was removed.

Arrival in Somers Town

On arrival the travellers did not disclose their identity as religious sisters but after they had been received with such courtesy by Fr Nerinckx and his sister and on the following day been shown over the whole building, they felt that they should do so. Fr Nerinckx told them that neither he nor his sister had ever been for one moment in doubt of that fact, and that they saw in their arrival, the fulfilment of the Abbe Caroon’s prediction that one day sisters would arrive from France to take charge of the schools. Fr. Nerinckx went into great detail about the financing of the establishment an, just at the point at which Madame d’Houet was convinced of her inability ever to undertake such a project in England, he offered her the whole building and concluded by saying that all the teachers, including his sister, wished to join the Society! After a visit to Dr Bramston, the Vicar Apostolic for the London District, the necessary arrangements for the transfer were concluded and, on 16 November 1830, the Faithful Companions of Jesus officially took charge of the schools in Somers Town and thus began their work for the Church in Britain.

The Laity Directory for 1831 gives us some idea of what was involved. The advertisement describes the two establishments of St Aloysius’ charity schools, viz. a Female Establishment and a Boy’s School. “In the principal establishment 160 females are boarded, lodged, clothed and educated. Of these 40 are exempt from all payment; but for the others a pension of from £6 to £12 each per annum is stipulated to be paid. A separate schoolroom has been lately erected for the accommodation of female day scholars in which 100 already receive education; of this number 36 are gratuitously fed and 26 clothed. The third division educates more than 120 boys- 36 are boarded and lodged for £13 per annum.” The boys’ school was not the concern of Madame D’houet. Fr Nerinckx told her that the new extension had cost 80,000 francs (£6,000). Madame d’Houet would seem to have fallen on her feet- to have landed in England on 11 November practically penniless and on the 16 November to be in charge of a large establishment! She herself writes: God’s hand was indeed manifestly visible. What is more astonishing, the spirit of our Society, gentleness, humility and charity, was at once as thoroughly understood and practised as in any of our houses. Al this shows that God was the bond which united us.’

But it was not all plain sailing. There were difficulties to be encountered, the main one being that though Fr Nerinckx had handed over the charge of the girls’ school to the sisters, he still preserved in his own mind certain proprietary rights and at times tried no only to interfere in the running of the schools but also in the religious life of the sisters. Under no circumstances would Madame d’Houet tolerate this latter interference. In fact she closed some of her French foundations because local bishops tried to change the rules and lifestyles of the sisters. The Society had pontifical status and was therefore non-diocesan. It had one centre of unity, its Superior General, and one rule common to all. Even before her return to France in January 1831, she went to see Fr Nerinckx to say that she had decided against remaining in London, but after mutual expressions of sorrow and reconciliation, she allowed her sisters to remain. Nevertheless, the matter cropped up several times. In 1833 she wrote to Mere Julie; “I do not regret the good we have done at Somers Town, yet it remains difficult for ome to go on.”

Extension of the Mission

In 1835 Fr Nerinckx extended his charity schools to Tottenham, a very poor mission three miles to the north of London. This mission had been founded in 1794 by another émigré priest, Abbe Cheverus. The area, which in those days included Edmonton and other adjacent villages, was very sparsely populated and mainly by the poor Irish who came for the market gardening and the work in the fields. The priest appealed for help in the Laity Directory because his people were destitute and often unemployed. In order to attract the wealthier classes to the area he recommended Tottenham as an airy, healthy and pleasant place for their residence. He was worried that unless something was done for the Catholic children they would either be decoyed into the numerous sectarian schools in the area or be exposed to every kind of evil.

William Robinson in The history and Antiquities of the Parish of Tottenham, 1840 says: “There are two schools belonging to the congregation (of the chapel): one for boys in Edmonton, and one for girls under the direction of the religious females of St Aloysius establishment, in White Hart Lane. The number of children in both is between 40 and 50. Both schools are supported by voluntary contributions.” He goes on to speak at length about the girls’ school: “It is a branch establishment from Somers Town, London. It is conducted by a religious order of females and supported partly by donations and partly by small weekly payments. Some children are received into the establishment gratis. They are educated, clothed, fed, etc. Needlework is taken in and executed at stated prices, the amount of which goes to the general fund of the establishment.”

In 1841 the Faithful Companions of Jesus moved north westwards to Hampstead, again to a mission founded in 1796 by a French émigré priest, the Abbe Jean-Jacques Morel. The sisters had a small house in Church Row in which they continued their work according to the same plan as in Somers Town and Tottenham.

A Changing Situation

But their position was a difficult one and problems with Fr Nerinckx were constant. They were inherent in the situation in which Madame d’Houet found herself- running schools which were dependent on the financial support which Fr Nerinckx could bring in in response to his numerous appeals. He who pays the piper calls the tune. The zealous priest would naturally want to exercise more control over what was done with the money, the type of pupil admitted and the type of couse provided. Was it that the FCJs were caught in an eternal triangle with Fr Nerinckx at the centre? Was this partly the reason why, when fire destroyed Tottenham in November 1853, Madam d’Houet made no effort to rebuild and shortly afterwards closed the Hampstead foundation? She herself says that the houses were only rented and were not self-supporting. Before he died in 1855, Fr Nerinckx had found it increasingly difficult to make ends meet. Many of his most generous benefactors had died and the price of food was escalating.

Was it the arrival in London of other religious sisters dedicated to working among the poor and distressed that gave her the chance to break our and establish a foundation of her own? In 1839 the Sisters of Mercy had arrived in Bermondsey with the express mission of caring for the poor. In 1840 their work was already spreading and the congregation was experiencing a great influx of vocations. Their rule and customs were adapted to living and working in small communities. They dwelt in small houses from which they went out to work among the poor with whom they could more easily communicate because they spoke English. Moreover, in 1841 the Good Shepherd Sisters began their work in London.

Madame d’Houet herself felt that until she could establish a school for the upper classes, these people would think that her sisters had not come to work for them nor would she draw English girls to join the ranks of the Faithful Companions of Jesus and work in the English mission. One of the ends of her Society was “to teach and bring up in Christian morality girls of all classes of society, especially those born of poor parents.” This was declared in the Brief of Praise given by Pope Leo XII in 1826 and again in the Decree of Approbation grated by Gregory XVI in 1837. This she was doing in France, in Switzerland, and in Italy. In England she had by 1840 amply proved her dedication to the children of the poor. Now she must do something for the others.

Gumley House, Isleworth

On the advice of Bishop Griffiths and aided by Fr Nerinckx who helped her find a suitable property, Madame d’ Houet purchased Gumley House, in Isleworth, then a suburb of London. This house, built by John Gumley in the early 18th century had through his daughter’s marriage, passed into the hands of the Marquis of Bath. As he and the other aristocratic families of the neighbourhood moved on towards more courtly precincts, their town cousins with their newly acquired wealth were moving out from London. 1835 had seen the bringing of the railroads into London and the building of Euston station. The area around Somers Town had therefore undergone a change and people were moving out to create new suburbs in the country. The small private schools followed suit. The area of Isleworth commended itself. It had given two of the first English martyrs for the faith, St Richard Reynolds and Blessed John Hale. Mass had been said there without a break because the lands had belonged to the Earls of Shrewsbury who had maintained a Catholic chaplain. Here, then, Madame d’Houet established a first-class boarding school and placed in charge of this venture Mere Julie Guillemet, not experienced in English ways.

Gumley House, situated within 9 miles of Hyde Park and 2 of Richmond, was opened on 25 March 1841. The advertisement in the Catholic Directoy of 1842 makes quaint reading to our modern minds, accustomed as they are to laying stress on the academic proficiency and technical equipment of our schools. This was ‘a transferring, as it were, of an entire establishment from abroad and setting it down within this country. It was to carry on of these establishments from the banks of the Loire or the Tiber and place it in the vicinity of the Thames, making all within its walls French or Italian while all without was English. The child is here educated as if she were separated by the sea and hundreds of miles from London, while now that the railways are extended al over England, she is within a few hours journey from her parents.’ And the subjects: English, French, Italian, Geography, the Use of the Globes, Botany, History, Writing, Arithmetic, Useful and Ornamental Needlework. Music, Dancing and Drawing were extra. The terms: £25 per annum. They worked hard and long in those days. ‘A vacation at Midsummer, but no extra charge to Young Ladies who remain at the establishment during that period.’

When the boarding school was well established, Madame d’Houet opened a school for the poor children alongside the main building.

The Banks of the Mersey

The Catholic Directory of 1845 carries a notice that ‘The Catholic Public are respectfully informed of the establishment of a Convent of the Faithful Companions of Jesus, No 3 Great George’s Square, Liverpool, under the approbation of the Right Reverend Prelates of the Lancashire District.’ Terms are £28 per annum. Medical attendance is listed among the extras.’

This announces the arrival of the FCJs in the North West not directly, as one might expect, along the railroads now extended all over England, but by a circuitous route via Ireland. A certain Dr Kirwan, parish priest of Oughterard on the shores of Lake Corrib in the Southwest of Ireland, came to London in 1842 to make an appeal for the poor of his parish. Through Fr Nerinckx he saw the work of the FCJs in Somers Town and Gumley and decided that the sisters would be welcome co- workers among the poor in his area. He therefore appealed for sisters. His request was answered and sisters went to Oughterard on 2 February 1843. This foundation was transferred to Limerick in 1844. Dr Kirwan had a friend, Fr Parker, who was in charge of St Patrick’s Liverpool.

Even before the influx of the famine years the Irish people were already entering Liverpool in great numbers. Work had started on the excavation of the docks on both sides of the Mersey. The building of the railroads employed great numbers of Irish navvies and the market gardening and harvesting of the fertile Lancashire hinterland provided both seasonal and some permanent employment. Many, rather than return to starvation in their own country, stayed in Liverpool and there added to the numbers of poor persons who seem to be the unfortunate concomitant of any fast-developing city. The Irish did not create the problems Liverpool was already a city of grave social evils resulting from the industrialisation of its port. But they did aggravate them. As in London, the Irish tended to concentrate in groups. St Patrick’s, Liverpool had been opened expressly for them in the 1820s by a group of laymen, non-Catholics as well as Catholics, who were concerned for their plight. Fr Parker heard from Dr Kirwan of the work being done by FCJs both in London and in the West of Ireland, so he wrote to Madame D’Houet asking for sisters.

Madame d’Houet, delighted at the prospect of increased work for souls, sent sisters, but she was determined to establish her sisters quite independently of the parish schools. A boarding school was established first in Great George’s Square and some of the sisters went out to the parish school during the day. Fr Parker was pressing very hard for a day school for the daughters of the middle classes who must have been well represented in a city that was full of merchants, bankers, industrialists and traders. He also pressed urgently the need to do something for ‘the poor girls’, who were too old for school, some of whom probably would have had small jobs in the rising factories, shops and laundries. They were girls in domestic service of whom there were a great number in the Liverpool of that day; and there were the older women who were clamouring for the instruction they had missed through no fault of their own. All were illiterate to a greater or lesser degree and, though they had ‘the faith’ they had no grounding in religious faith or practice. This kind of work was dear to the heart of the foundress, for this was how her apostolate had started in Amiens in 1820 with seven little destitute children.

One gets the impression from the foundress’s letters to Mere Julie that Fr. Parker was in a great hurry and wanted everything the parish school, the Sunday school, the night school and the day school – started at the same time. She wrote: ‘Tell Fr Parker that God alone can do everything at once; human beings have to take time.’ He must also have been making excessive demands on the sisters both about taking the children to Mass on Sundays, the running of the Sunday schools, the number and length of the sessions, what should be taught to adults. She found out what the other sisters in the area were doing and refused to allow her sisters to do more. She was also most insistent that Fr Parker should not go in and out of the schools as he pleased nor interfere. He must abide by the terms of the agreement. She was not having a repeat of what they had experienced with Fr Nerinckx. She was as anxious to help the adults as he was but she decided it was better to undertake things gradually and let them be well done. When she had more sisters, she would be ready and willing to undertake the rest. Eventually a night school was opened and the attendance of 200 girls secured. There were, on an average, 1,000 children attending St Patrick’s school.

The work in Liverpool was expanding before the potato famine in Ireland in 1846 and 1847 brought the Irish to Liverpool in their thousands. Park Lane and the district around St Patrick’s was an area where they congregated. Liverpool Corporation and the city’s businessmen were most anxious to do something for these poor, miserable, starving people but the flood overwhelmed them. The cumulative result of all the ills was that cholera broke out and rampaged through the poorer quarters of the city. The priests of St Patrick’s never ceased moving among the sick and dying, and they gathered up the dead to bury them. Three of them, including Fr Parker, died of the plague. Altogether ten priests gave their lives and one FCJ, Mother Xavier O’Neill, the headmistress of St Patrick’s school who died on 30 April, 1849.

Policy of Parallel Education

Madame d’Houet, as a result of her experiences, was evolving a policy which set a pattern for her English foundations. She had learnt, as had other religious congregations in France and in England, that the social classes of that era did not mix; that in order to spread the gospel message, on had to be prepared to accept the social structures of the time and of the countries in which one laboured. So, though the request might be for sisters to work in the poor schools, the Convent school was quickly established alongside any work in the parish and night schools. Boarding and day pupils were educated separately though they might share certain facilities and teachers. This running of parallel schools continued even as late as the 1920s when the increased demands for academic standards and the pressure of external examinations forced the combining of the boarding and day pupils for lessons but for no other activity.

On the advice of the bishops of the Lancashire District, a more ‘eligible’ property was opened in 1849 as a boarding school for the upper classes on the southern banks of the Mersey. Lingdale House was situated within 2 miles of Birkenhead and commanded a beautiful and extensive prospect. This move gave Madame d’Houet the first opportunity to establish in this country retreat work which was one of her great desires and part of the original vision of her apostolate. The first retreat to be held at Lingdale House during the summer vacation was given by the Passionist Father, Ignatius Spencer (1799-1864), one of the famous converts from the Oxford Movement and great-great-grand uncle of Lady Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales.

A school for the middle classes-later sited on Holt Hill was opened in Birkenhead itself in 1851. It was from this house that in response to the Bishop’s request, four sisters set off to open, in January 1854, Dee House, Chester. Whilst the apostolic work was spreading on the banks of the Mersey and the Dee, the call came to extend the apostolate to the banks of the Irwell where, as a result of the Industrial Revolution, two large cities were growing up side by side. To meet the demand for labour, the Irish had come in great numbers, the women to work in the cotton mills, the men to do the heavy and unskilled work in the factories. Bishop Turner appealed for sisters. They came in October 1852 and settled in Adelphi House, Salford. The following year, because there was so much work to be done, a further foundation was made in Manchester itself at 130 Upper Brook Street. From these two houses, the sisters spread their apostolate into many of the new parishes and schools of Salford, Manchester and Pendleton.

In all these places, the same policy was followed. The Convent with its boarding and day school was established, as the sisters went out to teach in the parish schools. They also took charge of the Sunday schools, the night schools and the various parish sodalities. They instructed the converts, there being sometimes as many as 30 in class.

The Foundress Apostolic Zeal

Before her death in 1858, the foundress recognised that the work in Liverpool, Salford and Manchester had done much to assuage that thirst of which Christ had spoken to her from the Cross. As far as possible, she herself visited the English houses every year, though in her later years this entailed considerable physical suffering. She had a bronchial-asthmatic condition and suffered frequently from migraine and an ulcerous leg which made it difficult to get in and out of public conveyances. But nothing deterred her from visiting her sisters. It must be remembered that England was not the only scene of her apostolic labours. On the continent, during the same periods 1830-58, several houses had been opened in France, Switzerland and Sardinia-Piedmont. Each year she crossed from England to Ireland to visit the sisters in Limerick. It is said that she made more than five hundred journeys by land, over mountain passes, on the sea- by coach, by canal barge, by steam boat and finally along the railroads.