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Sometimes, you need to see something more than once to appreciate its story. My recent visit to the Eileen O’Connor Centre in Coogee was memorable for many reasons. Not least because of a lock of Eileen’s hair. A lock of Eileen's hair displayed at the Eileen O'Connor Centre I had seen it before - blond and braided into a single plait several inches long. I had appreciated seeing it then: a relic of the inspirational Eileen whom I have come to love.  The hair, then on temporary display for her Feast Day in 2024, attracted me more deeply because I knew people had started to collect locks of Eileen’s hair during her lifetime, revering her as a saint and her hair as a holy relic. That image is so striking to me that a fictional lock of hair made its way into my novel. But this time, as I stood before the cabinet and gazed at Eileen’s all-too-real, severed plait, I was pulled into a deeper perspective. This wasn’t just a little snipping as a souvenir. It wasn’t the short length you’d expect from a haircut. This was a substantial plait, cut on 20 January 1898, a month before Eileen’s sixth birthday, and kept by Eileen’s mother. In a flash, I felt sure no mother would cut so much hair from her daughter’s head as a keepsake. Even when I was a little girl, I wanted to be a doctor and this got me into big trouble around age five, when two of my beautiful vintage dolls got scarlet fever and I cut their hair off, knowing somehow that was what you did when children got very sick. What if Annie O’Connor had cut Eileen’s hair off during a bout of terrible disease in childhood? That would explain why a perfect, substantial plait would have become a treasured keepsake. It’s not unusual for a child who is blond to grow up having darker hair as Eileen has in her portrait. We know Eileen contracted tuberculosis in childhood and it infected the bones of her spine. We know she received medical attention at age five for problems with her back. We know she had repeated back surgery in childhood. There is a revered story of her being carried towards a hospital operating theatre and, turning to an image of Jesus crowned with thorns, saying, “This will be my consolation.”   Eileen seated on her father's knee. Photo from https://eileenoconnor.com.au/eileens-story/ A photograph shows the young Eileen on her father’s knee, sporting a short haircut. Admittedly, her sister Mary has the same style, but we know Mary doted on Eileen and it’s easy to imagine a loving family where the healthy sister would have her hair cut in sympathy. Their younger siblings are in the photo, brothers Charles and Francis. Francis, born in December 1897, is an infant cradled on his mother’s lap, so the picture must have been taken around mid-1898. This would make Eileen about six and a half. Her sticking-up hair may well be regrowth. The little girls are both looking at the camera and smiling and, even though we know photographic subjects at the time often looked serious to keep their faces steady for longer exposure times, both parents are looking away and we might not be imagining the haunted look in her mother’s eyes. Archivist Carlos Lopez says, unfortunately, the reason the hair was collected was not recorded. But we do know that after Eileen died, her mother passed it into the care of her staunch ally, Farther Edward Gell. So, did Annie O’Connor cut this plait with shaking hands, not sure if her beloved five-year-old daughter would survive surgery on her infected spine in early 1898? We’ll probably never know for sure.

I was lucky enough to make a trip to Sydney to see the new museum that commemorates Eileen O’Connor, a young woman who suffered terribly from illness and deformity but founded an order of nurses to care for the sick poor in the slums of Sydney in 1913. Considered by many who knew her to be a saint in her own lifetime, Eileen was declared Servant of God in 2018 and her cause for canonisation is now being investigated at the Vatican. A life-sized statue of the three-foot ten (115cm approx) Eileen gazes towards the entry. The statue of ‘Little Mother’ was carved from ironbark by Brother James (Gregory) Fitzgerald. The museum is in the grounds of Eileen’s former home, and uses treasured artifacts, photographs and videos to immerse visitors in her life story. While I stood studying the contents of one of the display cases, my breath was suddenly taken away when I heard familiar voices. Sister Greta and the late Sister Margaret Mary had recorded their memories and incidents from Eileen’s life. I met them while I was working on my novel about Eileen and was spellbound by their storytelling on the screen.   The late Sister Margaret Mary was a familiar face. She was wonderfully supportive ally while I was researching and writing my novel about Eileen, and even made a cameo appearance in the story. There’s a replica of the bedroom that became the hub of Our Lady’s Nurses of the Poor when Eileen, paralysed in both legs and her right arm, took over the duties of matron, coordinating patient care and fundraising from her bed and taking phone calls on an Ericsson broom handle phone. Her actual bed and phone take pride of place in the display along with her Pieta statue. Eileen must have been one of the first potential saints to have her own telephone!   Next to the bedroom, is a reproduction of part of her living room, with the sofa the desperately ill Eileen was resting in to have her portrait painted as a memento for her nurses. The painting, by Norman Carter, is also on display, showing a serene young woman, with a penetrating gaze. Eileen had her portrait painted only months before her death as a gift to the nurses, who lived in her house with her and who she knew would miss her dreadfully when she died. While allowing us to get a feel for Eileen’s dreadful suffering, the museum also showcases Eileen’s zest for life: her passion for photography, her love for her devoted dog Rags, the joyful images she scrap-booked to show children who visited for the garden parties she liked to host, partly to bring fun to the lives of impoverished children, and partly to ensure they had a decent meal. Eileen died at age 28 and is buried in her former bedroom which has become part of the chapel in her home next to the museum. The memories of nursing care in the slums shared by Sister Margaret Mary really struck home. Sometimes the nurses would get to a patient’s home to find the door was locked, so they’d climb in through the window. They’d navigate floors with the risk of falling through holes up to their waists, and the before beginning to care for the patient, they’d have to clean up cat and dog excrement. Eileen’s own experience with catastrophic illness and poverty and her abiding faith that she was doing God’s work, drove her to go to extraordinary lengths to alleviate the suffering of people in dire circumstances, before social security payments and Medicare. She inspired a courageous, dedicated group of young women to take up a vocation and do the same. She and her Sisters lived by the maxim, “The cause of a person’s poverty is not yours to question. The fact a person is poor is the reason you help.” Congratulations to Project Manager Andrew Summerell and Archivist Carlos Lopez for creating a welcoming and authentic testament to Eileen, co-founder Father Ted McGrath and the generations of nurses who have lived and died in loving service to Eileen’s vision and the poor. An enlarged photograph of Eileen welcomes visitors to the Centre. The Centre, at 35 Dudley Street, Coogee, is open by appointment on Tuesday and Thursday. Bookings can be requested here: https://www.ourladysnurses.org.au/request-your-visit

Eileen O’Connor met Father Edward McGrath when he was called in to assist her grieving family after the early death of her father, which left the family destitute. He was a steadfast companion during the terrible illness which led Eileen to have a near-death experience and a vision that the Virgin Mary was calling her to care for the sick poor. Father McGrath and Eileen were united in the desire to see their nurses care for the sick poor in Sydney’s slums, not just with professional skill, but with deep love, courage and compassion drawn from their love of Our Lady. They delivered spiritual direction to their nurses, that was grounded in Ignatian spiritual inquiry, and sought to model their own behaviour on the Mysteries of the Rosary and the Stations of the Cross. Many years after Our Lady’s Nurses for the Poor was established, Father McGrath wrote a beautiful letter to the nuns. It is a lovely summary of the vision he and Eileen shared. Perhaps they will speak to you, as you read an extract from that letter, in Father McGrath’s words: “In and through the sick poor you will continue to slake the thirst of Our Saviour, as the poor Samaritan woman did at the well … Through the Poor you will feed Him as Lazarus, Martha and Mary Magdalene did when, in the evenings … He returned weary and hungry to Bethany. “You will continue to console and comfort Him by visiting and bending over those in their agony, as the angel in the Garden of Olives comforted Jesus … “[Y]ou will play the part of the Good Samaritan who bound up the wounds … carried him to the Inn, watched by his bedside and took care of him … “Help the poor to carry their crosses as Simon of Cyrene helped … “[You] will wipe the cold sweat from off the brows of Jesus’ and Mary’s Poor when in their last agony, even as saintly Veronica wiped the … blood-stained brow of Jesus “[Y]ou recognise and serve Jesus and Mary in all and each of your sacred charges” There would have been challenges in recognising Jesus and Mary in the destitute, alcoholic, often hostile, dirty, perhaps criminal, slum dwellers of Sydney through World War 1, the Spanish flu, the Depression and beyond. The cash-strapped nurses, who never charged for their services and did it all for love, sometimes walked five or six miles each way to attend their charges, as they couldn’t always afford tram fares. And they walked into those slums alone, not in pairs. Tough stuff indeed. Father McGrath was no stranger to life's toughest challenges either. He undeservedly attracted the ire of the Catholic Church hierarchy for complicated, unjust reasons, and was banished from Australia for three decades and forbidden to continue his involvement with Eileen and the Nurses. After this, he served as a chaplain in World War I, where his repeated bravery rescuing injured soldiers from No Man’s Land under fire, earned him a Military Cross. He was nominated for the Commonwealth’s highest medal for valour, the Victoria Cross, but the paperwork was lost when the vessel carrying it was sunk by enemy fire just before the end of the war. Father McGrath was not allowed back into Australia until 1941, but finally, in 1969 he was permitted to retire to Sydney, to live in the care of Our Lady’s Nurses until his death in 1977, aged ninety-six. After all the controversy he attracted early in his career, he was clearly back in favour by then. His funeral mass was officiated by an archbishop, two bishops, the Superior of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart Kensington, and twenty-two other priests.

Where better to sit with Life, than in a graveyard? I didn’t sit, as it happened. I laid on the grass between the rows of graves and kept company with the sisters and the priest who were, in their turn, companions to saint-in-waiting, Eileen O’Connor. Eileen died in 1921, aged twenty-eight, her three-foot-ten body stunted, ravaged, and partially paralysed by tuberculosis, which had infected her spine by the time she was three. This precious soul, despite her terrible illness (or because of it) was so moved by the plight of the sick and destitute of Sydney’s slums, that she founded an order of nurses to care for them, in their own homes and at no charge. Esteemed as a saint in her own lifetime, the wheels of the church are slowly turning and the paperwork supporting her investigation for sainthood reached the Vatican last year. She needs a documented miracle for the Vatican to consider her cause has divine confirmation. So, if you’re after miracles, pray to her. Each year, a memorial Mass to commemorate Eileen’s life of service is held on the anniversary of her death, January 10th. I flew to Sydney to attend the service and spend three glorious days walking in the footsteps of Eileen and her nuns, on holy ground. A pilgrimage. But also a visit, because there were many thin places, where it was so easy to feel the presence of this amazing woman. Sitting in the quiet in her chapel, created in her old bedroom, kneeling at the foot of her tomb under the floorboards, which is opened for the occasion. That place pumps with grace. The first time I visited Eileen’s home, by serendipitous chance seven or eight years ago, I knew nothing about her. But sitting alone in that chapel, I knew beyond doubt that she was a bona fide saint. She changed me and led me down the path which eventually led to me writing her story. Walking from Eileen’s house to the nearby cemetery where she was first interred while her companions battled bureaucracy to get permission to follow her wishes and rebury her at home, I became aware of the footsteps of her sisters, who had made the same walk every morning for nearly sixteen years, to pray the rosary at her graveside. Now, many of her nuns, and the co-founder of Our Lady’s Nurses for the Poor, Father Ted McGrath, are buried in that cemetery, and it was to them I paid a visitation, lying on the grass. Communing in silence. When Eileen was exhumed, almost 16 years after her death, the sisters asked for the coffin to be opened. The presiding funeral director recalled: “After the exhumation at the cemetery, the unopened casket was taken to our Funeral Chapel at 347 Anzac Parade, Kingsford, where a large number of Our Lady’s Nurses for the Poor awaited us. The Nurses asked me to open the sealed lead casket and remove the inner pine lid. This was done, and I was startled to see Eileen O’Connor lying there as though asleep in her simple blue gown, her hair lying naturally down each side of her face, and her hands joined on her breast. The skin appeared slightly dark and the eyes seemed a little sunken, but, not having the good fortune to know her in life, I could not know if this was natural. Our Lady’s Nurses then gathered around the open casket and appeared not in the least surprised at seeing their ‘Little Mother’ (Eileen O’Connor) as they last saw her 16 years earlier.” One of the sisters exclaimed, “The little darling is perfect.” The quote from the undertaker comes from https://www.ourladysnurses.org.au/just-they-last-saw-her/

When Eileen O’Connor, Australia’s saint in waiting, was born on February 19th, 1892, the world was a very different place. Antibiotics and X-rays hadn’t been invented, and neither had social security payments. Tuberculosis was endemic, often in its respiratory form, where it infects the lungs, but also as miliary TB, where the infection spreads through the blood and lodges in other parts of the body, including the spine and bones. Eileen contracted miliary tuberculosis in infancy, which damaged the bones of her spine, causing deformity, chronic pain, paralysis and inflammation in her spinal cord. Anaesthesia was quite primitive, but the child Eileen had multiple surgeries on her back, presumably to drain abscesses and attempt to straighten the deformity. Her illness caused her terrible suffering, stunted her growth so that she was only three foot ten tall (115cm) and resulted in her early death from heart failure at the age of twenty-eight. On top of all that, her father died when she was nineteen, plunging her family into poverty. We wouldn’t think that was an auspicious starting point for a journey towards sainthood… But Eileen O’Connor was considered a saint by many people in her own lifetime. After she died, her undertaker said the haunting words: “I buried a saint today.” Her reputation for saintliness hasn’t faded, and indeed her cause is being championed and she has been declared a Servant of God by the Vatican, which is a stepping stone on the process. So, what could a pain-wracked, paralysed, often bed-bound young woman do that would earn her this abiding reputation? Acutely aware, through her own life experience, of the devastating impact of illness and poverty, Eileen was determined to do something about it. The question was what. She was too ill to be accepted as a nun. But a near death experience when she was nineteen brought an apparition of the Virgin Mary, who offered Eileen three choices: she may stay with Mary in Heaven, she may return to lead a normal life, or she could return ill but work on Mary’s behalf to save people’s souls. Eileen chose the third option. During the apparition, she was shown that Father McGrath, the young priest deputed to assist the struggling family to find accommodation her mother could afford in the aftermath of being widowed. Father McGrath and Eileen found a mutual respect and admiration, and saw each other as the means to fulfill their life’s calling to alleviate the suffering of the sick poor. Together they founded Our Lady’s Nurses for the Poor, to care for the sick and dying poor in the slums of Sydney. The nurses were known as the Brown Nurses, due to the colour of their cloaks, brown being chosen not just for practicality, but to honour St Joseph. The nurses became heroes, risking their lives by nursing Spanish Flu patients in the terrible conditions of 1919, and indeed their matron died after catching it. Father McGrath was also a hero, having been awarded the Military Cross for repeatedly retrieving wounded soldiers from No Man’s Land under heavy fire. Eileen instilled a love of service in her nurses, helping them to see the face of Jesus in their patients, reminding them not to judge people for being poor, but to respond to their needs, and above all, to always do everything with love.