Little Book of Waterford by Hunt Tom

Author:Hunt, Tom
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780750969741
Publisher: The History Press

6

WATERFORD NOTABLES

Several natives of Waterford apart from those already mentioned have made a significant contribution in their fields of endeavour on the international and domestic fronts. This chapter examines the careers of eight of these individuals.

MARGARET AYLWARD (1810–1889)

Margaret Aylward, a member of one of the most prominent and wealthiest of Waterford’s Catholic merchant families, was born on 23 November 1810. She inherited the entrepreneurial gene and became an excellent businesswoman. Her first association with the world of work came as a volunteer lay teacher in the Presentation Sisters’ schools, educating the poor girls of the city. Aylward made two attempts to pursue a religious vocation: in 1834 she joined the Irish Sisters of Charity in Dublin but left after a short time; a brief spell as an Ursuline sister in January 1846 also ended in failure.

Margaret moved to Dublin where she quickly established a reputation as one of Dublin’s leading charity workers, operating on behalf of the Ladies’ Association of the Charity of St Vincent de Paul, especially in the parishes of St Mary’s and St Michan’s where she established a branch of the association in May 1851. The provision of support was leavened with an emphasis on the importance of maintaining the Catholic faith. Those receiving aid were encouraged to ‘frequent the Sacraments, to hear mass on Sundays and Holydays, to urge upon the parents the necessity of making their children attend the catechism’. The neglect of religious practice, Margaret believed, was ‘the very cancer of society, the feeder of the poor-house, the prison and the hospital’. In 1853 a practical intervention was taken to provide poor women with training and employment. The St Mary’s Industrial Institute was opened in an abandoned coach factory at 5 Upper Dorset Street, Dublin, offering training and employment in basic needlework and embroidery. Sadly, the low-value nature of the work proved to be economically unviable and the institute closed after two years.

The plight of orphaned Catholic children was a particular concern of Margaret; she believed that the traditional orphanage was unsuitable for the rearing of children and that a family environment was essential. The St Brigid’s Orphanage was opened on 1 January 1857. The main purpose of St Brigid’s was to find long-term foster homes for orphaned children, preferably in a rural environment in the surrounding counties where ‘there is the least amount of vice and the least amount of danger of contamination’. During the period 1868–74, the orphanage had an average of 292 children in its care at any one time. Children placed with farm families were expected to be given age-appropriate work on the land – this did not always happen, despite the twice-yearly inspections. Margaret developed one of the largest and most complex child-care organisations in the country, which defied practically every contemporary movement, and by the time of her death she had undertaken the long-term care of 2,717 children. It was a pioneering venture that lead to her imprisonment.

In April 1858 Margaret was imprisoned for failure to comply with

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