Nuns Across the Orange: A History of the Pioneering Anglican Community of St Michael and All Angels, Bloemfontein , livre ebook

A History of the Pioneering Anglican Community
of St Michael and All Angels, Bloemfontein
MICHAEL SPARROW
NUNS ACROSS
THE ORANGE
A History of the Pioneering Anglican Community
of St Michael and All Angels, Bloemfontein
MICHAEL SPARROWNuns Across the Orange
A Hisory of the Pioneering Anglican Community of St Michael and All Angels, Bloemfontein
Published by Sun Media Bloemfontein (Pty) Ltd.
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Copyright © 2020 Sun Media Bloemfontein and Michael Kenneth Sparrow
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978-1-928424-62-8
978-1-928424-63-5 (e-book)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.18820/9781928424635
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The e-book is available at the following link: https://doi.org/10.18820/9781928424635His servants shall serve him,
and they shall see his face.
Revelation 22, v.3-4C ONTENT S
Author’s Introduction ............................................................................................................ i
Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................... ix
Abbreviations used in footnotes and the text ........................................................................ xiii
Prelude ................................................................................................................................. xv
Chapter 1 Who will go for us? .............................................................................................. 1
Chapter 2 Afar of upon the sea ............................................................................................ 15
Chapter 3 A journey unattended by an accident is an accident ..................................... 23
Chapter 4 Forming the Sisterhood ....................................................................................... 35
Chapter 5 Establishing schools in Bloemfontein .............................................................. 63
Chapter 6 A great door opens on the Diamond Fields .................................................... 85
Chapter 7 Kimberley Hospital, Sister Henrietta,
and the development of nursing ......................................................................... 97
Chapter 8 Dust and Diamonds – Ninety years in Kimberley ........................................ 137
Chapter 9 Harrismith .............................................................................................................. 165
Chapter 10 Mission boxes ........................................................................................................ 181
Chapter 11 Called to nurse at the Zulu War ........................................................................ 189
Chapter 12 Nursing in the Transvaal War of Independenc e ............................................. 201Chapter 13 Beref of the founders .......................................................................................... 213
Chapter 14 Building on the foundations and extending the work
in and around Bloemfontein .............................................................................. 229
Chapter 15 Te Anglo-Boer War – Medals for St Michael’s ............................................. 247
Chapter 16 Consolidation and growth .................................................................................. 269
Chapter 17 St Faith’s Orphanage ............................................................................................ 291
Chapter 18 I stand before God - St Michael’s School comes into its own ...................... 305
Chapter 19 Uphill all the Way – Fify-two years in Basutoland ....................................... 347
Chapter 20 Caves, Cows and Contemplation – Tirty years at Modderpoort ............ 385
Chapter 21 Te English Committee of Help and a London House ............................... 401
Chapter 22 A Genuine Religious – the third Superior in changing circumstances ..... 423
Chapter 23 Ma ’Mohau – Mother of Mercy ........................................................................ 445
Chapter 24 Getting their boots on with the fourth Superior ........................................... 463
Chapter 25 An experimental house ........................................................................................ 485
Chapter 26 A House of Prayer and other projects .............................................................. 495
Chapter 27 To a smaller house ................................................................................................. 515
Chapter 28 Going home ........................................................................................................... 525
Postlude ................................................................................................................................. 529
Appendix 1: Professed Sisters of the CSM&AA, Bloemfontein ........................................... 533
Appendix 2: Superiors, Wardens, and Visitors of the CSM&AA, Bloemfontein ................. 539
Appendix 3: Te Early Adventures of A Young Wild Bird .................................................. 543
Bibliography ......................................................................................................................... 545
Index ..... 553AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION
One day in the middle of 1984 I received a letter from Miss Kay Hill OBE, Chairwoman
of the English Committee of Help to the Community of St Michael and All Angels,
Bloemfontein, inviting me to take on the voluntary role of Warden of the English
Associates of CSM&AA. I had attended the previous year’s Annual Meeting in London,
where I had been persuaded to join the Committee. Te Warden, Fr Austin Masters
SSM, was unable to attend that meeting, and had recently let her know that he wished to
stand down.
Agreeing to her request made me aware that I had not been in Bloemfontein for more
than twenty years and had never seen the new St Michael’s complex. I made plans to go
out there afer Easter the following year, to stay with the Sisters for three weeks and to see
the various works in which they were engaged.
I was met at the airport and driven to the House, shown my room and told that there
would be a cup of tea available in the Guest Wing Common Room at 4 p.m. Entering that
room, I was greeted by an old monk who introduced himself as Father Cecil Hemsley,
from the Society of the Sacred Mission’s Priory at Modderpoort. He was staying with
the Sisters while he had a course of medical treatment in one of Bloemfontein’s hospitals.
We sat at the table chatting. My back was to the door, and at one point he looked over my
shoulder and said, “Oh! Here’s Sister Evelyn.” Addressing her, he said, “Sister, a new priest
has arrived. Have you met him yet?”
“Have I met him?” Te Sister echoed his question as she came into the room, and
then repeated it. “Have I met him?” She paused briefy. “I’ve known him since he was
knee high.”
My acquaintance with CSM&AA is almost life-long. I was not quite three and a half years
old when my family arrived in Bloemfontein. My father’s sister Violet, who had served
IAUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION
previously as a SPG missionary, was joining the Community and, while on furlough in
Britain before entering the novitiate, had persuaded my parents to drop arrangements
that they were making to emigrate from London to Australia, in favour of going to
South Africa. My father was appointed Music Master at St Andrew’s Boys’ School and
Organist and Choir Master of Bloemfontein Cathedral. On our arrival, the house the
Cathedral was buying to accommodate us was not ready and we stayed for fve weeks in the
Sisters’ Guest House, St George’s. We lived only two and a quarter years in Bloemfontein
before moving to Natal, but our contact with the Sisters continued through my aunt,
who came to stay with us in July every year for two or three weeks’ holiday. I remember
nothing of our frst stay at St George’s, being very young, but I have clear memories of our
family holidays there when I was eleven and ffeen. I returned to live in England when
I was eighteen years old, and had little or no expectation of visiting Bloemfontein again.
My aunt kept in contact, of course, regularly writing blue aerogrammes, and she came to
England to attend my ordination as priest. Becoming Warden of the English Associates
renewed my contact with the other Sisters.
Te origins of the present project are much more recent. In 2006 I received a letter from
Sister Mary Ruth CSM&AA, telling me that she had recently completed the last of fve
booklets she was writing on aspects of the Community’s history that she thought had
not been documented adequately. “Tese should be on record when we are no more,”
1she wrote. Her letter is reproduced afer this Introduction. It tells also of the celebration
stof her 101 Birthday. I intended to reply, suggesting that she write another booklet
about her own call to the Community and her recollections of the older Sisters she met
on her arrival in 1932. Some may have provided an insight into the earliest days of the
Community. My letter was n