Clodagh Finn: The Irish nun whose ‘escape’ divided Australia

If it were a film, the publicity might include an unlikely collection of taglines about a nun running barefoot from a convent in the dead of night, a charge of lunacy, a court case to prove the woman sane and her subsequent court case against a bishop

An illustration from the Supreme Court case taken against a bishop, claiming damages for falsely and maliciously procuring the arrest and imprisonment of Bridget Partridge. Pictures: courtesy of Jeff Kildea

When Sister Liguori, born Bridget Mary Partridge in Kildare, fled a convent in New South Wales (NSW) in her nightgown in 1920, her dramatic departure marked the beginning of an affair that divided Australia for more than a year.

Even now, more than a century later, the story of this woman who claimed that her mother superior — who was also Irish — was trying to poison her still generates headlines. Only last year, an Australian newspaper ran an article claiming that she was pregnant by a priest and had run away because she didn’t want to give up her baby for adoption.

Bridget Partridge could not have known that she was about to become a pawn in a sectarian war.

Neither version is true. The real story — as is so often the case — is far more startling. What began as a row over a broom in a Presentation convent in Wagga Wagga in NSW blew up into a nationwide sectarian war that pitted Catholic against Protestant, drawing in the police, religious communities, politicians, and the press along the way.

When Bridget Partridge ran away from the convent, she unwittingly ended up in “no-man’s land, caught between … two powerful forces keen to use her to advance their ends”, to quote author Jeff Kildea.

His account of the extraordinary events that gripped Australia for 16 months between 1920 to 1921 is told in eye-opening detail in his fascinating new book, Sister Liguori, The nun who divided a nation.

If it were a film, and there’s talk of one, the publicity might include an unlikely collection of taglines about a nun running barefoot from a convent in the dead of night, a charge of lunacy, a court case to prove the woman sane and her subsequent Supreme Court case against a bishop.

There was a kidnapping too and talk of spies, a storyline too far but, then, this is stranger-than-fiction real life. At the heart of it all, however, is the moving story of an Irishwoman who was unhappy about her vocation and tried to do something about it 

It all began in the most innocuous way. Bridget Partridge had a row about a broom with another nun, Sister Joan, who accused her of lying.

The disagreement prompted her to leave her enclosed convent — without permission — and go to a nearby farm where she tried to phone the bishop. He wasn’t in, so she spoke to a priest. He, in turn, contacted Bridget’s mother superior who sent out the convent bus to look for her. Like Bridget, the mother superior, Mother Mary Stanislaus, was from Kildare. She was one of five nuns who left Ireland for Australia in 1874 to establish a convent and school in Wagga Wagga. In 1920, there were 80 nuns at the Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary convent and some 400 pupils attending the school.

By then, Bridget Partridge had been in the order over ten years. Born at Newbridge, Kildare, on October 21, 1890, Bridget left school at 14 and entered the convent three years later. She sailed to Australia in 1909 and appears to have been happy at first, teaching children at a convent school not far from Wagga Wagga.

When a diocesan inspector deemed Sr Liguori’s teaching skills inadequate, she was moved to the convent at Wagga Wagga where she was assigned domestic duties. That’s when her disenchantment with religious life began, according to Jeff Kildea, a retired barrister and honorary professor in Irish Studies at the University of New South Wales.

'I really thought it was poison'

After her failed attempt to talk to the bishop — and it says something about Bridget Partridge that she left the convent to try to talk to him — she was brought back to the convent. She was put to bed and given castor oil mixed with coffee to mask the taste. The doctor was called. He found her to be of unsound mind.

Bridget, though, sensed a conspiracy — an attempt on her life even — and made a run for it.

Later, she said this of that night: “I was sent to bed which had been prepared for me, and holy water sprinkled about the room and on the bed. Sister M. Brendan gave me something in a cup which she called oil. I really thought it was poison. This conviction is based on the agonising look on the doctor’s face during the Angelus. “The Rev Mother could not look at me at all. There was certainly oil in the cup, but to a very small degree, and something else which had a very dead taste. Sister M Brendan told me to lie quite still and not to move, and that I would sleep for six months. Other things were said about death to convince me I was to die.”

There is absolutely no suggestion that the Rev Mother was trying to poison Bridget Partridge, but the unfounded fear of it prompted her to flee into the night.

The whole affair might have ended quietly had the convent bus been sent out again to bring her home. However, when she returned to the farmhouse where she first made the phone call, she was taken in and later put under the protection of Robert Thompson, a member of the Protestant Alliance Friendly Society (an offshoot of the Loyal Orange Institution).

Bridget Partridge could not have known that she was about to become a pawn in a sectarian war that, as author Jeff Kildea writes, “played out in the press, the parliament, and at protest meetings across the country, dividing the Australian nation still recovering from the bitter debates over conscription and riven by the violent struggle for Irish independence”.

He charts every unbelievable step of it in a book that has been 25 years in the making. That deep research shows; you feel as if you are one of the thousands of Australians — many newly emigrated from Ireland — who followed the case with rubber-neck curiosity. When Sister Liguori could not be found, Bishop Joseph Dwyer requested she be arrested under the Lunacy Act of 1898. After her arrest, she appeared before the Lunacy Court — the name itself reveals the attitudes of the time — where she was declared sane.

Then, she fought back against the Catholic Church. Or rather the Orange Lodge helped her take a Supreme Court case against the bishop, claiming damages for falsely and maliciously procuring her arrest and imprisonment.

There were long queues outside the courthouse when the trial opened on July 1, 1921. To use a modern term; the story went viral.

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Bishop Dwyer won the case, but the affair does not end there. Bridget Partridge was later kidnapped — spoiler alert: by her own brother — but she did not give in to his demand to return with him to Ireland.

To find out what happened next, pick up a copy of Jeff Kildea’s meticulously researched book from Connor Court Publishing.

As he told this column: “The Sister Liguori story resonates today because it is more than just an episode in Australia’s political and religious history. It is a universal story dating back to Helen of Troy. A story of powerful forces using the misfortunes of a hapless victim to malign their adversaries, all the while proclaiming their motivation is in the victim’s best interests.”