ENGLAND

New Zealand Tablet, 12 June 1913, Page 55

ENGLAND

A CRIMEAN HEROINE. The death has occurred in London of Mother-Mary Stanislaus, who was one of Florence Nightingale's principal assistants during the Crimean war. The deceased, who celebrated her diamond jubilee as a religious about four years ago, was born in England ninety years ago, when George IY. was king, and Leo XII. sat on tne throne of Peter. Well-nigh seventy years ago she made her choice. In the heyday of her youth sue gave herself to God for a life of unselfish labor, in poverty, obedience, and, for all she knew, obscurity. She would have had no thoughts beyond a life of lowly simplicity in work performed for God, when, on August 21, 1846, she entered the humble convent which the Sisters of Mercy had founded in Bermondsey. In . October, 1854, five Sisters of the community at Bermondsey, at the call of the British War Office, volunteered for the Crimea, the deceased being among the number. What these, with other valiant women led by Florence Nightingale, did for humanity and for the British Army has often been told. With altogether inadequate resources, with improvised appliances, such as only love could produce, under the splendid skill of the surgeons and physicians, they nursed their patients back to health, and offered them to their country, as trophies of their sacrifice and devotion. The war finished, but its vast and awful consequences remained. Malignant fever and dysentery ravaged the camps, and the hospitals were crowded. The gentle Sisters never deserted them, and Mother Mary Stanislaus was one of the last to leave the fateful Crimea.