Age and primacy draw us in. But they can blind us too.
We like to visit sites of beginning, to cross the first threshold, to walk the oldest bridge. A case in point is St John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church in Richmond. Poised above glistening waters, amiable ducks, and a picturesque bridge, its slightly convoluted status as Australia’s oldest standing catholic church is still sufficient to attract visitors and pilgrims alike. But its fame hides stories.
Connected with the convict past and the early days of the neo-gothic movement, this country church’s deep past has much to offer the heritage tourist. Yet inside is a story far more unfamiliar. There are lots of convict-era churches, but few have one of these.
At first glance it is relatively innocuous: a lancet pair of stained glass windows. Host and chalice shine against a red background on the left, a lamb hefts a banner of the cross on the right. For the symbolically attuned, it is a double-Christ, quietly alluding to a theological mystery. It is nice, but also conventional.
Below these images is the dedication. This is what marks this feature as rare in the extreme. The window was erected, in yellow-orange glass:
To the memory of Sister H.V. O’GRADY
Died on Active Service Aug 12th 1915.
Australia’s oldest standing catholic church, it turns out, memorialises a World War I servicewoman.
Sister O’Grady proved a bit difficult to find, even in this age of fingertip digital research. Starting with the online portal of Australia’s National Archives, the majority of war service files I found relating to “Sister O’Grady” proved to be for O’Grady men who listed their sisters as next-of-kin.
Fortunately, after some trawling, one name stood out. This time the next-of-kin was a brother. I had found the record for an Amy Veda O’Grady.
I immediately began to think the glazier may have made a mistake. Maybe H.V. was supposed to be A.V. How many something-vee-O’Grady nursing sisters could there be, after all?
In broad terms Amy O’Grady matched the slim picture offered by the window’s inscription. When she enlisted in the Australian Army Nursing Service in August 1915 she was 39 years of age and single. For three years O’Grady had trained at Melbourne Hospital, and she was certified by the Queen Charlotte Hospital in London. She had reportedly been nursing for 13 years. Then, just over a year after enlisting, she died on duty. A memo dated 1916 in her file records that she ‘Died of cholera on the 12th August at Bombay, India.’ The date was the same as the window, 12 August, but the year was different. Had the glazier made not one, but two mistakes?
Increasingly confident that this was the right person memorialised by some sloppy window-smithing,
I still wanted a firmer documentary connection, and now had a new mystery to resolve – if my hunch was right, why was a Victorian nurse memorialised in a Tasmanian window?
O’Grady had no obvious connection with Richmond herself. She was born in Castlemaine, Victoria, and her brother lived at Preston near Melbourne. So, a little frustrated, I looked more closely at the history of the church. I found that that the window was installed in April, 1929, during a renovation of the church interior, one of several new windows at that time. “All the old plain windows were replaced with stained glass from Brooks Robertson, Melbourne,” the Hobart Mercury explained. A big write-up of the opening ceremony in Tasmania’s Catholic Standard detailed the value of the interior furnishings. The eight new side windows had cost £10 each.
Fortunately, the Catholic Standard also printed a list of window donors. While they were not linked with particular windows, I hoped to use those names to find a Victorian connection to the O’Grady family. Among these donors were families, businesses, and one priest.
This last seemed most promising for a special reason: Amy O’Grady’s wartime next-of-kin was one Father O’Grady. Although not himself the window donor, I could almost smell the connection.
The priestly window donor was Richmond’s parish priest at the time of the renovation. This was Fr Daniel Shaw. Looking into his story, I soon found that he was born in Victoria. I sniffed an imminent research win. I tracked down some surviving letters Fr Shaw wrote, now among papers in the Archdiocese of Hobart Archives. One, dated 1913, discussed his becoming a priest. Another, from 1937 recounted recent travel, mentioning going “to China, and then through Japan, just getting out of these countries in time”. Others dealt with more mundane matters. There was no mention of any Amy Veda O’Grady.
But I did find another O’Grady among Fr Shaw’s papers.
In Fr Shaw’s will, he referred to an inheritance that he had received “from the Estate of my late Uncle the Very Reverend James Henry O’Grady Deceased of Preston, Victoria”. Here was the family history I needed, spelled out in legalese. With that document the whole picture slid into place. Amy was Fr Shaw’s aunt.
Thus, through a combination of family and parochial happenstance, nurse Amy Veda O’Grady took her place in the history of Australia’s oldest standing Catholic church. This Tasmanian window memorialises a Victorian nurse who died in active duty in India. Its dedication may be incorrect, and its significance long forgotten, but it is a small reminder to look beyond just the oldest stories. This window, dedicated to a World War I servicewoman, is one of the rarest things in Tasmania.
If you go and light a candle for the convicts in Richmond, make sure to light one for Amy too. Lest we forget indeed.
Nick Brodie describes himself as a professional history nerd. He has a doctorate in late medieval vagrancy law, is a leading expert on the history of poor boxes, and is the author of acclaimed popular histories Kin: A Real People's History of Our Nation and 1787: The Lost Chapters of Australia's Beginnings. His latest book is The Vandemonian War: The Secret History of Britain's Tasmanian Invasion, which uses a wealth of new archival material to re-write Australia's most infamous colonial war.