Nano Nagle

It is 1746 and Honoria ‘Nano’ Nagle, an intelligent, independent, privileged girl, is a long way from home, a long way from the Irish world of darkness and terror. Ireland?s Catholics are suffering under the infamous Penal Laws instituted by the English to obliterate their religion and to punish them for daring to support the Stuart claimants to the English throne. Ireland?s young men are already in Europe, the famous Wild Geese who continue the fight against the British with the French army. Among these is Nano?s brother Joseph.


Desperate to give their daughters a proper Catholic education – something punished by death and forfeiture – Nano’s family had smuggled their young daughters onto a cargo ship and send them to France.


Nano loves Paris. She and her sister Ann attend parties and the theatre, living on a generous allowance. One stormy morning, returning from a ball just before dawn, her carriage is forced to stop while a footman removes a fallen branch. Through her window, Nano notices a ragged group of people shivering outside a church, trying to shelter from the storm. Her eyes meet those of a small girl clinging to her mother?s skirts. She is unnerved but dances on.


After their father’s death, Nano and Ann return to Dublin. Nano is now 28, an adult and it is in Dublin that she begins to understand the repression rampant in her native land.


One day, Nano discovers that Ann has been visiting the poor and decides to go along. It is a fateful decision. Distressed by the effects on the Irish of being denied instruction in both faith and academics, she opens her first school with 35 girls in a two-room hut. With every move, she is risking her life but, without regard for her own safety, she educates children during the day and nurses the sick at night, known to all as the Lady with the Lantern.


Joseph eventually returns to Cork and is horrified and furious, extremely worried that either Nano or he himself will get caught and lose all. Nano insists that God will keep them safe and Joseph begins to help her in her work. Nano begs money and goods from local merchants. She takes child prostitutes off the street and provides an education for them. She gives and gives and gives, including her own health. Eventually, realising the need for a group to continue her work after her death, Nano founds her own religious order.


One stormy night, aristocratic young women push past a starving ragged woman begging for alms outside a church. They?re gone before they can see Nano?s Presentation Sisters hustle their founder out of the rain and into their convent, chiding her for not putting her life before a few farthings. As she lies on her deathbed, Nano reminds her Sisters to ?Spend yourself for the poor.?