Mary Aikenhead

Mother Mary Frances
Mary Aikenhead (ca. 1807)
Born	19 January 1787 Daunt's Square, Cork, Ireland
Died	22 July 1858 Our Lady's Mount, Harolds Cross, Dublin, Ireland
Resting place	St. Mary Magdalen's, Donnybrook, Dublin, Ireland
Known for	The founder of the Religious Sisters of Charity
Parent(s)	David Aikenhead Mary Stacpole

Mother Mary Frances Aikenhead (19 January 1787 – 22 July 1858) was born in Daunt's Square off Grand Parade, Cork, Ireland. She was the founder of the Catholic religious institute, the Religious Sisters of Charity, the Sisters of Charity of Australia, and of St. Vincent's Hospital in Dublin.

The daughter of David Aikenhead, a physician, member of the Anglican Church of Ireland, and Mary Stacpole, a Roman Catholic. Her grandfather, also named David Aikenhead, was a Scottish gentleman who relinquished his military profession, married a Limerick lady, Miss Anne Wight and settled in Cork. Mary was baptised in the Anglican Communion on 4 April 1787. Mary was quite frail and probably considered to be asthmatic and it was recommended that she be fostered with a nanny called Mary Rourke who lived on higher ground on Eason's Hill, Shandon, Cork. It is thought that Mary was secretly baptised a Catholic from this early age by Mary Rourke who was a devout Catholic. Her parents would visit every week until 1793 when her father decided he wanted her to rejoin the family in Daunt's Square. The Rourkes also joined the family and worked as servants to the family.

By the early 1790s Dr. Aikenhead had become imbibed by the principles of the United Irishmen. On one occasion Lord Edward Fitzgerald disguised as a Quaker sought refuge in the Aikenhead home. He was enjoying dinner with the family when the house was surrounded by troops with the sheriff at their head. The visitor managed to disappear and reach safety across the river. The house was searched but because of the loyalty of his apprentices who knew and kept the doctor’s secret, no incriminating documents were found.

She was aged 15 when she was officially baptised a Roman Catholic on 6 June 1802, a time after the death of her father on 15 December 1801, who had himself been received into the Roman Catholic Church on his death-bed.