Sr Eileen

“First, I should like to write a little about Sr Eileen as I knew her. I was a pupil at All Hallows School in the war years (1939) and Sister was on the house staff then but I got to know her better after 1951 when I joined the Community. She had these sparkling dark eyes and was full of fun, and of tales of her time in Canada. Her cousin was Cyril Falls, a military correspondent …, but we did not discuss family backgrounds in those days. On dark wartime nights, I would walk her back to the Convent as she had no night vision – wartime blackout did not allow any light to be shown.

When she was resident here [i.e. the Convent], she worked in the embroidery room. By then she was elderly so she did not do the heavy work on frontals but made stoles. I recall a green one with a silver design which she made. In her last illness, she was very accepting and on the day before she died, she asked if Sr Daphne, my fellow Sister, and I could visit her. It was at the time of our Profession anniversary. She lay there, very pale but she conveyed an atmosphere of great peace and serenity. It made a deep impression on me.

Because we were very reticent about facts of our lives, I do not know when she was sent to Canada to our house at Yale on the Fraser River. There she taught simple embroidery to both Canadians and First Nation girls …” So writes Sr Violet in response to a request about Sr Eileen. It is these personal memories that bring a Sister to life, although so often we only have facts, and bare facts at that.

Eileen Falls was born in Malacca, Malaysia in 1882, and I have not yet been able to find much about her background. M. Mary says of her that she was Irish and had a merry laugh. The first facts I have been able to find about her, so far, are from the 1901 census when, aged 18, she is registered at the Community House at Ditchingham as a visitor, when her occupation is down as ‘embroidery, fancy work’.  She was received as an Associate of the second order in December 1904, but a couple of years later became a Novice and was professed on November 4^th 1909. In the 1911 Census, she is found working at the Orphanage with Sr Rosanna and Sr Isobel, who was Sister in Charge. This census confirms that Sr Eileen is a British Subject by parentage. The Sisters at the Orphanage worked alongside lay staff, including 2 matrons, a laundry maid and 3 teachers. It is possible that Sr Eileen may have taught embroidery here, as she was later to do in Canada, but it seems likely that she would have had other responsibilities in both places, as one of few Sisters there. We do not know when she was in Canada, but it is most probable that she went in the years after the 1911 census. By 1921, the Community had withdrawn from Canada, and Sr Eileen was back in Norfolk.

We have some magazines called All Hallows in the West which were published while we were in Canada, and I hope to find out more about our time there, and in particular the work of the individual Sisters, when I have time to examine them more closely. Whenever I write these blogs, I find there is always more to do, more to research; for instance, will searching for her cousin Cyril bring more information about Sr Eileen? A brief google search confirms the Irish connection. However, back to the 1921 Census, when Sr Eileen was working at the Norwich Mission House. This census is helpful, in that it gives more room for detail as to what each Sister’s work entailed. Sr Eileen’s work was at the institution, that is at the Mission House itself, not working in one of the parishes. While we do not know exactly what that involved, we do know that the Community had various guilds and groups who met at the Mission House, so it is possible Sr Eileen was involved in those. By 1939, she was back at Ditchingham, based at the Community House, but possibly working at the School [which had evolved from the Orphanage], and is where she was when Sr Violet first knew her. That point about her having no night vision is easily one that might have got lost, had not Sr Violet been the pupil asked to walk her back. Moving on from the School, she worked in the Embroidery room during the 1940s and 1950s. She was Sister-in-Charge there during the 1940s, and had help from some Sister Associates.

It seems her health was not good in her later years. We have the memories of her last illness from Sr Violet, and we have this from the Community Diary, after she died on May 4^th 1955: at 2.20am Sr Eileen went to her rest after 5 months of great suffering and finally bodily crucifixion. She bore her suffering with great fortitude and was sanctified by her great testing. A good religious, most faithful to Rule with a spirit of joy at all times. Laus deo. Funeral on the 7^th.