The Honourable Arabella Denny was one of the great philanthropists of the eighteenth century, who devoted half her life to the welfare of foundling children and ‘fallen’ women. She founded the Magdalen Asylum, an early female philanthropic institution, which was the first charitable asylum of its kind in Ireland and became a model for institutions all over the country.
Lady Arabella was the second daughter of Thomas Fitzmaurice, the twenty-first lord (and later the first earl) of Kerry. Her mother was Anne Petty, the only daughter of Sir William Petty from England. There was considerable wealth on both sides of this landowning family, and Lady Arabella spent her youth in luxury at the family homes in County Kerry. As was usual for a woman of her class she was very charitable towards the tenants on her father’s estates. As a teenager she started and ran an ‘apothecary’s shop’, a basic medical dispensary for the poorer folk.
In August 1727, at the age of twenty, Arabella married Arthur Denny, a colonel in the British Army and MP for Kerry, and went to live at Lixnaw Castle, Tralee. Early in her marriage she was made miserable by the bullying behaviour of her husband’s brother, who may have been put out by having to accept a new mistress at Lixnaw. As his behaviour continued, Arabella decided to tackle it in the head-on fashion that was to become her trademark. She secretly took shooting lessons and waited for an opportunity to show the brother what she was made of. One day, when he was being particularly obnoxious, she took him into the woods, demonstrated what she could do with a firearm and told him she’d kill him if he didn’t stay out of her way. The direct approach worked and the unnerved brother caused no more trouble for Lady Arabella.
The colonel died of apoplexy in 1742, leaving Arabella a widow at the age of thirty-five. As she was childless, she was required by law to move out of the castle, which had been her home for fifteen years. The estate and its wealth passed to her husband’s male relations, but she was left modestly well off by the standards of her class. By 1745 she was living in a house in Dublin’s Stephen’s Green, and by 1748 she had moved to the suburb of Blackrock, where she was to live for the rest of her life.
Georgian Dublin was a beautiful, modern city with many wealthy inhabitants and a rich cultural life. Regarded as the second city in the British Empire, it enjoyed the fruits of great prosperity. It was also a city where people starved to death every day. The Foundling Hospital had been established to shelter and feed the thousands of poor children who were abandoned by their desperate parents each year, either because of extreme poverty, illegitimacy or both. The hospital was a last resort: a mother would place her child in the purpose-built cradle at the gates of the hospital, ring the bell and leave quickly, usually never to see her child again.
Conditions inside the hospital were barely better than outside. The food was poor, clothing insufficient and disease was rampant. Severe crowding was the norm, with up to eight children sharing one bed – even the attached graveyard was overcrowded, with up to ten children to a grave. Staff were few and elderly, and the place was run by a treasurer who was able to act, in the name of the Board of Governors, with total autonomy and hardly any accountability. The death rate was phenomenally high, but those children who managed to survive to the age of twelve years were shunted out into the world to earn their living. Predominantly Catholics, these children were required to change their religion and were then apprenticed to Protestant tradesmen to ensure there was no backsliding.
Lady Arabella’s involvement started in 1759 when she made a charity visit to the hospital with other well-to-do ladies. When the other ladies lost interest, she continued her visits alone and began to involve herself in a more immediate way. She engaged and paid for more qualified staff for the hospital and offered them cash incentives: instead of leaving sickly children to die, they received a bonus for every child they nursed back to health. She donated a clock that chimed every twenty minutes to call feeding-time for the young babies. She paid older children to produce their own lacework and knitted goods to inculcate the habit of working for a living. She spent more than £4,000 of her own money on extensions to the building.
A ‘model of amiability and independence’ was how Lady Arabella’s nephew, William Petty-Fitzmaurice, first marquess of Landsdowne and later, briefly, prime minister of Britain, described his aunt. The diarist Mrs Delaney called her a ‘very civil, sensible woman’. But Arabella brought more than these well-heeled qualities to her work at Dublin’s Foundling Hospital. She brought a commitment unheard of in women of her social class, as well as generosity, originality and passion. As one biographer wrote: ‘she brooked no delays, shortcomings or interference.’ Lady Arabella’s continuing work radically improved conditions inside the hospital and the death rate dropped dramatically. (Sadly when she retired, the death rate at the hospital immediately rose and kept rising until the 1840s when the hospital closed down.)
Her contribution was recognised in 1764 when the Irish House of Commons passed a resolution of thanks to Lady Arabella, and in 1765 she was presented with the Freedom of the City of Dublin. In 1766 she was the first woman elected a member of the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) – an honorary position, of course, as no women were allowed to be active in the hallowed group.
While Lady Arabella was reforming the Foundling Hospital, she came into contact with despairing and exploited young women who had been forced to give up their children, their homes and their families. Moved by the way a whole life could be blighted by one early mistake, she resolved on a rescue mission: to bring young women such as these back into a useful, self-supporting existence. The Magdalen Asylum, named for the reformed prostitute of the Gospels, Mary Magdalen, was established in Leeson Street in 1766, and its first inmate took up residence in August 1767. It was run by a committee headed by Lady Arabella.
As the asylum’s governors later noted, the Magdalen was Arabella’s ‘own and favourite institution [and] she was constant and ardent in her attentions’. She raised funds tirelessly, shamelessly using as many of her high-ranking connections as she could. The pièce de resistance was when she managed to get Queen Charlotte, the wife of King George III, to act as patron. As a result, the charity became deeply fashionable and received substantial contributions from ladies who lunched.
When the Magdalen’s adjoining chapel was opened in early 1768, Lady Arabella made sure the first service was attended by none other than George, viscount Townshend, lord lieutenant of Ireland. The chapel proved to be another source of funds for the institute: due to the high calibre of the preachers invited to speak, plus the fashion factor, it eventually became so popular that services turned into ticket-only affairs at one shilling each.
Inside the Magdalen Asylum, life was strict and well-ordered. Lady Arabella’s deeply held religious beliefs ensured that women were more likely to be admitted if they were or were willing to become Protestant (Catholics tended to go to religious-run homes). They also had to be young enough to reject their ‘former vileness’. The institute was ‘not designed for the vicious, but for those resolved to be virtuous …’ In other words, battle-hardened prostitutes looking for a rest were not welcome.
While there, the penitents benefitted from anonymity and three square meals a day. They attended chapel, received religious instruction and were encouraged to ‘private devotions and meditations’ in their own rooms. When they were not doing this, they had to employ themselves doing something useful – generally reading or the never-ending needlework. Their health was attended to by the viceregal physician, Dr Robert Emmet (father of United Irishmen member, Robert Emmet), who acted as long-term medical supervisor to the institution. The penitents stayed for up to two years, ideally leaving only when they had decent employment to go to. On departure, they received a guinea to get them started, with a further small payment if they managed to stay out of trouble for a year.
Lady Arabella resigned from the committee in 1778, aged seventy-one, as she felt too old to cope with the rigorous day-to-day demands of running the institution. By the time she left, she had inspired the establishment of Magdalen Asylums all over Ireland.
She spent her declining years in her beautiful house in Blackrock with her cousin and ‘adopted daughter’ Katherine Fitzmaurice, in poor health but always cheerful. ‘Thank God,’ she wrote in spring 1779, ‘tho’ I am a cripple my mind is free and my spirit good.’ Her only worry seems to have been a morbid fear of being buried alive. To prevent this she left clear instructions in the eventuality of her death. Burial should wait, she wrote, ‘until I am certainly dead’ and, to make absolutely sure, she desired to be left lying on her bed ‘for at least 72 hours’.
After thirteen years of retirement, Lady Arabella died at the age of eighty-five; the burial was carried out according to her instructions. In her will she left money to the Foundling Hospital and to the Magdalen Asylum she had founded, regretting only that it could not be more.