Mary Potter’s Story
Mary Potter’s quiet strength, determination and resilience developed as she faced and overcame many challenges from an early age. Her parents, William and Mary Ann, had four healthy sons when Mary Ann became pregnant again in 1847. During the first trimester, Mary Ann contracted Tuberculosis putting the pregnancy at risk. Despite this, Mary Potter was born on 22 November 1847 in London, with a congenital heart defect and poorly developed lungs and suffered from ill health for most of her life.
A middle class family, the Potters’ life was disrupted and Mary’s early years were marked by the shame of bankruptcy, as William’s pawn broking business failed, and a broken home, with her father’s departure as an absconded debtor. Her mother, Mary Ann demonstrated great strength of character in raising five children, with strict discipline, in a home filled with laughter, music and much love. The older boys spoiled their sister, nicknaming her “Trotty”. Although her education was interrupted with ill health, Mary demonstrated above average intelligence and left school quite a competent musician, a good singer and was relatively fluent in French.
In her twenties, Mary embarked upon a spiritual journey that lead to the establishment of the Little Company of Mary, a group of religious women, called Sisters, with the mission of ‘being for others’ – caring and praying for the sick and the dying. This journey however, was convoluted and marred by derision and scorn from Church leaders and even her own family.
Despite this overwhelming opposition to her vision, she persevered, eventually establishing the Sisters in a poor area of Nottingham called Hyson Green. A compassionate but very practical woman, it is written of Mary Potter that “First she washed a poor sick mother, gave her some nourishment then washed the children, gave them some breakfast and sent them off to school, then there was the husband’s dinner to prepare. She swept the kitchen and left all ready on the stove for the poor man’s dinner.”
The LCM’s early years were further impacted by an interfering Bishop and eventually Mary Potter sought support from Pope Leo, essentially going ‘over the Bishop’s head’ and so it was that the Constitution and Rules of the Little Company of Mary were developed in Rome.
For a woman in the 1800’s to achieve what Mary Potter did in her lifetime is an inspiration to us all. During a life plagued by multiple episodes of ill health due to lung issues, two occurrences of breast cancer necessitating surgery without anaesthesia!, scarlet fever, shoulder cancer and several serious heart attacks, Mary stayed true to her vision of ‘being for others’ modelled on the dedication and love shown by Mary, the Mother of God, as she stood by her son while he died on the cross on the hill at Calvary. Aside from her not-so-insignificant medical problems, Mary Potter also had to overcome a myriad of other challenges as the Little Company of Mary expanded to Italy, Australia, Ireland, America, Malta, South Africa, Argentina and New Zealand during her lifetime and a further 9 countries after her death. Throughout this amazing expansion, Mary Potter demonstrated resilience and determination and well-honed skills of negotiation as she addressed challenges along the way.
Shaped by the “piercing loneliness she felt in her own sickness and in being misunderstood by others” Mary Potter modelled compassion and love that knew no bounds. She was visionary beyond her years and her time, but also practical. After some strict guidelines had been agreed to by Cardinal Moran she sent six Founding Sisters to Australia, with little other that the habits they wore, trusting in providence to provide for them. In spite of this inauspicious lack of financial backing, the first LCM hospital, the Hospital of the Holy Child at Lewisham in Sydney was completed within 5 years of arriving in Australia – a time line that would take some beating even by today’s standards.
Mary Potter and the Sisters of the Little Company of Mary provided many practical examples of responding to need when and where it arose. She was flexible and open about the need to re-think her strategy, changing her mind at the last minute regarding who she would send to Australia but then making a trip to Naples to meet the ship on route from England to pray with, and support her young Sisters. When a mental health hospital was proposed in response to a need at Ryde in Sydney, Mary Potter was quick to respond, instructing her Australian LCM Sisters to send two nurses to England to train in Psychiatric nursing for this endeavour. The Sisters also demonstrated the need for careful consideration and discernment when a service was no longer required, or suitable, and was closed or when it was no longer safe for the Sisters to stay in a particular country and to withdraw. Their example and legacy continue to inspire and guide our work as Calvary today.
