Book review: Sister Liguori

Sister Liguori: The Nun Who Divided a Nation will constitute for the foreseeable future the definitive account and analysis of this astonishing episode of sectarianism in Australia.

Dr Jeff Kildea is the ideal historian for the research and writing in this matter. In addition to being a leading narrator and researcher on early twentieth-century Catholic-Protestant relations and of sectarianism in general in Australia, Dr Kildea was a highly respected and successful barrister. He had an extensive practice at the NSW Bar and much success in Native Title, local government and liquor law. His extensive legal background provides complete familiarity with the main data in this matter, being transcripts of the Supreme Court case that Bridget Partridge (ex-Sister Liguori) brought against the Bishop of Wagga Wagga, Joseph Dwyer, and related court documents and proceedings. Dr Kildea is conversant with this legal material in a way other writers without his background would not be.

Dr Kildea’s research into the Liguori affair extended over 25 years so that every factual aspect was reviewed and interpreted. The immediate cause of his turning this research into a book was what he described as a ‘totally ridiculous article’ in 2023 in the Sydney Morning Herald alleging ex-Sister Liguori had fled Mount Erin Convent in Wagga Wagga in July 1920 as she was pregnant to a priest and her child was to be put up for adoption. All untrue!  But it left Dr Kildea determined to publish his research: ‘I decided it was time for me to publish a complete and accurate account of the story – “the true history of the Sister Liguori affair”’.

To my mind, his offering will take its place as an Australian legal and historical classic, providing facts and interpretation which are correct, accurate, balanced and reasonable.

He begins his account with these words:

The Sister Liguori story, strange but true, concerns a Catholic nun, a Catholic bishop, and a Protestant parson. Arrayed behind them are the parson’s wife, the grand master of the Loyal Orange Institution, and numerous priests, politicians, and policemen, not to mention the press and the public. For more than fifteen months in 1920-21 they worked themselves into such a lather over the fate of the nun that many feared the consequences not only for her but for the social harmony of the country as well.

If that sounds far-fetched, it must be remembered that Australia in the early twentieth century was a very different place to what it is now, no more so than in matters pertaining to religion. Unlike today, most people then regarded religious affiliation as a significant marker of their identity. And for many Australians the Sister Liguori affair was a Manichean morality play, a struggle between good and evil, in which the players on both sides sought to pluck the mote from the eyes of the other without beholding the beams in their own.

From the commencement of his work, Dr Kildea makes clear that the Liguori affair was multi-faceted. He writes:

At one level, the Sister Liguori affair is the story of the personal crisis of a young Irish woman, Bridget Mary Partridge, who wished to quit the religious life she had embraced as Sister Liguori a decade before, but who felt trapped by the system she wanted to abandon. At another level, the affair is arguably one of the most significant events in the history of religious sectarianism in Australia. And, at yet another level, it is an episode in the ongoing struggle for political power. It is the intertwining of these three strands that makes the Sister Liguori story so compelling.

The real hero of Dr Kildea’s account of the Sister Liguori affair is Supreme Court Justice David Ferguson, who presided over the trial of Partridge v Dwyer. In the presentation of his account, Dr Kildea makes clear that the central drama was the Supreme Court case heard by Justice Ferguson with a jury of four (all men in accordance with the then law).  He underlines that it was the Loyal Orange Institution’s idea to commence legal proceedings against the bishop and that the necessary documents were prepared by their solicitors prior to obtaining ex-Sister Liguori’s consent. Consequently, the documents were filed some two months after the Loyal Orange Institution’s press statement relating to Bridget Partridge’s commencing proceedings against the bishop.  It seemed that she required considerable persuasion over many weeks before she signed the documents.

This book is a paperback. It is well designed and laid out. The photographs and sketches are well chosen and illuminating. The format allows for the first chapters to cover on a day-by-day basis the immediate circumstances and consequences of Sister Liguori’s fleeing the convent in her nightdress, fearful she was about to be murdered by her mother superior, leading to her arrest under the Lunacy Act at the request of Bishop Dwyer and her subsequent release.  Dr Kildea gives a daily account of these events in chapters 2, 3, and 4, followed in chapter 5 by a description of the actions of the Loyal Orange Institution which drew a reaction from the Catholic Federation, a major Catholic lay organisation at that time. Chapters 7, 8, and 9 cover the trial in the Supreme Court, also on a day-by-day basis, in which Partridge sued the bishop for having had her wrongfully arrested.  For explanation of the evidence, Dr Kildea’s writing is clear and precise. In chapters 6 and 9, there is an account of the presence in Sydney of Bridget Partridge’s brother, Joseph Partridge, who had arrived to persuade her to leave the Protestant family with whom she was living and go home to Ireland.  He tried various tactics, including strong-arm efforts, which were unsuccessful and he left and returned to Ireland on his own.

In an epilogue that details the fate of the main characters after the affair’s conclusion in 1921, Dr Kildea references a deterioration in Bridget Partridge’s mental health that led to her being returned to the Lunacy Court in 1939. The Court remanded her for a week of medical examination.  Her behaviour led one psychiatrist at that time to declare that he considered her to be insane.  She eventually returned, however, to live with Rev Touchell and his wife.  Ex-Sister Liguori died in 1966.

Dr Kildea’s concluding remarks in chapter 10 should also conclude this review:

“Looking back more than 100 years, it is difficult for us living in a largely secular world to understand what the fuss was all about and why the Sister Liguori story has continued over decades to fascinate the public imagination. To this author, who has researched the affair for more than a quarter century, the answer lies in the fact that it is more than just an episode in Australia’s political and religious history. It is a universal story, dating back at least to the Mycenaean age with the saga of Helen of Troy popularised by Homer. We have seen it played out in our own times, most spectacularly in 2005 with the severely brain-damaged Terri Schiavo over her ‘right to die’ and in 2000 with Elián González, a five-year-old Cuban refugee, over his repatriation to Cuba. It is a tale in which powerful adversaries pull at a hapless victim like children fighting over a rag doll, in a struggle they frame in Manichean terms, while at the same time proclaiming their motivation is the individual’s best interests.”

I strongly recommend to any readers of this review to give themselves a literary and historical treat by reading Sister Liguori: The Nun Who Divided a Nation.