The exact date is unknown but this photograph was taken in the period between Kathleen being widowed in November 1918 (there is a wedding ring on her finger) and her second marriage to RJ Mack in April 1921, thus probably the summer of 1919.
This is the only known photograph of the five siblings together. They are posed in order of age: from the top: Dorothy (Diddy), Francis, Margery, Humphrey (not yet a Benedictine monk – that would come with his novitiate in 1922), Kathleen.
It would have been most unusual for Margery to leave the Community of St Michael and All Angels at Bloemfontein, South Africa, and come to England – there must have been some special reason. Could it have been because of her sister Kathleen’s bereavement? Travel would have become safer with the end of the Great War in November the previous year. The journey to England entailed a long sea voyage, so the earliest that Margery could have arrived would have been around February 1919.
The last time Margery is known to have come back to her home country was in 1935. Michael Sparrow’s book “Nuns Across the Orange” gives this information: “the new Assistant Superior, Sister Margery Angela, was in England to attend the Commemoration of the Ninetieth Anniversary of the Revival of the Religious Life. Wherever she went she spread the great need of women to offer themselves as postulants, ‘for there are opportunities of developing our Community life and work in many ways, but we are hampered in all directions by our small numbers’.” (p.410).
There is a small prayerbook inside which, since 1905, the family had continually written joking messages claiming ownership. There are several in 1935 (but none for 1919). Clearly the family spent some time together in April and May of that year. Margery writes that she “re-recovered” the book on 3 May 1935, but she must have left it behind when she went back to South Africa, which is why it was in Kathleen’s archives.
There is no date on the back of the above photograph, although Kathleen (who scrupulously marked the backs of her photographs in pencil) gives the details: “Sister Margery Angela (Margery Hughes), St Michael’s Home, Bloemfontein, South Africa”. The photograph seems to have been taken at the same time as the one of the five siblings together as it appears to have an English background.
The Hughes family bible records the following of Margery: ““Entered the Novitiate in the Community of St Michael and All Angels on the Feast of St Cecilia 1913.”
Michael Sparrow’s book “Nuns across the Orange” gives these details for Margery:
- Admission (to CSM&AA): 22 October 1913
- Life Profession: 6 October 1916