Rosaleen and Breedge go to England for nurse training

Rosaleen McGahern and Breedge McGahern’s move to England for nurse training turned a household burden into a route toward professional independence. The sisters made the plan together, seeking paid training and a livelihood beyond the menial work available to them in Ireland; their father’s eventual consent came only after the applications were already in the post.

Background and Limited Prospects

Rosaleen had remained at home to keep house in the barracks. With their education interrupted, she and Breedge had few prospects in Ireland beyond menial employment. Nursing offered a specific alternative: Irish training hospitals charged fees, whereas hospitals in England paid nurses while they trained. The difference was not merely a choice of destination but a difference in whether the sisters could afford to acquire a profession.

The family had known both the sacrifices and the possibilities of education. Susan McGahern had taken a scholarship and boarded at the Marist Convent in Carrick-on-Shannon, while her family struggled to cover expenses the scholarship did not meet. Later, as a teacher, she helped Pat and Maggie establish themselves in Ballinamore; by the time of the family’s life at Aughawillan, Pat and Maggie were helping Susan. That history offers a practical precedent for the sisters’ plan: education could open a path to work and security, but making it possible depended on family resources and support.

A Plan Made Before Permission

The sisters obtained application forms and applied to several hospitals in London before their father learned what they were doing. His first response was opposition, expressed as a grievance that he had not been consulted. The order of events matters: the daughters had already taken the decisive step before he could approve or prevent it. Their applications made the plan concrete and gave the family something to consider beyond his objection.

Gradually, their father was persuaded by the prospect of a profession for life, the fact that training would be paid, and the absence of any cost to him. He also knew that girls from respectable local families were already training in England. His change of position was therefore practical as well as social: the plan could be presented as respectable, useful, and financially advantageous, rather than as an act of defiance alone.

Whipps Cross and the Father’s Reversal

A further example helped settle the matter. Their father heard that the daughter of Harrington, a saddlemaker in Boyle, had become assistant matron at Whipps Cross Hospital in East London. He went to Boyle, obtained her address, and wrote to her. He continued the correspondence for years. The episode shows his resistance giving way to active involvement: having opposed a plan formed without him, he sought information and established a connection that could help guide it.

Both sisters were accepted for training at several hospitals, but chose Whipps Cross. Before they left for London, their father obtained from Matron Harrington a list of the religious services available to Catholic girls training there. This final condition-shaped gesture joined approval of their professional future to attention to their religious life. The account establishes their choice and preparations, but does not describe the departure itself or their subsequent experience as trainees.

Significance

The sisters’ decision depended on their cooperation with one another: they applied together and pursued the same route out of restricted local prospects. Yet the plan also exposed the limits of their autonomy within the family. They acted before their father knew, while his eventual acceptance brought his authority back into the process through correspondence and concern for religious observance.

The move thus marks both an opening and a negotiation. England offered paid training that Ireland’s fee-charging hospitals did not, and Whipps Cross offered the sisters a path toward professional security. Their father’s reversal did not erase the initial resistance, but it changed its consequence: instead of preventing the applications, he helped make their chosen destination acceptable to the household.