‘Woods, M. Joseph died ye 20 April 1822, the last of ye Ladies of ye Establishment’
So ends the register of the convent founded in Hammersmith in 1669, and with the death of Sister Joseph the Institute of Mary became extinct in the south of England. But in distant Belfast the story of its revival was already taking shape. On 1st April 1812 a little girl, Mary Petronilla, was born there to a Protestant Doctor Barratt and his wife. We know nothing of her childhood, but it is thought that as a young woman she taught singing in a Loreto convent. About the year 1835 she was received into the Catholic Church, and so embarked upon a career that was to have far-reaching effects. The presence of a Roman Catholic daughter may have been embarrassing to the doctor’s household, or perhaps it was just the desire to learn German and to see the world that prompted Mary Barratt to follow the advice of the Loreto Sisters and to accept a teaching post advertised in Augsburg. There she not only learned German in return for giving English lessons, but she observed religious life as lived in the oldest house of the Institute. Strict as the régime was (the nuns rose at 4.30 am. all the year round) she fell in love with it and asked to be received into the novitiate. On 10th September 1844 she was clothed in the habit and given the name Sister Petronilla, though this was later changed to Sister Ignatius.