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Definitions:
Sisters of Mercy - The Sisters of Mercy is a religious institute for women in the Roman Catholic Church. It was founded in 1831 in Dublin, Ireland, by Catherine McAuley.
As of 2019, the institute has about 6,200 sisters worldwide, organized into a number of independent congregations. They also started many education and health care facilities around the world.
Starting in the 1850s, The Sisters of Mercy began a program to find American based Irish families to adopt Irish children who had lost their parents during the potato blight and subsequent famine.
Sister Rita O’Doule ran the Manhattan office of the Sisters of Mercy, and personally oversaw the U.S. side of the Irish orphan adoption program.
In 1865, Women, even nuns, were not allowed to transport children out of the country, so they partnered with Irish priests who agreed to escort the children across the ocean from Ireland.
She met the most recent ship at the Jay Street Pier in Manhattan, at 8am on Saturday, April 1, 1865.
Father O’Leary stood at the top of the gangplank as a parade of bright eyed, yet exhausted Irish orphans made their way down to the pier and into the custody of Sister O’Doule.
Unbeknownst to Father O’Leary, Sister O’Doule had surreptitiously received the orphan manifest from her Irish Sisters of Mercy counterparts.
There had been rumors circulating that some of the children, almost all boys, did not disembark in New York although they were on the ships when they left Ireland.
These rumors were always in hushed tones and included scandalous accounts of priests keeping some of the boys as conjugal pets.
The last child to disembark approached Sister O’Doule, gave her name, and then her name was checked off on the orphan manifest.
The gangplank was empty.
There was one name unchecked. Timothy Jenkins of County Cork.
Sister O’Doule ran up the gangplank.
She was screaming: “Timothy Jenkins, it is time to disembark!
Timothy Jenkins, it is time to disembark!”
She ran up to Father O’Leary and stood nose to nose with him.
She said: “You give me that child right now or my friends below will be talking to you next.”
A few dozen New York City policemen were staring up at Father O’Leary, each smacking their wooden batons into their left hands.
Father O'Leary stared directly into her eyes and said: "You're mistaken Sister.
There was never any Timothy Jenkins on this vessel.
Now get off before I throw you off!"
Sister O’Doule pushed her way past father O’Leary, and went below decks, screaming for Timothy.
She found him naked on a bed, crying in a fetal position, in the Captain’s Quarters.
She got him dressed, picked him up, and carried him down the gangplank.
She checked his name off the orphan manifest.
The police got the nod from Sister O’Doule and headed up the gangplank.
Father O’Leary never saw Ireland again.
