Name/Title
1919/Hughes: The five siblingsDescription
The exact date is unknown but the 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 last 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 last time Margery is known for certain 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).