Wilson (Miss Mary Jane)

This distinguished lady was born in Madras, in British India, on 3 October 1840. She settled in Madeira in 1880, and two years later she founded a school in the Palácio de São Pedro (‘St Peter’), which she named St. Georges High School and which was widely attended by girls from the best Funchal society. Having closed the school around 1892, she rebuilt the old hospital of the town (vila) of Santa Cruz (‘Holy Cross’) with money raised from alms. There she took in a number of patients and set up a pharmacy, rendering outstanding services to the sick and the poor of that municipality (concelho). She was the founder of a diocesan religious community which, through its hospital work and its teaching in many schools scattered across various parishes, earned the highest praise and the gratitude of the people of this island.

In 1907, during a smallpox epidemic, Miss Wilson took charge of the isolation hospital set up in the Lazareto de Gonçalo Aires (‘Gonçalo Aires quarantine hospital’). The circumstances were very grave, and the most lamentable consequences were feared. Yet so outstanding were the services that this illustrious lady rendered at the time that the groundless fears which had arisen in many minds, still under the impression of the unfortunate events of January 1905, were soon dispelled.

On this subject, one of the authors of the present work wrote in the former Heraldo da Madeira (‘Madeira Herald’):

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Miss Wilson, devoting her boundless self-denial and her great and never-failing charity to the unfortunate smallpox patients, with no thought of the slightest gain or the most trifling reward, has placed herself on the same level as the great benefactors of humanity who, doing good purely for its own sake, aspire only to the approval of their own conscience and to the rewards of the life beyond the grave.

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Alongside this incomparable charity, her kindly heart holds such treasures of tenderness, affection and gentleness that in the lazaretto she is the true providence of the sick, her brow always lit by the smile of hope and consolation.

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The people, in their ignorance and excessive credulity, skilfully exploited by those who ought to have been their true mentors and guides, turned the lazaretto into a prison of Ugolino or a cave of Cacus, where the sick suffered the worst abuses, ranging from outrages against modesty to the most heinous murders. All this, which was nothing more than a legend and merely the object of wicked speculation, became for the general public an unshakeable belief, an axiomatic truth, which it would have been impossible to dispel or destroy.

Miss Wilson had to struggle stubbornly against these deep-rooted prejudices, superstitions and terrors. It was not without great fear that the first smallpox patients entered the isolation hospital. Before long, however, the spell was completely broken. Those fantastic horrors are gradually fading away, and in the lazaretto the patients found only the ardent flame of charity blazing intensely in a woman’s heart.

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Today she is there the spirit of goodness, scattering blessings in abundance, a beacon of brilliant light illuminating so many minds, a rainbow of peace and hope comforting troubled hearts.

With the establishment of the new political regime, Miss Wilson had to leave Madeira, but she returned to Funchal. She died in the house of the former convent of St Bernardino (São Bernardino), in Câmara de Lobos (‘seals’ den’), on 18 October 1916. On 15 April 1939 her remains were moved to the chapel of the building in Rua do Carmo (‘Carmel’) that houses the headquarters of the religious congregation she had founded.

As stated above, in 1884 Mary Jane Wilson founded a diocesan religious congregation, which she named the Franciscan Sisters of Our Lady of Victories (Irmãs Franciscanas de Nossa Senhora das Vitórias), and it received the full approval of the ecclesiastical authorities. This Congregation, which is devoted particularly to hospital work and to the elementary schooling of poor children, has rendered the most outstanding services here in Madeira, always with the greatest zeal and dedication, and these services are acknowledged by all without exception. Today its beneficent work in running the charitable institutions entrusted to it cannot be done without. A considerable number of its members already work selflessly in the evangelical missions of Portuguese Africa.