Clodagh Finn: The life and extraordinary death of Arabella Denny

If you are squeamish, turn away now. Then again, the instructions in her will — which came to me courtesy of genealogist Kay Caball — make a bit more sense when you know she had a morbid fear of being buried alive.

It read: “I desire that I may be put in a leaden coffin, and my jugular veins opened, and then enclosed in an oak coffin and conveyed to the Church of Tralee, on a hearse with but one mourning coach.”

There were instructions for the servants and driver and what they were to be paid after the hearse — the first ever to be seen in Tralee, Co Kerry — arrived in the town.

This account from The Kerry Magazine gives an evocative account of what happened afterwards: “The corpse was privately waked in the Church that night and interred next day in Tralee Church in the DENNY Vault, attended by a large assemblage of all classes. 

"The most remarkable circumstance attending the funeral was the wailing of the twelve mourners. There were twelve widows, who each received two suits of black, yearly, and donations at festivals, from her ladyship, since the death of Col. ARTHUR, her husband.”

Arabella Denny was just 35 when she lost her husband, Colonel Arthur Denny, an MP for Kerry. Despite many offers, she didn’t want to marry again — “too much experience ever to become a slave again,” she said — and moved to Dublin.

There, she set up the very first Magdalen Asylum on Leeson Street in 1765, leaving behind a very difficult legacy — at this remove in any case — but one that ensured her name resonates down through the centuries.

Mind you, at the time, her project was considered problematic too, but for different reasons. The critics denounced the idea as “wild, ideal, romantic and absurd”, but Lady Arabella’s determination to help single women — fallen ones, at that — was part of an instinct for charity that went right back to her childhood.

Parents

She came into the world in 1707 in Lixnaw, Co Kerry, the daughter of Anne and Thomas Fitzmaurice, the first Earl of Kerry. If she had a privileged upbringing at the Fitzmaurice seat at Lixnaw, it was overshadowed by “the whims and eccentricities of her father”, as historian Rosemary Raughter put it.

She writes: “Described by his own grandson as uneducated, obstinate and inflexible, Thomas Fitzmaurice was an ‘excessive bad husband’, a despotic father, and a tyrant who held his household and the surrounding countryside ‘in strict subordination’. 

"Lady Kerry, on the other hand, was a cultivated woman of ‘superior understanding, address and temper’. Ambitious and active, she was credited with having brought into the Fitzmaurice family ‘whatever degree of sense may have appeared in it, or whatever wealth is likely to remain in it’.”

If, as Raughter suggests, Arabella inherited her love of Kerry from her father, her interest in sciences, the arts, innovation and we might add philanthropy, came from her mother.

Charitable works

She set up a dispensary for the poor in Tralee as well as an almshouse and when she moved to Dublin she involved herself in many charitable works.

Though, she was no pushover either. Her nephew William Petty, the first marquess of Lansdowne, told how she fought back against her bullying brother-in-law in the early days of her marriage by taking shooting lessons. She let him know that she had not only the skill but the gumption to put those lessons into practice.

The bullying stopped, we’re told.

When her husband died, she moved to Dublin and began a new life where she travelled widely, mixed in elevated circles — Jonathan Swift was a friend — and bought a house in Blackrock in Co Dublin.

At the same time, she became ever more deeply involved in charitable work. In 1758, for instance, she suggested that Dublin’s Foundling Hospital might reduce its shockingly high rate of infant deaths, if it was inspected regularly.

She rolled up her sleeves, too, and got directly involved in the running of the hospital. She funded structural improvements and, more importantly, encouraged a change of approach in nursing infants which significantly improved mortality rates.

Ireland's first Magdalen Asylum

Where there are foundlings, there are mothers; very often women who have been abandoned by their families after becoming pregnant. That sad fact inspired Arabella to set up the first Magdalen Asylum in Ireland in 1765.

According to a pamphlet of the time, the project was not designed to be “a place of punishment for the wicked but of assistance and reward for those who have ceased to do evil and are resolved to do well”.

It sheltered prostitutes but was also seen as a place where women could take refuge after “a first fall”. While being lodged, boarded and clothed, they could learn “the principles of true religion” (Protestantism) and a range of skills that might enable them to earn an honest living.

Some of the women hadn’t fallen at all, according to Rosemary Raughter whose study of the asylum’s registers make a fascinating read. “Maria Nugent, for instance, was admitted in 1783, having been ‘deceived by a gentleman who married her, having another wife’. Two other women chose to enter the asylum purely as a means of obtaining shelter and training,” she writes.

The average ‘stay’, if that’s the right word, was two years, but in some cases it went up to five.

It is hard to read of the project, pioneering though it was, and not see it as an early exercise in social control (and incarceration). Arabella herself drew up a set of rules — there were specific times for prayer and household chores, and mealtimes were timed with an hour-glass (an hour for dinner and half-hour each for breakfast and supper).

Women could be expelled for disobeying the rules, or showing “violence of temper”. One woman, Ann Lee, was told to leave “for saying she seen a ghost”, an act that was considered a ploy to frighten others out of the house.

And yet, Lady Arabella Denny was a woman who did immense good during her life. She supported the Rotunda Hospital, helped the blind and promoted industry. 

This is where the silkworms make their entrance: she bred them for carpet-weaving, according to one account of her life. Her efforts were so admired that she was made a patron of the Irish Silk Warehouse in Dublin and granted honorary membership of the Dublin Society in 1766.

It is wonderful that there is so much material about Lady Arabella Denny’s remarkable life, not to mention death. If you are reading this, though, spare a thought for all the women who passed through her Magdalen asylum and the unspeakable Magdalen laundries that followed. 

Their stories deserve to be told in detail too.