Eleanor Brennan (always known as Nelly), was born in Douglas in humble circumstances on 26 January 1792 some months after the death of her Irish father who was a boatswain aboard a man-of-war. When she was 16 years of age she lost the help and support of her mother.
In her early years she was a regular attender at St George’s Church but when the 6am service in that church was discontinued, she began to attend a prayer meeting held at the same time in the Wesleyan Chapel, which was then situated in Preaching House Lane (now Wellington Street) and which, in due course, was susperseded by the new chapel in Thomas Street – the building (that was) known as Victoria Street Methodist Church.
Earning her living with a mangle which she had inherited from her mother, Nelly Brennan soon began to display a strong interest in the well-being of her fellows while her increasing skill as a laundress resulted in her obtaining a position in this capacity at Castle Mona Hotel, not residing in the Castle, but in a little apartment in the grounds some distance from the house.
THE CHOLERA EPIDEMIC
When the cholera epidemic struck the Island (in 1832 and 1833), Nelly Brennan defied the scourge of the disease as she tended to those in distress, voluntarily exposing her life to danger more certain and more frightful than the artillery of a siege or the bayonets of a battlefield.
“Our heroine, and we must call her a heroine now – did this, not for a revered parent, a beloved sister or darling child – not even for a friend or acquaintance – but for the unknown, in many cases the outcasts of society and for those whose only claim on her was their utter wretchedness.”
When the epidemic had passed, Nelly Brennan – “the poor manglewoman” – undertook responsibilities that many with apparently better resources would shrink from. Many were the motherless girls who were taken under her roof, and with the assistance of friends, were helped on in the world. It was not uncommon for her to go to the house of the rich to ask aid for the poor because her own goodness had a wonderful faculty for drawing out the moral qualities of others, especially the benevolent feelings of the wealthy towards the destitute.
For many years, a Douglas lady whose advanced age prevented her following out the desires of her heart, constituted Nelly her almoner (distributor of alms), and it is probable that many others did the same.
Dozens of instances of Nelly Brennan’s work for the afflicted of the town are recorded which describes her as one who “was familiar with every form of wretchedness; she sought out misery and she was not repulsed even by vice.”
The medical men of Douglas found in her a valuable aid in the sick room and one of them told how he had rushed out of “a wretched room” to take a bath “to prevent the bad effects of the feted air,” leaving Miss Brennan “performing the most loathsome offices with skill and tenderness beyond all praise.”
SUFFERED THROUGH HER DEVOTION
Miss Brennan’s attendance at the temporary cholera hospital during the epidemic lost her a lot of customers for whom she had been doing the washing, their natural fear of sending their clothes to a house into which infection might have been carried being understandable, though it had the effect of reducing Nelly Brennan in health and purse.
It was some time after this that she accepted the situation as laundress at the Castle Mona Hotel, but when she found that her residence was too far from town to enable her to run in and out among the poor as she had been accustomed to, she gave up the laundry and returned to her old haunts.
When questioned as to the wisdom of giving up so eligible a position she replied simply,
“I dare not neglect the poor.”
Never was she heard to complain about her worldly lot – no-one thought she was poor – nor would it ever have been known that she was once on the borders of want had it not been for the fact that when she was offered the Matronship of the Douglas Dispensary (in Fort Street), she exclaimed,
“This is sent by Providence, like the twelve guineas that Mrs W brought me.”
She then told of an incident of 17 years earlier at the cholera hospital, she lay on her bed without the means of purchasing a cup of tea.
“The idea of dying of want came across me,” she said, “but very soon the words “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want” came into my mind with power. I repeated them aloud. I heard a gentle tap at the door and I said, “Come in if you please,” for I was not able to rise, so the door opened and Mrs W entered bringing in her hand a purse with twelve guineas in it. I saw the merciful hand of Providence then and should I be appointed to the Dispensary I would see it in the same light.”
And having been prevailed upon to accept the twelve guineas at the time, she appropriated only a small part to her own use.
When a Hospital was added to the Dispensary, Miss Brennan was requested to take charge of it at an annual salary of £30, in addition to the £10, with house, gas and coal, she received for her work in the dispensary.
So assiduously did Nelly Brennan apply herself to the work in the hospital that she suffered a breakdown in health after 18 months occupancy of the position and had to give it up. A visitor to the hospital wrote this testimony to her work while she was there:
“No money could have remunerated her for all she went through. Daily did she wash with her own hands the deeply afflicted inmates of that asylum. Her sympathy for the suffering body was only equalled by her anxiety for the soul. Love to the Saviour was the constraining motive and she went from room to room, reading and praying with all, until her health gave way and she was obliged to resign, to the sincere regret of both the clergy and medical men of the town.”
“The very looks of the patients,” writes Miss Bellanne Stowell, “when she approached their beds was sufficient to make anyone aware that no one smoothed a pillow or administered the potion as she did.”
Though she had to leave the hospital, Nelly Brennan continued her beneficial work for the poor and afflicted, her willing feet plodding many a weary mile to relieve distress, whenever it might be found, and she was ever as ready to pour the balm of consolation into the wounded sorrow-stricken heart as she was to administer ease to the suffering and food to the starving.
In her later years she achieved her ambition to have a house built for herself in Wesley Terrace. She also made a will leaving the house to a young woman whom she had reared as her own child and after her death to “four poor single woman about 50 years of age belonging to the Wesleyan connexion.”
“There are plenty of houses for widows and orphans,” she said, “but there is no provision made for these four lone ones.”
When the Douglas Dorcas Society was founded, Miss Brennan became actively associated with the organisation which has done such good work during its existence of 114 years. In its early years the society held meetings in the homes of its members and Miss Bellanne Stowell mentions a meeting held in Nelly’s home, work being carried out “in the Great Laundry where the mangle was.”
In the later years of her life, with her constitution undermined by the repeated exposure to infection and the frequent inhaling of foul air, Nelly Brennan was compelled to relinquish many of her Christian labours. Her only resource was keeping lodgers.
But she continued with many of her arduous tasks until shortly before her death. Advised to rest she said she had so many things to do – to gather clothes for a poor boy who is going to sea, to collect for the Dorcas Society “and many other things to get on with before Christmas.” And before Christmas came she was laid on a bed of sickness from which she never arose, her death taking place on 23 January, 1859 – three days before her 68th birthday.
Nelly Brennan is buried at St George’s in Douglas. Seven ministers of different congregations were in attendance in order to pay their respects and of whom they described as:
“One of the most wonderful women who had ever lived in the Island and one whose devotion to duty was not exceeded even by Florence Nightingale.”
She has been remembered and honoured over the years with the latest taking place in Dec 2021 when a memorial was unveiled to her at Nobles Hospital.
Gravestone for Eleanor ‘Nelly’ Brannan (sic) and her mother Mary Percival. There is a plaque at the base from the Royal College of Nursing.
The back of Nelly Brennan’s grave
Source: Isle of Man Examiner (22 Dec 1950) courtesy of imusum; the photograph of Nelly is also part of the imuseum/Manx National Heritage archive. A wiki article also shows a photograph of her house Wesley Terrace/Willow Terrace. The grave photographs are from the Find a Grave website.
