Clare Emma Whitty

Early life

According to her birth certificate, Clare Emma Whitty was born on 30 May 1883 in Fenloe, County Clare, Ireland. Her father, Richard Laurence Whitty, a qualified medical doctor and land agent, was born in 1844 in Rathvilly, County Carlow, to a clerical family. He was the youngest of four children, to Reverend William Whitty, curate of Rathvilly, and his wife Gertrude (née Langley). and two older sisters, Sophia Angel St John Whitty, born on 4 November 1877 in Dublin, who was named after their maternal grandmother, and Katherine Llandaff Whitty born on 3 January 1881 at Hillcot, Whitechurch, County Dublin.

In the 1891 census, the family is recorded to have moved to Loughton, Essex, England. In the 1911 census, Whitty is recorded as an "elementary teacher" living in Bordesley, Birmingham. Before that she received training in art in Paris, and she became a fluent speaker of French. was in 1911 consecrated the third Anglican Bishop in Korea, and some years later requested that Whitty (then Sister Mary Clare) should come to Korea to aid him in the founding of a society of Korean sisters in Seoul. She eventually reached Korea in 1923, following the difficulties placed upon travel following the war, she undertook Korean language studies. She is believed to be the first recorded Irish-born woman to have lived in Korea.