Mary Purcell

Mary Purcell (28 May 1906 – 19 March 1991) was an Irish teacher, biographer, and archivist.

Life Mary Purcell was born in Carrigeen, County Kilkenny, on 28 May 1906. Her parents were schoolteachers, Richard and Mary Purcell (née Rafter). She had one older sister, who also became a teacher, and a brother, sports journalist and novelist, Patrick. She was educated at St Louis Convent in Monaghan, before enrolling in Carysfort College in Blackrock, County Dublin, for teacher training. She went on to teach in Dublin and Kilkenny from 1928 to 1958. From 1935 until her death, she lived at 32 Gardiner Street.

From the 1960s, Purcell was the catechetical supervisor to the Dublin diocese. She retired at the same time as McQuaid, in 1972. In 1960, she was appointed a supervisor for the higher diploma in catechetics in the department of education at University College Dublin. Purcell wrote a series of 6 doctrinal books and teachers’ guides for primary level, and co-authored books 4–6 with Brother J. C. Moore. In the late 1960s, she published a number of instructional pamphlets for parents and children as part of the Irish Messenger series.

Archbishop Dermot Ryan invited Purcell to work in the diocesan archives in 1973. For 12 years she worked cataloguing the letters of Archdeacon John Hamilton and Archbishop Daniel Murray, with the two calendars being serialised in Archivium Hibernicum from 1981. In 1961 she was awarded the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice by Pope John XXIII. On 14 November 1989 she was awarded an honorary doctorate of philosophy from the Pontifical University of Maynooth, the third recipient and first woman to receive the honour. She died in Dublin on 19 March 1991.

Selected publications The pilgrim came late (1946) The halo on the sword (1950) Matt Talbot and his times (1954) To Africa With Love (1987)