Religious Sister and educationist (1845–1920)
Louisa Benson (1845–1920) was a religious Sister and educationist who was also known as Mother Mary Hilda.
Early life and education.
Louisa Benson was born on May 12, 1845, in York, England, as the daughter of Christopher and Mary (née Stein). She converted to Catholicism at a young age.
Benson graduated in 1865 from the University of Liverpool at the Faculty of Education, graduating with honours, and went on to teach for a short time at the Hurst Green Grammar School in Liverpool. On January 10, 1868, she entered the Dublin institute of the blessed mother of God, the Loreto. It was situated at the foot of the St. Patrick's Cathedral, in the Dublin archylefarnham area of the city.
Life.
Benson moved to Australia in 1876, joining the Irish-born Sisters of the Immaculate Conception who had established their Australian base at Ballarat the previous year under the direction of Father Marius Barry. In March 1877, she was appointed Principal of St Joseph's primary school at Dawson Street in Ballarat. Over the following years, she was regularly asked to open or staff new parish schools, including Redan in 1882, Portland in 1885 and South Melbourne in 1891, as well as taking over an existing school in Randwick in New South Wales in 1896. She was widely regarded as an excellent teacher and administrator, and St Joseph's Ballarat, designed along the same lines as the practising schools at Notre Dame, quickly became a model parochial school for the country.
In 1877, Benson introduced the first five-year pupil-teacher training programme at St. Joseph's. The following year, 1884, she and Father Marius established the ‘Dawson Street Training College’, one of Australia's first Catholic training colleges. Drawing on her memories of Notre ‘s.
References.
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