This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Frances Clarke. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Born: 19 March 1828, Ireland
Died: 27 January 1869
Country most active: Ireland
Also known as: NA
Downing, Ellen Mary Patrick (1828–69), poet, was born 19 March 1828 in Cork, the daughter of J. B. Downing, resident medical officer at the Cork Fever Hospital, where her mother served as matron. After making her first communion in St Patrick’s church, Cork, she added Patrick to her name. Delicate and hypersensitive as a child, she was encouraged by her mother in a love of literature, and began to compose poetry orally. Her early interest in Byron and Thomas Moore gave way to enthusiasm for work of a more political nature when, in her mid-teens, she became a regular reader of the Nation. Her first contribution, the poem ‘Forget the wrongs’, appeared 10 May 1845 under the pseudonym Kate. Gavan Duffy recalled the manuscript arriving ‘in a scrawl . . . crooked, blurred and totally without punctuation’ (90), and described her work as ‘summer rain, as passionate, spontaneous and native as anything in the circle of song’ (92). Her verse appeared regularly in the paper throughout 1846–7, signed either Mary or E.M.P.D, and she became one of the most popular of the Nation’s women poets. In 1846 she joined the Cork Historical Society, where she met the Young Irelanders Denny Lane and Joseph Brenan. She became informally engaged to Brenan, but the relationship had faltered even before his flight to America in 1849.
As deaths from famine mounted in 1847, Downing became increasingly frustrated by the moderate policies of the Nation, and after the split within the Confederacy in January 1848 transferred her allegiance to the United Irishman, the more radical paper of John Mitchel. During this period she also contributed religious poetry to the Irish People. The shock of Mitchel’s conviction for treason felony in May 1848 and the suppression of the United Irishman shattered her fragile health. She convalesced in the North Presentation Convent, Cork, where she decided to follow her growing sense of a religious vocation. By July 1849 she was signing herself Mary Alphonsus, and on 14 October began her novitiate in the same convent. However, her training was soon disrupted by a serious illness, characterised by sporadic and extended periods of paralysis, which forced her to leave the convent by spring 1851. Though she lived first with her sister, and subsequently in lodgings, she maintained the lifestyle of a lay sister. After the death of her mother in 1860 Downing attempted to take over the latter’s duties at the Fever Hospital, but recurrent ill health led her to resign the post. When her paralysis became total she was admitted in December 1868 to the Mercy Hospital, Cork, and died there 27 January 1869. Her religious poetry was collected and edited as Voices from the heart (1868) by John Pius Leahy (1802–90), bishop of Dromore (1860–90), who also edited her unpublished Novenas and meditations (1879) and Poems for children (1881). Her work is represented in several anthologies, including those of Samuel Lover (c.1895) and Stopford Augustus Brooke and T. W. Rolleston (1900).