Lawrence Gregory is the NINS senior archivist and UK agent, and a historian of nineteenth-century English Catholicism, who also enjoys cats and steam trains.
In 2022, the National Institute for Newman Studies began a second phase of the digitization project at the Birmingham Oratory. The project involved scanning the correspondence archives of the Oratory Fathers who lived and worked with Cardinal Newman, including Fathers William Neville, Frederick Bowles, Edward Caswall, Paul Eaglesim, and Nicholas Darnell.
The NINS Digital Collections contains one letter from Father Basil Maturin to Bishop Amigo discussing his attendance at Father Tyrrell’s funeral. Father Maturin was born February 15, 1847 at All Saints Vicarage, Grangegorman, Co. Dublin, the third of ten children of the Rev. William Maturin. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and originally took Anglican Orders in 1870.
The mission at Stone, Staffordshire was begun by Blessed Dominic Barberi who resided at nearby Aston Hall. In 1844 he opened the chapel of St. Anne, which was designed by A. W. N. Pugin.
Included in the archives of the Birmingham Oratory, which were digitized in 2012, are two scrap books compiled by Newman. He labeled these his Autographic Remains. They contain letters, notes, sketches and other items related to his formative years between his 1806 and the death of his mother in 1836.
The Rev. Isaac Williams (1802–1865) was a contemporary of John Henry Newman at Trinity College, Oxford, and served as assistant curate to Newman at Littlemore. He contributed several Tracts, and several of his letters to Newman are now included in the NINS Digital Collections.
The Sisters of Mercy are probably one of the best-known female Catholic congregations, having even entered popular culture; so much so that in 1971 musician and singer Leonard Cohen used their name as a title for one of his songs. Later in 1980 a newly formed rock band also took the name, having been influenced by Cohen’s song. However conflicted anybody might feel about the use of the name in these contexts, it demonstrates the indelible impression that the congregation has made on society in general, in a way that few others have.
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