1892

The girls were taught their letters

Long before the sisters came, this village is said to have had a girls' school: the Church Missionary Society's Rhenius and Schmid are remembered as opening one here in 1821, and teaching needlework and lace along with the letters. The Sisters of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows were Indian religious, formed at Trichinopoly in 1876. By 1892 there were sixty-five of them, and of the four houses they kept beyond that city, one was here. Their particular work was the education of girls, and everywhere, it was written of them, “they direct flourishing schools”. The Society's Roman register sets the priest of Vadakkankulam down as chaplain of that convent and director of its school — in 1900, and again in 1914 under Fr Caussanel. In a country where most girls were never taught to read, the girls of this village were taught to read.