Nell McCafferty and Queen’s University

Sir, – In an article on the late Nell McCafferty, you write that “As secondary education opened up to Catholics in the 1960s, she was among the early cohorts of Catholics admitted to Queen’s University Belfast (News, August 22nd).

On the basis of this statement, the uninformed reader might form the impression that there was no provision for Catholic secondary education in Northern Ireland before the 1960s and that members of the church were barred from Queen’s until that decade. In fact there are many examples of Catholic secondary schools on this side of the border from the 19th century (eg St Malachy’s, Belfast) or the early years of the last century (Mount Lourdes, Enniskillen).

Nell McCafferty benefitted from increased access to secondary schools for both Catholics and Protestants under the 1947 Northern Ireland Education Act. Queen’s has had a Catholic presence since its foundation in the 1840s. Low numbers of Catholics there for much of the 19th century can be accounted for in part by the hostility of the hierarchy to all three Queen’s colleges (Cork and Galway as well as Belfast). The 1908 University Act provided for the teaching of scholastic philosophy at Queen’s. This was followed by the appointment in 1909 of a Catholic dean of residence.

As JC Beckett and TW Moody note in their history of Queen’s, by 1915 a quarter of all students at Queen’s were Catholics. It might be added that two future cardinals – Conway and Daly – graduated from the university decades before Nell McCafferty arrived there. – Yours, etc,