eLumenate: Rose Hawthorne - Third Order

ATE
BIOGRAPHY OF
Mother Mary Alphonsa, O.P.
[Rose Hawthorne Lathrop]
By Carla and the members of the Rose Hawthorne Pro‐Chapter
of the Lay Fraternity of St. Dominic
Fall 2012
Mother M. Alphonsa Lathrop, O.P., was born Rose Hawthorne on
May 20, 1851 in Lenox Massachusetts to the great American novelist Nathan‐
iel Hawthorne and Sophie Peabody. She was brought up in England and
studied art in Germany and Italy. She came from a privileged and famous
family that loved her very much and raised her to become a very refined,
educated young lady. Rose was raised as a Unitarian.
In 1871 on September 11 she married a writer named George Lathrop
who was an Episcopalian. In November of 1876 Rose gave birth to a son
named Francis. She was completely devoted to her son. When he passed
away at the age of 4, Rose and her husband were devastated. This tragedy
may have led both of them to be drawn to the Catholic Church through car‐
ing friends who supplied them with spiritual writings of the Church.
In by 1891 both were received formally into the Roman Catholic Church. In spite of this their
union was doomed to a separation due to her husband’s alcoholism and depression.
Rose moved to New York City when she was in her forties, where she began to focus in ear‐
nest on her literary career. Her poems and short stories were published in Harpers Weekly, The At‐
lantic Monthly, and the Century Magazine. 1 Her life was filled by writing and socializing with the
highest of society. She made many connections which would serve her greatly in the future when
she was busy raising funds and organizing charitable enterprises for the homes for the incurable
cancerous which she would eventually found.
A good friend of hers in New York City was very sick with cancer and eventually died. This
event brought her closer to the hospitals that were serving cancer patients. Rose was appalled when
she discovered that only the rich were able to get the treatment they needed and the poor, who
could not pay, were left to die agonizing deaths, some alone on the streets if they had no one to care
for them. She had become aware of the terrible plight of the impoverished victims of cancer, a dis‐
ease for which there was little available treatment. Once diagnosed, cancer cases were not permitted
to remain in New York hospitals. Those without family or other means were banished to die in
bleak isolation on Blackwellʹs Island. Rose became convinced that her vocation was to provide an
alternative to this fate. 2 She was dealing with an illness which was considered loathsome and com‐
municable, like leprosy, hers was an act of immense charity and personal heroism. 3
Eventually, God moved her in such a magnanimous way that she decided, at age 45, to enroll
in a three‐month nursing course at New York’s Cancer Hospital; in the fall of 1896, Rose moved into
a small three room cold water flat in the impoverished section of the lower east side of Manhattan. 4
Rose lived among the very poor and took dying cancer patients off the streets to care for them. She
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