eLumenate: Rose Hawthorne - Third Order

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was overwhelmed with work and many times
she just went out on the street or door to door
to help the impoverished sick.
Rose said at the time “ʺNo description
had given me a real knowledge of how dark
the passages are in the daytime, how miserably
inadequate the water supply, how impossible
that the masses of poor in tenements should
keep themselves or their quarters clean.ʺ But
keeping her focus on God, she resolved ʺ... to
take the lowest class we know both in poverty
and suffering and put them in such a condition,
that if our Lord knocked at the door we should
not be ashamed to show what we have done.ʺ 5
A successful portrait painter by the
name of Alice Huber, was quite taken with
Roseʹs mission like approach and compassion
and joined her in her quest to serve the dying
cancerous poor in the lower east side on Water
Street. Alice was known to
have said” When I find a
work of perfect charity, I
will join it.ʺ Alice went to
visit Rose in November
1897 after reading one of
Rose’s articles describing
how she cares for the
poor. 6 Alice described her
visit:
“A fair bright‐faced woman, who
was bending over an old woman
bandaging up her leg, rose from
her work and came forward to
meet me. I looked at her as she
stood there, the only bright being
in all that mass of ugliness and
misery. As I looked at her, a
great feeling of affection and pity
came into my heart for her. So, at
last I mustered up courage and
offered to help her one afternoon
of each week.ʺ
Fall 2012
It was then that Alice found “the work of per‐
fect charity” and joined Rose on March 24,
1898. 7
Rose Hawthorne and Alice Huber
shared a profoundly spiritual human love,
which sustained them both in this enormously
difficult undertaking. 8 This dedication and
love for the poor with cancer was the corner‐
stone and foundation for all their works.
During this time she wrote many articles
and flyers about the plight of these unfortu‐
nates. She was able to get news out to the pub‐
lic through her writing abilities and her connec‐
tions to influential groups of the New York
City establishment. Donations started pouring
in little by little. A Do‐
minican priest, Rev.
Clement Thuente from
St. Vincent Ferrer Pri‐
ory visited them and
saw the statue of St
Rose of Lima in their
apartment and encour‐
aged them to become Dominican Tertiaries.
On September 14, 1899 Rose and Alice became
Tertiaries under Archbishop Michael Corrigan.
Roseʹs husband died in 1898 and a year
later she had moved to a
larger house calling it St.
Rose Free Home for In‐
curable Cancer. On Dec
8, 1900, Rose made her
vows as a Dominican nun
taking the name of Sister
M. Alphonsa; and Alice
took the name Sister M. Rose. Together, they
founded the Dominican Congregation of St
Rose of Lima, later called the Servants of Relief
for Incurable Cancer. The most fundamental
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