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The Mystery and Aura of the Pauper's Grave
When Charles Gordon O'Neill passed away at Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital on the 8 November 1900 at the age of seventy-two, it was likely that memory of him would fade quickly. An Irish-Scots bachelor, he had no family resident other than an equally poor elder brother John James, who would follow him to the grave within a year after being cared for by the Little Sisters of the Poor.1
Two years later, a handsome gravestone was purchased by voluntary contributions from Sydney Catholics and erected at Rookwood necropolis to mark the remains and those of his brother. Its ornamented cross urged the viewer to 'Of your Charity Pray for the Souls' of Charles and his brother John; added the initials M. I .C .E (Member of the Institution of Engineers) after Charles' name and proclaimed that he was the founder of the St Vincent de Paul Society in Australasia.2 A pilgrimage led by Father Pierre Le Rennetel sm of St Patrick's Church Hill marked the dedication of the monument on 6 July 1902. Six days later, also reporting the ceremony, an obituary was published in the Freemans' Journal. That obituary revealed a life of exceptional piety:
No two figures were better known in the streets of Sydney than those of Charles O'Neill and his brother John, who was his inseparable companion... A lengthy volume could be written concerning the attachment of the two brothers, and the many anecdotes of pathetic simplicity, mutual forbearance, and self-sacrifice of the two pious men who lived more in heaven than on earth.3
During the pre-Federation Victorian era, the Australian public lauded the exemplary Christian or 'good' death.4 Even so, the memory of the O'Neill brothers in the slums of Sydney's The Rock's district had been something much more than inspirational and would prove more enduring over time.
Apart from the monument erected in 1902, but one memento of Charles O'Neill remained. Shortly before his death, O'Neill had handed to a young volunteer of the St Patrick's Conference of the St Vincent de Paul Society, a small spiritual guidebook.5 It was his copy of a Manual of the Saint Vincent de Paul Society, published in 1877 most likely in Dublin, containing...