Description

Extended Data

Birth Place

London, England

Biography

sketcher, scientist, Roman Catholic priest and mystic, was born in London on 15 November 1832, fourth son of James Dominic Woods, a parliamentary reporter who had studied law, and Henrietta Maria Saint-Eloy, née Tenison. Details of his early life given in the memoirs he dictated in 1887-88 are sometimes unreliable, for Woods romanticised his past, claiming for example that (despite having been baptised a Roman Catholic as an infant) he was a convert to the faith. He attended the Government School of Design for a few months in 1848 before abandoning art for journalism in 1849. The following year he joined the Passionist Order but, after prolonged bouts of the ill-health which would dog him all his life, transferred to the less strict Marists and was sent to recuperate in France. There he came into contact with the mystics Julien Eymard and Jean Baptiste Vianney (both later canonised) who perhaps inspired his own later spiritual extravagances. Woods arrived at Hobart Town on 30 January 1855 as a lay chaplain and teacher, but he soon fell out with Bishop R.W. Willson (a pattern that was to repeat itself in other colonial dioceses). He joined his older brother, James, in Adelaide, where he was ordained priest on 4 January 1857. He was appointed to a large parish in the south-east of the colony of South Australia and for a time combined his pastoral work with geological field studies. He corresponded with fellow natural historians such as W.B. Clarke and Baron von Mueller , sent scientific papers to the Victorian Philosophical Institute, and wrote his first book, Geological Observations in South Australia (London 1862). His biographer, O’Neill, wrote that during this period Woods 'amused himself occasionally with drawing and painting, making this accomplishment helpful to his scientific work. He could paint excellent reproductions of flowers, shells and the like and these sketches often served to illustrate his published writings’. Geological Observations , however, was illustrated with drawings by Alexander Burkitt . In the mid 1860s, with his protégée Mary McKillop, Woods founded the Sisters of St Joseph as a teaching order. In 1867 Woods became director-general of the Catholic education system of South Australia, as well as editor of The Southern Cross . In 1870, while Sister Mary McKillop was in Brisbane setting up a Queensland branch of the order, the Adelaide convent, left under Woods’s spiritual guidance, was apparently visited by a horde of tormenting devils who burned beds, threw boiling liquid over the sleeping nuns and violated the chapel, leaving blood-stains on the altar cloth. Even after an ecclesiastical inquiry had elicited a confession from the nun who had orchestrated these events, Woods persisted in his foolhardy belief in their authenticity. His position in Adelaide became untenable and he was actively encouraged by church authorities to leave South Australia altogether. Exiled to the eastern colonies, he remained a controversial figure, becoming a freelance preacher and missionary and founding a second order of nuns (the Sisters of Perpetual Adoration). He suffered frequent episodes of illness (suspected to have been petit mal ), during which he was subject to visions and torments, managing to alienate by his behaviour many would-be supporters. It is difficult to reconcile this image of Woods as mystic with his parallel scientific persona. Yet throughout this period of intense religious fervour he continued his geological and palaeontological work, even expanding his studies to include marine biology. His scholarship was respected by associates such as William Macleay and he was elected president of the Linnaean Society of New South Wales in 1880, having published twenty-three scientific papers the previous year. The illustrations accompanying them were sometimes his own-necessarily detailed, even finicky, drawings of fossils or shells to record type specimens. More interesting than these diagrams, and far more revealing, are the sketches of people and places Woods made when travelling in Asia in 1883-86. His sketchbook (Catholic Historical Museum) contains lightning portraits such as that of the Filipina Antonina (1886), as well as a series of delicate watercolours he made while ill and snow-bound in Japan during the winter of 1885-86. Woods’s health rapidly declined from the time of his return to Australia. He was cared for in a house in Elizabeth Street, Sydney, where he dictated his memoirs and some articles for the popular press. He died there on 7 October 1889 and was buried in Waverley Cemetery. Writers: Callaway, Anita Date written: 1992 Last updated: 2011

Born

b. 15 November 1832

Summary

Scientist and Roman Catholic priest, Woods was skilled at detailed sketches of his specimens and often sent them in with his scientific publications. His ecclesiastical life was far more controversial, he suffered many bouts of visions and torments, had frequent fall-outs with other parishioners until he was finally exiled by South Australian church authorities.

Gender

Male

Died

7 October 1889

Age at death

57