Moore, Georgina (Sister Mary Clare) (1814–74), Sister of Mercy, foundress, Crimean war nurse, and teacher, was born 20 March 1814 in the Church of Ireland parish of St Ann's, Dublin, youngest among three children (one son and two daughters) of George and Catherine Moore, both protestants. George Moore died in 1817, and in 1823 Mrs Moore and her three children became Roman catholics. Georgina was educated privately, and then worked as a governess. On 13 October 1828 she took up duty as governess to a niece and a young cousin of Catherine McAuley (qv) who were living in the House of Mercy, Baggot St., Dublin. She became involved in the other works of the House of Mercy. On 23 January 1832 she received the habit of the Sisters of Mercy at the recently founded convent in Baggot St., taking the name Sister Mary Clare, and was professed 24 January 1833 (the congregation had been founded 12 December 1831). During the 1832 cholera epidemic she nursed victims in the Townsend St. depot. Mother M. Clare was appointed superior of the Cork foundation (established 6 July 1837), where she trained the English candidates for the first Convent of Mercy in England, at Bermondsey, south-east London. On 19 November 1839 she became the first superior of the Bermondsey foundation, a temporary appointment until Sr M. Clare Agnew was appointed to the position. Mother M. Clare returned to Cork (26 June 1841), but returned permanently to Bermondsey on 10 December 1841, on the removal of her predecessor because of her eccentricity, instability, and misunderstanding of her vocation.
Mother M. Clare and her sisters visited the poor in their homes and in Guy's and St Thomas's Hospitals, instructed adult converts and catholics who had not been attending church, and conducted poor schools in the parish. Requests for nursing care in their own homes came from the duchess of Leeds, for her husband, and from the Marchioness Wellesley.
On 17 October 1854, at the request of Dr Thomas Grant, bishop of Southwark, Mother M. Clare and four other sisters went to the Crimea to nurse the sick and wounded soldiers of the British army during the war against Russia. They left London before Florence Nightingale's departure, but in response to Dr Grant's request remained in Paris until joined by the Nightingale party (22 October). Mother M. Clare visited hospitals in Paris to study nursing practice and procured cases of surgical instruments, which later proved useful to the medical officers in the Crimea. When the group arrived in Constantinople on 4 November, Mother M. Clare took charge of the kitchens, the stores, and the orderlies employed in these departments. The other sisters and the Florence Nightingale party took charge of 2,500 wounded in an old Turkish barracks that had been converted into a makeshift hospital. Later Mother M. Clare was assigned to the barracks hospital in Scutari, Turkey, where she nursed victims of an outbreak of cholera in 1855. She returned home to London (28 April 1856) after a serious illness. Florence Nightingale paid tribute to her qualities in a letter from Balaclava and acknowledged her indebtedness to Mother M. Clare in the performance of her nursing duties. A lifelong friendship developed between these two women.
Mother M. Clare founded eight convents in England: Chelsea (1845), Bristol (1846), Brighton (1852), St John's and Elizabeth's Hospital, London (1856), Wigton (1857), Abingdon (1860), Gravesend (1860), Clifford (1870), and a branch convent and House of Mercy in Eltham (1874). She died 13 December 1874 in the Convent of Mercy, Bermondsey, and was buried in the convent cemetery. Other foundations from Ireland included Birmingham (1841), Liverpool and Sunderland (1843), Queen's Square, London (1844), Cheadle and Derby (1849), Hull (1857), Glasgow (1849), Crispin St., London, and Edinburgh (1858), Commercial Road, London, and Dundee (1859), and Shrewsbury (1868).