Walker, Margaret (1881–1966), missionary in Calabar, Nigeria, was born 16 March 1881 in Brighton, Sussex, England, fifth of six children – three sons and three daughters – of Col. Edward Walker and Mary Josephine Walker (née Woodhead). She was educated at the convent of the Holy Child, Mayfield, Sussex. In November 1901 she entered the congregation of the Religious Sisters of Charity in Milltown, Dublin, and was professed on 26 May 1904, having received the name ‘Sister Mary Charles’ at her reception in May 1902. Her first assignment after profession was to Basin Lane primary school in Dublin's inner city, where she taught for eight years, as well as attending a course in pedagogy in St Mary's College, Dublin, where she received honours in her final examination.
In July 1912 Sr M. Charles was transferred to St Vincent's convent school, Cork, and three years later, to Foxford, Co. Mayo. Here she found a friend in the person of Mother Arsenius Morrogh Bernard (qv), the local superior, to whom she confided that she felt drawn to work in Africa, though at that time the Sisters of Charity were not yet established in any African country. Mgr Shanahan, CSSp. had appealed to the superior general, Mother Agnes Gertrude, for a foundation in southern Nigeria in 1914. In response to a circular letter from her, Sr M. Charles was one of the first to volunteer for such a mission. Meanwhile she continued teaching in the school in Foxford and compiled a book, Catechism notes, which was used in schools throughout Ireland. In 1920 she was transferred to Bray, where again she taught in the school and prepared a booklet on the work of the congregation, Caritas Christi urget nos (the motto of her order). The proposed Nigerian foundation did not materialise, but in 1923 Sr M. Charles obtained permission to live outside her congregation and work with Bishop Shanahan in Calabar, Nigeria. While there, she was known as Sr Magdalen.
Sr Magdalen's work in Calabar was not confined to education, though this was her primary apostolate – preparing the girls to be good wives and mothers, training teachers to carry on the work, establishing literacy centres, vocational education, and Montessori classes. She was responsible for the building of schools and dispensaries and centres for twins and their mothers (where these were social outcasts), and visited the poor in their homes. She organised religious instruction for women and children, and the numbers attending grew from 300 in 1924 to 1,000 in 1929. She strove to raise the status of women and gave them a sense of their own dignity. During a visit to Foxford, Bishop Shanahan remarked: ‘Sr Mary Charles has done more work than all the priests of the mission put together.’ She paved the way for the establishment of a congregation of indigenous religious sisters – the Handmaids of the Holy Child Jesus – in the early 1930s, and the first four candidates for this congregation were girls whom she had trained.
Sr M. Charles's health was failing before she left Nigeria in 1934. She spent a year in the British Cameroons, helping a community of Franciscan Sisters in their schools, after which she returned to England and worked under the direction of ecclesiastical superiors till her health broke down in 1946. She was nursed by her sister-in-law in her home. She dressed in lay clothes for security reasons, since she was not attached to a convent.
Before leaving the congregation of the Religious Sisters of Charity to embark on her Nigerian mission, Sister M. Charles had made a promise to the superior general and to the then archbishop of Dublin, Dr Edward J. Byrne (qv), that she would not ask to be received back into the congregation if the venture failed or if she was unable to endure the climate. However, she had never ceased to be a Sister of Charity, and some thirty years later the archbishop of Dublin, Dr McQuaid (qv), assured the superior general that there was no reason why she should not be received back into the congregation, since she had never ceased to be a member of it. Accordingly, she was invited to return and gladly accepted the invitation. She was welcomed home to Milltown on 18 January 1956.
In the summer of 1956 she was sent to Chikuni, Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia), where she was to take charge of the formation of a young congregation of African Sisters, the Handmaids of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This work was subsequently taken over by an African Sister, and Sr M. Charles devoted her time to prayer and to the making of altar breads. She died in Chikuni on 27 February 1966 and was buried in the local cemetery. In October 1981, at the request of the Nigerian Handmaids of the Holy Child Jesus, her remains were exhumed and transferred to Calabar, where her memory is still revered.