Whitty, Ellen (Sister Mary Vincent) (1819–92), Sister of Mercy, foundress, and educator, was born 1 March 1819 in Poldharrigge, Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford, daughter of Robert Whitty and Mary Whitty. She had two sisters and three brothers. Educated in Enniscorthy and the Academy of Miss Finn in Hardwick Place, Dublin, she entered the Convent of Mercy, Baggot St., Dublin (16 January 1839), received the habit of the Sisters of Mercy (23 July 1839), taking the religious name Sister Mary Vincent, and was professed 19 August 1841. She undertook her three-year monitorial teacher-training in the Baggot St. school and was awarded her National Board teacher's certificate in 1842.
Sr M. Vincent served as bursar, novice mistress, and assistant superior, and was elected superior of the convent 26 September 1849. She was in charge of the branch convents in Booterstown and Kingstown (Dún Laoghaire), the House of Mercy, and the national school, which was extended during her six-year term of office. Branch convents were founded in Jervis St. Hospital (15 August 1854), where the sisters took up nursing duties, and in Glasthule, Co. Dublin (1855), to establish a home for unmarried mothers. Independent convents were founded in Loughrea, Co. Galway (1850), and Belfast (1854). Athy, Co. Kildare, was founded in conjunction with Carlow in October 1852. In 1849 Mother M. Vincent purchased for £1,530 a site for a future teacher-training college (opened 1877), and in 1851 purchased a fifteen-acre site fronting Eccles St., Dublin, for the future Mater Misercordiae Hospital. An architect was engaged to visit hospitals in Edinburgh and London before plans were drawn up. In 1852 three sisters were sent to the Hôtel Dieu in Paris and to other French institutions to study the hospital system. In response to a request from the secretary for war, Sydney Herbert, for sisters to nurse in the Crimea during the war of 1854–6, Mother M. Vincent recruited volunteers from Convents of Mercy in Baggot St., Carlow, Charleville, and Kinsale, and from Liverpool and Chelsea in England.
Mother M. Vincent led a foundation to Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, travelling on board the Donald McKay which left Liverpool 8 December 1860, arriving in Brisbane 10 May 1861. She was joint founder, with the bishop Dr James Quinn (qv), of the Queensland catholic educational system, based on the Irish national board system of education. When the Queensland board of education stopped paying salaries to teachers of denominational schools, she established an independent system. She divided each school into a select and general school, with the former subsidising the latter. In spite of opposition from the clergy and others, she admitted non-catholic children to her schools. In 1866 her seven schools were reconnected with the unified board of administration, but teachers could not give religious and secular instruction in the same school. This problem was solved by assigning the sisters to teach secular subjects in one school and religion in another.
Mother M. Vincent lived in Brisbane for thirty-one years, during which she commenced hospital and home visitation and established convents, orphanages, St Anne's technical school for dressmaking and commercial classes, day and boarding schools, a teacher-training college for lay teachers, a model school for pupil teachers, and a teacher-training school for teachers coming through the old pupil–teacher system. Mother M. Vincent Whitty died in Brisbane 9 March 1892 and is buried in the community cemetery.