Mary Ellen Adrien, fondly known as Molly, was born on 21 September 1873, at Micknanstown, County Meath. She came from a prosperous middle-class Roman Catholic professional family; whose menfolk had a propensity to have become medical doctor-surgeons of some repute. The Adrien’s, according to Sir Charles Cameron, had been of Huguenot extraction, which in general terms, were Protestants who fled persecution in France after the terms of the Edict of Nantes were abolished by King Louis X1V in 1685.1 Molly’s family linkages in Dublin City were through her great-great-grandfather, William Adrien, who was a tallow-chandler at 42 Thomas Street, Dublin, in c. 1783.2 Along the way some of the Adrien’s became Roman Catholics through inter-marriage as ...