During the time of Fr. Ignatius, the Parish Priest of Kilachery and Director of the Convent, the School was raised from primary to Upper primary. The year 1877 was the year of the great famine. As no help could be obtained from surplus areas owing to lack of transport facilities in those days, hundreds of persons were seen on the road side and in public places, lying dead or in terrible agonies of death. What was most heartrending was the sight of children abandoned by their parents or rendered orphans by their death, dirty, ragged, naked, literally reduced to skin and bones and dying of starvation by the roadside or by the side of fences.
To gather and house such helpless children, to feed, clothe and instruct them for Baptism and teach them some means of livelihood, was an Evangelical work, highly appealing to Christian charity. To this appeal there was a ready and enthusiastic response on the part of Catholic priests, among whom special mention may be made, of Fathers Ignatius, Dominic, Ratna Nadher and Kennedy.
The Monastery of the Place’s Garden, whither it was shifted from Kilachery at the beginning of the Great Famine year, and the new Convent of St. Anne at Kilachery were no less alive to the need of receiving these famine-stricken children. The boys about 400 were put under the charge of the Brothers at Place’s Garden and the girls about 200, found asylum in St. Anne’s at Kilachery. It was no easy task to house such a number of girls, instruct them in Religion and prepare them for Baptism, teach and supervise them and equip them for their future state as wives and mothers.
At that time there were only two Nuns, Sisters Joseph and Ignatius in the convent, but they rose to the occasion and, assisted by two lay women, Sagily Showramma and Desam Amurthamma, showed themselves in every way equal to the task. They cared for the children and made the convent a real home for them and not a workshop or a place of employment under a severe task-master exacting maximum amount of work for the minimum amount of maintenance. The children in their turn developed a great affection for their foster-mothers and when they had finally to leave the convent they felt as if they were violently torn from the fond embraces of their parents. Those children remained about eight years with the Nuns and were settled in marriage in the districts of Cuddapah, Kurnool, Bellary, Krishna, Nellore and Chingleput, in groups of 5 and 6 to be of mutual help in their new environments. While a few of these children died under the care of the nuns, a few others had the grace of vocation to the religious state.
The famine of 1877 must be considered an ever memorable year in the annals of St. Anne’s for the most excellent, self-sacrificing and heroic work of the Congregation. St. Paul speaking of his converts said that they formed his crown and glory. “For what is our hope and joy, or crown of glory? Are not you, in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at His Coming? For you are our glory and joy”. (1 Thess. 2: 19-20). Sisters Joseph and Ignatius could well have said the same of the orphans whom they so lovingly cared for and saved.
These Sisters had enough to do looking after the orphans; the teaching in the School was wholly in the hands of grown up girls. Boreddi Mariamma, who entered the Novitiate on 26th July 1881, as Sister Elizabeth, was appointed Headmistress of the school and under her, it soon began to produce excellent results. On the 8th December of the same year, Enumala Showramma and Sagily Rajamma became Novices and took the names of Bernard and Agathamma respectively.
