Swifty: A Life of Yvonne Swift

By Edmund Campion

The extraordinary story of how a devoted nun became an equally devoted campaigner for justice – as a successful criminal defence lawyer. When Yvonne Benedicta Swift entered the Sacre Coeur convent in Rose Bay in 1938, she was determined to dedicate herself to religious life. But in the 1970s she did something unusual: retrained as a lawyer, established her own practice and defended some of Sydney's most notorious criminals. In her shift to the law, 'Swifty', as she was known, left behind an impressive career as principal of the Rose Bay School of the Sacred Heart, and later Sancta Sophia College at the University of Sydney. In her legal practice she took on clients who she believed had been wronged, especially by the legal system itself. Known for her plain-speaking approach and her deeply compassionate outlook, Swifty went on to represent the likes of convicted murderers Douglas Rendell and Arthur Loveday, underworld figure Bill Bayeh, and Bandidos gang members for everything from traffic offences to murder. The story of this extraordinary woman, who treated everyone from bishops to bikies equally, is a truly unusual and remarkable one.

• Language: English
• Publisher: NewSouth
• Release date: Jun 14, 2016
• ISBN: 9781742242491

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1

A French convent

When the Swift family moved from Sydney to Melbourne in 1921 they had to find a school for their only child, nine-year-old Yvonne Benedicta. She had been with the Dominican nuns at Moss Vale, more than 100 kilometres south of Sydney; now they entrusted her as a boarder to the Sacre Coeur nuns, in Burke Road Glen Iris, near their new home in East Balwyn. Established 33 years earlier, the school was still a small one but its buildings were impressive – the original mansion on ten acres where the school started and a later addition, a tall Gothic-style block of classrooms with a chapel. There were some 60 pupils, a number that would not change much through Yvonne’s nine years at Burke Road. Taking her into town to Snow’s store in Flinders Street, her mother kitted her out in the navy and tan school uniform and other necessities and presented her to her new school in February 1922.

The year opened with a public reading of the School Rule. They did that every year at Burke Road; it was a pointer to the culture underpinning daily life there. For this was a convent school where pupils shared the life and aspirations of the nuns, whose days also were measured by a rule, the Rule of Religious of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (RSCJ). If some of the precepts of the School Rule swept over the new girl unnoticed on her first day, Yvonne soon came to appreciate the values contained there. One day she would commit herself to those values by becoming an RSCJ nun herself, a commitment she kept until she died.

Celebrations and festivals afford insights into any society. The big day of the year at this convent school was Reverend Mother’s feast day, when there would be a concert and presentations to Reverend Mother of a ‘spiritual bouquet’ (Masses, prayers and acts of self-denial offered for her ‘intentions’), reports of good behaviour attempted by the whole school, such as prompt obedience to the bell, and accounts of special projects undertaken by each class. One by one, class representatives brought their feast-day offerings to lay at Reverend Mother’s feet in a formal gathering of the whole school. Here was recognition of her leadership in what was fundamentally a moral enterprise.

The moral purpose of the school was also evident in another formal gathering every week. Called ‘Weekly Notes’ or ‘Exemptions’, this brought the school in assembly before the community of nuns. Each girl’s name was called and her conduct during the week noted: ‘Very Good’, ‘Good’, ‘Indifferent’ or ‘No Note’. ‘No Note’ was to be in disgrace, for instance for speaking during a period of silence four or more times in the week. To any observer the moral impetus of this weekly exercise was clear.

Silence was a noticeable aspect of the school’s culture. Silence was to be observed in the study room, during meals, at night after prayers and moving from place to place. One did not move of one’s own volition: girls stood silent in ranks until a nun gave a signal. Speaking was allowed at recreation and at needlework, ‘that the children may learn the art of conversation’, as the School Rule noted. The emphasis, however, was on the usefulness of silence. Its rationale was self-control. Janet Erskine Stuart, the inspirer of 20th-century RSCJs, wrote early in the century, ‘Self-control is so vital to the conduct of life that no price is too great to pay for the acquiring of the habit.’

The tone of the school was very French; French words were part of the school vocabulary. They played French games and sang French hymns, called the nuns Mère and curtsied like young Frenchwomen (‘one, two, three, down … four, five, six, up for formal occasions, and the short bob when one passed the superior, mistress general, priests or visitors’ – to quote from Leila Barlow RSCJ’s history of Sacre Coeur, Rose Bay). When conversation was allowed at breakfast, it was in French. The premier sodality in the school was Les Enfants de Marie; it would be some years before this title was anglicised to Children of Mary.

There were French nuns in the community from the early days of Burke Road. The suppression of 46 Sacre Coeur convents by the secularist government of France in the early 20th century had sent 2500 nuns to all parts of the world, three of them to Melbourne, in 1904. The suppressed convents sent their chapel treasures out of France too, some of which came to Burke Road: the marble shrine and altar and a statue of Mary from Lille; the organ from Marseilles; and chapel stalls from Angoulême. The school clock came from Bordeaux. Theirs was an international sorority, the wide world of Sacre Coeur sisterhood.

A FRENCH VOCABULARY

Nuns were called Mère and their written title was Madame, abbreviated to Me. Until the mid-1920s, the Mother Assistant kept the day-today House Journal in French and the Econome converted the accounts to be sent to the Maison Mère into francs and sous. French words were absorbed into the school’s vocabulary. After a perfect rentrée (all back on time) the children were given a congé de joie (joy holiday). They aspired to become Enfants de Marie and were given the charge of adjustrice (helper around the house). They sang French hymns, such as Coeur de Jesus and J’irai la voir un jour, made parterres (carpets of flowers) for important occasions and placed notes for the Mistress-General in the pochon attached to her door. After school, the boarders had goûter (a snack) and collected their paquets of clean clothes from the linen room. At recreation they played catte and on feast days experienced the excitement of the traditional games, cache and loup.

Sacre Coeur Burke Road 1888–1988.

2

Schooldays

The heart of this convent school was the chapel. Elsewhere a school’s heart might be found in the library or perhaps on a football field but at Burke Road it was the chapel. Each day began there with Mass and ended with night prayers. The girls sat in the body of the church flanked by nuns’ stalls along the walls, with convent superiors accommodated in tribunes at the back facing the altar. Stained glass windows alongside the altar depicted episodes from the childhood of Jesus, his presentation in the temple and later his being found there among the Jewish elders. On the front wall above the altar was a crucifix, a memento of Janet Erskine Stuart who visited the school in 1913 and, finding the bare chapel wall unattractive, sent out a crucifix when she returned to Belgium. Inside the main door, a chapel dedicated to Mary – Mater Admirabilis , to whom the Sacre Coeur students had a special devotion – invited private prayer. Elsewhere, along the walls religious pictures were an everyday reminder of the school’s purpose, most notably lifesized frescoes of Gospel scenes by Mother Zahel, an RSCJ nun and