Catherine McAuley was a wealthy heiress who spent her fortune trying to help the poor, Her first "House of Mercy" in Baggot St. was built for what nowadays we would call the "underprivileged women of Dublin" . Her brother William McAuley unkindly nicknamed the building 'Kitty's Folly. Catherine, who had neither wish nor inclination to be a nun, ended up as mother foundress of the Mercy Order, the second largest order of nuns in the world.