When the Rev. John Hamilton (Jack) Brownrigg died in 1921 he left a widow Susan Isobelle Norwood Brownrigg, and son John Winston age 7 and a daughter Iris Isobelle age 6. The Liddle family (good Methodists) found a home for the Brownriggs in Donacloney when they had to leave the manse in Moville and undertook to create a career for Winston in the linen business. The Methodist Church found places for both children as boarders in the Methodist College Belfast, which must have been a shock following a full time private tutor, and set up a fund to secure their futures. Mrs Brownrigg brought her mother to Donacloney, trained as a midwife and went out to work to support her family. Granny Dawson ran an extremely frugal regime based on her personal childhood experience of the famine. Mrs Brownrigg, who wore her widow's weeds for the rest of her life, brought home grim accounts of home births on piles of straw to avoid soiling the bed and smothering deformed babies. Iris was destined to be the last of a long line of hard working, opinionated, managing down-right bossy women. Iris's moiety of the fund took her to Princess Christian College in Manchester where she trained as a Children's Nurse. Princess Christian, founded by a daughter of Queen Victoria, seems to have operated in the shadow of Norland College. Its graduates bragged about training with real babies, and that Norland trained with dolls; but they were mortified every time another royal baby was found a Norland Nanny. Apart from working as her brother's housekeeper for a short period in Dublin, and being briefly engaged to be married, Iris's early career as a Children's Nurse was in institutions on both sides of the Atlantic and large households where she was a small cog in a big wheel and had no outlet for initiative and no opportunity to take charge. She slowly developed a loyal private clientele of families to whom she regularly returned. She would look after a new baby for a month and return later in the year to run the house and look after the children while the parents went on holiday. Finally she was in her element; she would take charge of any situation, deputise for anyone. She was equally at home in town or on a farm, she managed cleaners, maids, dairymen and peers of the realm with equal ease; dealing with every emergency that fate threw in her path. Illness, accidents, broken limbs, storm damage, burst pipes, ponies escaped on the main road, World War One mine washed up in the front garden; all were dealt with by the time the parents got home. After a lengthy period of years more-or-less living out of a suitcase, three things happened which brought about the ultimate development in her career. Iris's mother was beginning to feel her age and it became obvious that Iris would have to spend more time at home. She was booked-out just too far in advance; a nineteen year old bride (whom she had nursed as a baby) came to her with a five year diary and asked, "Brownie, can I have a baby in October two years hence". A couple of her favourite clients were getting frustrated at not being able to get away for holidays when they wanted, and started to encourage her to set up an agency. After toying with calling it the "Mary Poppins Agency" (the film had recently been released) she settled on calling it "Irish Aunts". In 1967 she advertised for staff in "Court and Personal" in the Belfast Newsletter and interviewed the first four in a Belfast Hotel. The Agency started off merely dealing with Iris's regular clientele, greatly easing their frustration and expanded solely by word of mouth. The work with children never significantly increased beyond that which a few staff could cover; but work with the elderly took off and became the Agency's mainstay. Iris was making a living. During the first years she still went to work for a few select clients, leaving a friend to call in with her mother every day and answer the telephone in the mornings. In 1974 Iris was the beneficiary of a small private legacy which enabled her to leave the Agency's first address at 20 Belfast Road, Lisburn; and buy a house at 12 The Mount, Belfast; where she set up home with her mother and her business. Iris's mother died in 1975. Iris travelled to Australia and elsewhere without spending too much of her capital, and the Agency quietly thrived in the background. However by the early 1980s her health began to deteriorate, her hands became too arthritic to continue with her lifetime favourite hobby, sewing, patchwork and tapestry (the Ulster Folk Museum had displayed and tried to acquire her silk bedspread). The Agency began to contract, the accountants advised her to sell it. For the financial year 1985 - 86 the Agency netted £1,900 before tax, and no purchaser could be found. In April 1986 Iris gifted the Agency to her nephew with only four operating contracts and twenty-one staff on its books. Iris's attempt to provide for her retirement by converting 12 The Mount into three separate apartments failed when she ran out of capital before the conversion was completed. She sold the house with a lifetime lease on the ground floor flat and continued in her previous lifestyle, but now living on her capital. She would regale all who would listen to stories of how she set up the business of which she was so proud, and tell them of the other two businesses for which she claimed responsibility. (Apparently returning from Canada just after the war she tried to rent a radio from a supplier in Lisburn who had never heard of this North American concept and the present day company "Radio Rentals" was born. She also claimed that, while looking after the children of one of the principals of Anderson & McAuley's Belfast department store, she persuaded them that the time was right to set up Belfast's first out-of-town superstore, and "Supermac" was built.) Iris became increasingly eccentric, she would hit grown men and women around the legs with her walking stick, admonishing them "bad boy" or "bad girl" for such offences as leaving a gate open or parking in front of her house. In 1993 she eventually ran out of capital and just could not understand why the bank would not continue to permit her to write cheques, her car was sold and her nephew took control of her financial affairs. Iris died on 11th December 1996, just six months after her brother, at the age of 82 years, following two broken hips (her "spirited character" just would not let her fade away quietly) and a stroke.
