Like a number of other Catholic ladies in Dublin in the last century, Maria Murray was in the habit of roaming poor areas of the city to ascertain how many Catholic children attended Protestant schools. Her purpose, she wrote to Cullen in 1864, was to take ‘as many children from the proselytising parties as I can snatch’. She also explained that it was not the government which supported these institutions but that it was ‘the Protestant ladies of Dublin who are doing the mischief’. Murray suggested to Cullen that one way to counteract this problem was to establish an alternative Catholic run home to look after any children who were in danger of falling into Protestant hands. Murray's school does not appear to have become a reality but other Catholic women established orphanages and homes to counteract what they saw as the proselytising zeal of Protestants. Throughout most of the nineteenth century state involvement in the provision of institutional services, such as schools and workhouses, created much heated debate regarding religious issues. It was from the 1850s that the Catholic church reacted most vigorously to proselytism. To the forefront of that fight, particularly for the ‘souls of children’, were Catholic female religious. Of all aspects of philanthropic endeavour in the nineteenth century it was women's work with children which most empowered them. It was also the work which most divided women philanthropists from each other.

The maternal role attributed to women allowed them greater access to institutions which dealt with children, and individual women established numerous orphanages and homes to look after the needs of various groups, whether orphans, deserted children or those who lived on the streets.