Teresa Higginson was oblivious to the blood trickling down her neck and on to her white scarf as she emerged from the church where she had been praying. A colleague spotted the stain and quietly advised her to change before returning to teach in a nearby school, later saying she would never forget Teresa’s expression when she realised what was happening.
Yet it was not the blood that horrified Teresa, but the fact that someone noticed the wounds of Christ that she strived to conceal.
She first received the stigmata in Wigan, Lancashire, on the Good Friday of 1874, and by summer of 1880 her head and hands were bleeding several times a day, including in the classroom of St Alexander’s School in Bootle, Liverpool, witnessed by pupils and teachers alike.
