The nuns began taking in pupils only ten days after moving in, establishing the first CHIJ school in Singapore. Reverend Mother Mathilde staffed her school with sisters from the parent Society, the Institute of the Charitable Schools of the Holy Infant Jesus of Saint Maur. She dedicated 20 years of her life turning the convent into a school, a house at the corner of the Stamford Road and North Bridge Road was acquired in 1855 to served as an orphanage and refuge known as Home for Abandoned Babies for local girls and women and sometimes boys. Two classes were conducted, one for fee-paying students and another for orphans and the poor. Slowly, the nuns managed to restore the house into a simple but austere residence.