22 November 2018

The vicar’s daughter who
founded an order of nuns
in Victorian London

An acrylic on linen by D Joanna Jamieson OSB in the Kairos Centre, Roehampton, depicting the life and work of Mother Magdalen (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Patrick Comerford

The Poor Servants of the Mother of God, who run the Kairos Centre where I am staying in Roehampton in west London, were founded in 1872 by Frances Taylor (Mother Magdalen). The values of this daughter of an Anglican priest and friend of Florence Nightingale continue to shape the values and mission of the religious order she founded almost a century and a half ago.

I am in London this week at a meeting of the trustees of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), and we are meeting in the Kairos Centre.

Frances Margaret Taylor was born on 20 January 1832 in Stoke Rochford, Lincolnshire. Her father, the Revd Henry Taylor (1777-1842), was an Anglican priest and Frances was the youngest of 10 children. Her happy country childhood came to an end in 1842 when her father died, and the family had to move to London.

The family lived in Saint John’s Wood, where the young Fanny Taylor and her older sisters were strongly influenced by the Oxford Movement. The poverty and the squalor of 19th century London came as a shock to her and her compassion moved her to work with the poor, and she became involved in many charitable activities, including the work of the Anglican Sisters of Mercy of the Holy Trinity in Devonport.

She went to the Crimea with Florence Nightingale’s Lady Volunteer Nurses in 1854. The plight of the wounded soldiers, the faith of the young Irish men and the dedication of the Irish Sisters of Mercy inspired her to become a Roman Catholic, and she was received into the Roman Catholic Church on 14 April 1855 by a Jesuit priest, Father Joseph Woollett (1818-1898), who had been a chaplain in the Crimean War.

On her return to London, she continued to work with the poor and began writing. Her desire to work with the poor led her to found her own order on 24 September 1869. She took the name Mother Magdalen and with three companions began the work of the Poor Servants of the Mother of God. They responded to the needs of the time, working with the most vulnerable, especially women and children, and recognising and valuing the dignity and worth of each person.

A portrait of Mother Magdalen in the Library in the Kairos Centre in Roehampton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Her book, Eastern Hospitals and English Nurses – an exposé, highlighted the neglect of soldiers and the injustice and indignities they suffered. In this book, she called for the reform of the character of paid nurses, whom she often found to be drunk, immoral and insubordinate, while sick and dying patients were left in their care.

She convinced the Jesuit Father Augustus Dignam (1833-1894) to change the Messenger of the Sacred Heart from being an expensive literary magazine into a popular penny-worth magazine that quickly circulated freely among the poor.

She also encouraged the New Ross-born Jesuit Father James Cullen (1841-1921) of Dublin, founder of the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association, to make the magazine available in Ireland. The first Irish Messenger of the Sacred Heart appeared within a year, and reached a circulation of 73,000. The Messenger is still published in Ireland today.

Her community opened its first house in Roehampton in 1871. The Irish foundations during Mother Magdalen’s lifetime included Limerick, (1874), Carrigtwohill, Cork (1875), Monkstown, Cork (1881), Dublin (1888), and her last foundation at Loughlinstown, Co Dublin (1899).

Mother Magdalen died in Soho Square, London, on 9 June 1900. Her body was taken from Mortlake Cemetery on 24 September 1959, 90 years after she had founded her order in 1869, and she was reburied in a side chapel in the community chapel.

Today, the congregation or order she founded continues the work begun by Mother Magdalen in social, pastoral, health care, education and outreach work in Britain, Ireland, North America, Kenya and Italy.

During the past century, this work has changed and the sisters have responded to the new situations. But this work is still carried out in the same spirit and according to the same values espoused by Frances Taylor.

On 13 June 2014, Pope Francis issued a decree about Mother Magdalen, declaring her ‘Venerable’ and putting her on the path towards being declared a saint. The community she founded hopes to see her canonised and hopes this inspires other with her vision.

The grave of Mother Magdalen in a side chapel in the Community Chapel in Roehampton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Two days at a retreat
centre in London with
the trustees of USPG

The Kairos Retreat and Conference Centre was established in 1995 (Photograph: Patrixk Comerford, 2018)

Patrick Comerford

I am in London at a two-day meeting of the trustees of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), and then travelling on to Lichfield tomorrow evening before taking part in a day for USPG volunteers in Birmingham Cathedral. This afternoon, at the trustees’ meeting, I led the theological reflection or Bible study.

I arrived in London on an early morning flight from Dublin to Heathrow, and I am staying in the Kairos Centre, a retreat and conference centre in an urban oasis in south-west London, standing in acres of landscaped gardens close to the campuses of Roehampton University and overlooking Richmond Park.

The tranquil setting of peaceful, secluded gardens provides a place to pray, space to think and time to meet. Kairos is keen to be a resource for the local community in response to the Lord’s invitation to ‘come and rest a while.’

The Kairos Centre is at 12 Roehampton Court, later known as Maryfield Convent, which was built in 1913/1914 to a Georgian design. The architect was Frank Chesterton, who also designed part of Hampton Court and Ibstock School.

The house was bought at auction with 11 acres of land by the Poor Servants of The Mother of God on 18 July 1927. The order was seeking new property as a novitiate because Saint Mary’s Convent in the High Street housed an orphanage and also the general leadership of the order, as well as postulants, novices and tertians, preparing to take final vows.

The main work in the house involved training of the novices. In September 1928, 15 postulants arrived and they became the first postulants to spend Christmas in Maryfield. Over the next 10 years, from 1928 to 1938, additions were made to the original building, including a kitchen, laundry, dining room and the large and beautiful chapel.

But once World War II broke out on 3 September 1939, all changed: there were identity cards and food rationing all over England, and the first bomb was dropped on London on 15 August 1940. It was often a nightly occurrence for air raid warnings to start at 9 or 10 p.m. and people had to head for air raid shelters and remain until the ‘all clear’ sounded, indicating that it was safe to return.

In 1941, Digby Stuart College was hit, and a Jesuit novice was killed in an air raid on 10 October 1941. Maryfield was now unsafe and the novitiate was moved to Corston near Bath.

On 18 February 1944, a basket of bombs landed on the roof of the original house in Maryfield, and within a few hours it was completely engulfed in flames.

When World War II ended in 1945, life gradually returned to normal and the novices returned to Maryfield.

The house was used by the order’s Generalate, Trustees and Novitiate in 1945-1974. From 1974 to 1995, The Novitiate was relocated to the top floor of the convent and the remainder of the house became a residential home for women with learning disabilities.

Part of the New Wing was refurbished in 1995 and became the present Retreat and Conference Centre which is known as the Kairos Centre. Meanwhile, the Generalate continues to have offices in the main building.

The original house at the heart of the Kairos Centre was designed by the architect Frank Chesterton (Photograph: Patrixk Comerford, 2018)