Lydia Sellon

Lydia Sellon
Sellon in c. 1865
Born	Priscilla Lydia Smith 21 March 1821 Hampstead
Died	20 November 1876 West Malvern
Residence	Ascot Priory
Nationality	British
Education	by governess
Known for	founding a religious order
Successor	Bertha Turnbull

Lydia Sellon or Priscilla Lydia Sellon (1821 – 20 November 1876) was a British founder of an Anglican women's order. The Church of England established November 20 as a holy day to celebrate her work.

Priscilla Lydia Smith was brought up in Grosmont in Monmouthmouthshire, but she was born on 21 March 1821 in Hampstead. Her mother died when she was a small child. Her father, Commander Richard Baker Smith, who was in the Royal Navy married again and had eleven more children. In 1847 her father was left an inheritance by his maternal aunt and as a consequence the family name was changed to Sellon.

In 1848 Henry Phillpotts who was the Bishop of Exeter placed an appeal in the weekly Anglican newspaper "The Guardian" which appeared in January 1848 for help for the poor of Devonport. Phillpott's request was for new churches and education for the population who had outgrown the local facilities. This request was answered by Sellon who was just about to travel to Italy for her health. Sellon contacted Edward Bouverie Pusey whom she knew and he introduced her to a local clergyman. Sellon and Catherine Chambers who was a family friend took advice from the local clergy and they worked in a local school. With her father's support Sellon quickly created more new institutions. An industrial school for girls, an orphanage for sailors children, a school for the starving and a night school for teenage boys.

She started work in Devonport looking after the poor. Philpott's inspiration of Sellon led to the formation of an Anglican order which Sellon led as after a number of years there were several women working with Sellon and she founded the Devonport Sisters of Mercy. Although this was not the first Anglican sisterhood, she had the consolation of merging with the Sisterhood of the Holy Cross which had been founded in 1845 in London and Sellon lead the combined organisation. Even before the organisations merged they worked together. When Florence Nightingale travelled to the Crimean in 1854 she took 38 nurses and fourteen of these were nuns from what would become Sellon's organisation. One of their important early actions was to tend to the victims if the 1849 cholera outbreak which started around Union Street.