Poor Servants of the Mother of God

The Poor Servants of the Mother of God are a religious congregation founded in 1872 by the venerable Mother Mary Magdalen of the Sacred Heart, Frances Margaret Taylor. She was closely assisted by her friend and benefactor Lady Georgiana Fullerton, and following her death, by her husband, Mr A G Fullerton (1808-1907).

In 1867 Lady Georgiana translated the rule of the ‘Little Servant Sisters of the Immaculate Conception’, a rural Polish congregation. She obtained permission from the founder, Edmund Bojanowski, to establish the congregation in England. On 24 October 1868, Frances Taylor took charge of a putative English branch of this congregation, in rented rooms in Fleet Street, London. In February 1869, at the invitation of the order of priests, the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, the community moved to the Catholic mission at Tower Hill, where they worked until June 1870.

Affiliation with the Polish congregation was found to be impracticable, and the new order was placed under the direction of its own superior general (Mother M. Magdalen). On 12 February 1872, the new congregation came formally into being when Sister Mary Magdalen took her religious vows for life. From the first it was approved and encouraged by Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, its spiritual training being committed to the Fathers of the Society of Jesus, near whose church, The Immaculate Conception, Farm St., London, the congregation worked in its early years with the poor of central London and Soho.

The early members devoted themselves to visiting the poor, teaching in parochial schools, nursing, and conducting institutions of refuge and rescue for women. The early foundations of the congregation included refuges, night shelters, schools, a workhouse, a home for the elderly, and a general free hospital, the Providence Hospital in St Helens, Lancashire.

The main other foundations made during Mother Magdalen’s lifetime were: Limerick, Ireland. (1874); Margate, Kent (1874); Carrigtwohill, Cork, Ireland (1875); Roehampton, London (1871); Brentford, Middlesex (1880); St. Helens, Lancashire (1882); Monkstown, Cork (1881); North Hyde, Middlesex (1883); Rome (1886); Streatham, London (1888); Dublin (1888); Paris (1890); Liverpool (1891); Woodford Green, Essex (1894); Rhyl, Wales (1899); Selkirk, Scotland (1899); and her last foundation at Loughlinstown, Ireland (1899).

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Wikipedia