Taylor, Frances – On her way to becoming a saint

Fanny Taylor, (1832-1900)

FANNY Margaret Taylor, who later took the name Mother Mary Magdalen of the Sacred Heart, was the founder of the Roman Catholic order the Poor Servants of the Mother of God.

The youngest of 10 children, she was born at Stoke Rochford in 1832, her father was the Anglican rector who educated her until he died of TB when she was only 10 years old.

With older sisters Emma and Charlotte, Fanny attended an Anglican church. Emma Taylor became an Anglican nun and Fanny joined too but when she was 22 she went to Crimea with Florence Nightingale, becoming a Roman Catholic.

As one of Miss Nightingale’s band of nurses in the Crimea she became acquainted with the Catholic faith as manifested by many of the soldiers she nursed, and on her return to England in 1855 entered the Church.

She went to London and worked with the poor under Cardinal Dr Manning.

She wrote books, novels, poetry and edited two magazines, The Lamp and The Month.

The Jesuits took over The Lamp which continues to this day.

In conjunction with Lady Georgiana Fullerton, Fanny founded the Poor Servants of the Mother of God in 1868 to care for the poor.

This order was guided by Jesuits, had a public laundry to support themselves.As there was no dowry necessary for sisters to join the convent they took in poor working class girls.

There was only one class of sisters. The congregation is under the direction of a superior general.

A black habit is worn, with a blue scapular and a black veil.

Members devote themselves to visiting the poor, teaching in parochial schools, nursing, and conducting institutions of refuge and rescue for women.

Her congregation grew and developed with laundries and orphanages and she founded a hospital in Ireland.

Fanny was extremely sympathetic to her nuns, gave them encouragement as many were uneducated. She loved the Irish.

She died unmarried.

The first prayer for Mother Magdalen’s beatification, the first stage towards canonisation, was published in 1935. A cause for the beatification of Mother Magdalen Taylor was opened by Cardinal Basil Hume in 1982.

In September 1959, her remains were transferred from Mortlake Cemetery, Surrey, to the chapel of the Generalate and Novitiate of the Poor Servants of the Mother of God at Maryfield Convent, Roehampton, London, and placed in a vault in front of the Sacred Heart altar.

The Poor Servants of the Mother of God still work in many areas including pastoral ministry in parishes, youth work, prison ministry, adult education, retreat work, work in schools, residential care for the elderly and homeless. Hospital work, group homes for children at risk and help for adults with physical or learning disabilities.

The order – based in Brentford, Middlesex – operates in England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Italy, The USA, South America and Africa.

Today, the Sisters look to the new expressions of religious poverty, robustly respond to distress and suffering, and support people to experience their God given dignity, helping them to celebrate and fulfil their lives.

All professed Sisters, Novices, Postulants, the Associates, Staff and Friends, of the Poor Servants of the Mother of God, continue Frances’ great work of social, pastoral, health care, education and outreach work, in Italy, the USA, Kenya, Tanzania, Ireland, and England, corresponding to the same values espoused by Mother Magdalen Taylor.

In June 2014, Mother Magdalen was declared ‘Venerable’ by Pope Franc

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

(Tel. 0208-568-7305) www.poorservants.com Poor Servants of the Mother of God, Reg. Charity 227931

Expert on Frances Taylor,  SMG Central Archivist  Paul Shaw says:

‘Writing on behalf of the Congregation of the Poor Servants of the Mother of God, the order founded by Frances Taylor (in religion Mother Magdalen), I would like to say how pleased the Sisters are that there is such an interest in her life in the locality in which she was born, as reflected in this website.

Though Frances left Lincolnshire when only ten years’ old, and spent most of her adult life in the great cities of London and Rome, she had very warm, affectionate and vivid memories of her childhood and upbringing in Stoke Rochford.

Mother Magdalen’s first biographer, Father F C Devas SJ, wrote:

‘With many English converts, she liked to think that the grace of her conversion was due in part to the influence of the holy men and women who had lived in her native county in pre-reformation days, and …was proud of the richness and beauty of the Catholic traditions of Lincolnshire…To the merits and prayers of the old monks and nuns, and the still older hermits and anchorites of Lincolnshire, and to the prayers of the guardian Angels of the various haunts of her childhood, she felt she owed a debt of gratitude, and one she was the more eager to meet as it served to increase and deepen the fervour of her patriotism.’

The Sisters, their employees and lay associates all share in the joy of the extraordinary honour granted to Mother Magdalen by Pope Francis by her declaration as ‘Venerable’: this was the product of a very strictly established process of investigation and research, laid down according to the canons of the Church, which concluded that she had led a life of ‘heroic virtue’. According to the normal procedures current in the Roman Catholic Church, the ultimate declaration of sainthood (or canonisation) can only take place following the report and attestation of two miracles (usually healings), the confirmation of which requires a further careful process of investigation. In July 2009 Pope Benedict XVI officially recognised the miraculous healing of Deacon Jack Sullivan, through the intercession of one of Mother Magdalen’s own associates, the great theologian Cardinal J H Newman. This decision means that Newman has been declared beatified, with only one stage left which would need to be achieved before canonisation. The Sisters and their supporters are praying fervently that in due course Mother Magdalen will also be beatified.

It may be of interest to readers of this site if I were to add some further detail and some slight corrections to the account of Frances Taylor’s life and work posted above.

Mother Magdalen was one of those small band of notable Victorian female pioneers in the field of serious journalism. July 1864 she became founder editor of The Month, a major intellectual and literary journal. Her dedication and passionate advocacy of the project gained her the support of J H Newman, and she had the distinction of being the first to publish his poem ‘The Dream of Gerontius’, later famously set to music by Sir Edward Elgar.

Yet, in addition, she was also editor of the The Lamp, a popular Catholic magazine aimed at a general audience which she managed from 1863 until 1871, also being founder-editor of a journal for children, Fireside Readings, which lasted for only fourteen months from 1864 to 1865. The Lamp title was lost through amalgamations with other magazines before the end of the nineteenth century, but the Month was taken over by the English Jesuits, and survived until 2001.

Even following the official founding of the Poor Servants of the Mother of God in 1872, Mother Magdalen continued to be active in writing and translation, including biographies of notable individuals such as the Catholic philanthropist Lady Georgiana Fullerton, her great friend and supporter in all her works for the poor and vulnerable.

Mother Magdalen’s first published work, on her return from nursing in the Crimean hospitals, was Eastern Hospital and English Nurses, which was only the second first-hand Crimean nursing account to be published, and was highly acclaimed on its publication, including a mention in contemporary parliamentary debates. Her classic account of Irish Catholic charitable institutions, with its very wise and prescient analysis of the Irish social scene, was published in 1867 under the title Irish Homes and Irish Hearts and has now been republished by the University College Press in Dublin.

The order which she founded grew rapidly, and by 1900 the Poor Servants of the Mother of God administered over twenty houses and institutions, including the Providence Free Hospital, St. Helens. The work was based mainly in England and Ireland, but there were also houses in Paris and Rome. The work of the Sisters was focused on support, education and training of the poor and vulnerable, particularly young women, through the founding of refuges, night shelters, schools, hospitals, and hostels, and they now have a particular vocation to care for people with learning disabilities. Their first home for the elderly, St Joseph’s Asylum in Dublin, was taken over in 1888.

The headquarters of the order is Maryfield Convent in Roehampton, where the Sisters also administer the very popular Kairos retreat centre. The order’s archives and heritage centre is at St Mary’s Convent, Brentford, and the convent has for many years provided guided tours for the annual ‘Open House London’ day. The work of the order has long been international, including work in the United States, Venezuela and Kenya. In common with many modern ‘apostolic’ (ie active) religious orders, the Sisters no longer wear a formal religious habit.

Much of the social work to which the Sisters are committed is now carried out by lay employees, in England under the aegis of the Francis Taylor Foundation. Those wishing to know more about the order and its works should look at the relevant websites (links below), and there is a very accessible short biography of Frances Taylor by Sr Eithne Leonard published by the Catholic Truth Society.

Frances Taylor Foundation | Home

www.ftf.org.uk/