Frances Margaret Taylor - Conversion and Early Years As A Catholic

Conversion and Early Years As A Catholic

In March 1854 the Crimean War broke out. Frances volunteered to nurse in the military hospitals in Turkey. Though under age she was accepted for the second party of volunteer nurses which went out in December 1854, being joined there by her sister Charlotte in April 1855.

She nursed briefly with Florence Nightingale at Scutari Hospital, though she was critical of the organisation particularly of supplies at the hospital, and she shortly moved to another military hospital at Koulali. There, she encountered the Sisters of Mercy and the stoical Irish Catholic soldiery. In the poor conditions of the military hospitals, Frances sought the counsel of Father Sydney Woollett SJ, who was assisting the Catholic chaplain Father William Ronan SJ. She was received into the Roman Catholic Church by Father Woollett on April 14, 1855.

Her wartime experiences appeared as her first book. It was one of the earliest published eye-witness accounts of the military hospitals. The book in its final edition (1857) included an impassioned appeal for reform of the public nursing system, and in general of the treatment of the poor by contemporary society.

The delicate watercolour portrait of Frances Taylor as a nurse, by an unknown artist (left), has been much reproduced and copied. On her return to England, Frances put herself under the direction of Henry Edward Manning, Rector of the Church of St. Mary and the Angels, Bayswater. Dr. Manning introduced Frances to Catholic charitable organisations, allowing her to work with the London poor as she desired.

Lady Georgiana Fullerton (1812–1885) was to have a great influence on Frances’ life, encouraging and assisting with her literary and charitable work. They first met c.1859 following the publication of Frances’ first and most popular historical novel Tyborne, a story of the Catholic recusant martyrs of the sixteenth century. Between the years 1859 and 1866, Frances made determined efforts to find a religious vocation, including time spent with the Daughters of Charity in Paris, and the Filles de Marie (Daughters of the Holy Heart of Mary) in England.

At this time, her spiritual director was the Jesuit Peter Gallwey. Around 1865-7, with the support of Dr. Manning and Father James Clare S.J., Rector of the Jesuit Church, Farm Street, Frances visited Ireland to study Catholic charitable institutions, partly in order to better assist Irish emigrants in England. This visit resulted in one of her most important literary works, Irish Homes and Irish Hearts (1867), a state-of-the-nation work on contemporary Ireland.