This book introduces readers to the life of a Victorian religious community, both within the privacy of the convent and in its work in the wider world, based on documents preserved by the Society of All Saints Sisters of the Poor. It begins by using the memoirs of first-generation members of the community, a colourful and human introduction to the Anglican 're-invention' of monastic life in the second half of the nineteenth century. The section on government includes the power struggles between the sisters and the religious establishment, and the community's determination to retain its...

This is a study of the social history and cultural significance of the sisterhoods which sprang up in Victorian Britain. It looks at those women who abandoned the domestic sphere to become the prototype of the modern social worker, pushing back the boundaries of what women could do within the structure of the Anglican Church.