Struggle and Suffrage in Portsmouth by Sarah Quail

Author:Sarah Quail [Quail, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781526712387
Amazon: B07HMMGC2J
Barnesnoble: B07HMMGC2J
Goodreads: 53769708
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2018-09-30T00:00:00+00:00

By 1894 there were altogether thirty-seven deaconess sisters, probationers and resident female church workers. By 1901 there were sixteen deaconesses and twenty-five lay women of whom one deaconess and twelve lay women were on the staff of St Mary’s, Portsea. When Mother Emma died in 1920 Gates wrote in Records of the Corporation,

By the death of ‘Mother Emma’ in February, the religious life of Portsmouth suffered heavy loss. From the early eighties [sic] she was the leading churchwoman and one of the most notable social workers of the diocese. In 1889 Portsmouth was chosen for the permanent home of the Deaconesses, and the large sum of money necessary for the building of St Andrew’s Home at Southsea was raised through her personal efforts. It has since become one of the great centres of social work and of the Church and intellectual life of the town and diocese. Mother Emma’s whole life was spent in service, and she ever displayed a rare spirit of comradeship and understanding charity.

There were only nine deaconesses and four lay workers by the time war broke out in 1939. Afterwards they moved to smaller premises in Southsea but their numbers continued to decline due probably to a combination of things: declining vocations and what can best be described as the centralisation and municipalisation of social care after 1947. St Andrew’s Home was closed in 1958 and in due course its funds went into a trust for women’s ministerial training.

The last deaconess working in Portsmouth, Deaconess Ada, who was attached to the former parish church, now the cathedral, was ordained deacon in 1994 at the same time as the first group of Portsmouth women were ordained to the priesthood. There is a three-fold ordained order in the Anglican ministry of bishops, priests and deacons. Ada was elderly by this time and did not seek to be ordained subsequently to the priesthood but she continued to undertake pastoral care and community work, as she and her fellow-sisters had always done, until ill-health persuaded her to retire. However, something still survives of the work of the deaconesses in Portsmouth. Mother Emma founded a nursing home, the Home of Comfort for the Dying, in 1896, in the heart of Owen’s Southsea. It opened originally with just twelve residents. Highly regarded, the Home of Comfort (the words ‘for the Dying’ were later dropped) now offers care to twenty-nine older people with long-term and palliative nursing needs, and is still closely linked to local churches.

Another woman who followed what might also be described as a religious calling was Agnes Weston who founded the Royal Sailors’ Rests in Devonport and Portsmouth. Born in 1840, she was the daughter of a barrister. Her father retired in 1845 and moved his family to Bath. Agnes was educated there and prepared for confirmation by the Reverend James Fleming, curate at St Stephen Lansdown in the parish of Walcot, Bath between 1855 and 1859. Presented to St Michael’s Chester Square in London in 1873, Fleming would become

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