Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de paul 
British Province

Historical Background to the Sheffield

On 27th August 1857, the Daughters of Charity began their founding mission in Britain at
the invitation of Fr Bourke CM and his Vincentian confrères in Sheffield. 
Here they served the poorest people, many of them Irish immigrants, living in the crowded back-to-back housing know as The Crofts.
These people provided cheap labour for the growing steel industry. Ten years previously in 1847, four Daughters of Charity had been sent from the Mother House in Paris to Salford in North West England, but conditions were harsh and pockets of anti-Catholic aggression abounded. It was so bad that the Sisters had to be escorted by men from the parish as they went about their business of serving the poor.
They even had their house burnt down. This harassment, combined with the lack of sound financial backing, led to their reluctant recall to Paris in 1849.

By 1857, when Sisters Louise de Missy, Vincent O'Farrell, Josephine Clarke
and Marie Merric were missioned to Sheffield, the situation had changed. 
Catholic Emancipation was on the horizon and the Sisters had the
financial backing of the Norfolk family, a leading aristocratic Catholic family.
This time the ground was better prepared and the seed that was sown grew
and blossomed. Twenty-seven years after the opening of the Sheffield house,
a further twenty houses had been opened in England, three in Scotland,
and four in Ireland, and 264 women from the British Isles had joined
the Daughters of Charity, all called by God to meet the needs of people
who were becoming more and more polarised economically.

                      

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