House of Mercy

I wonder how many of you know that our original work was actually founded before the Community was? Our House of Mercy took in fallen women, trained them in domestic service as well as teaching them to live Christian lives. There were several of these institutions around in Victorian Britain; I know very little about their general history, but our own House of Mercy kept the girls for two years, before finding them a place in Service, if appropriate, and giving them a uniform to wear, which they could keep if they stayed in the same job for a year. It was founded by a group of clergy from the Diocese of Norwich (then including the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, so comprising most of Norfolk and Suffolk), to enlarge the work in this area. It began at a farm in a small village called Shipmeadow, run initially by a woman who had done similar work in the past.  She agreed to set up the home, but didn’t want to stay on, so another woman was found to run it in the long term.  Born and raised in Norwich, Lavinia Crosse was a doctor’s daughter, whom I have mentioned in this blog before. She felt that the best way of running the House of Mercy was by a group of women dedicated to that work; she had also, I believe, felt called to start a religious community. So, on New Year’s Eve 1855, at Midnight, in the Chapel of the House of Mercy at Shipmeadow, M. Lavinia made her vows as the first professed Sister in the fledgling Community of All Hallows; she was joined by two Novices, Adele, known to us as M. Adele, and Frances, who later left.

The site at Shipmeadow didn’t work, so a move was made a few miles down the road to Ditchingham, where one of the founding clergy was the Vicar. The new House of Mercy was built in the late 1850s, and the mid 1860s; the plans were unable to be fulfilled in one go, so the outbuildings, with the North and West wings were built in the 1850s, the House being blessed on St Michael’s Day in 1859. The remaining two wings were completed in the 1860s and were blessed in 1864 on the same day as the Orphanage buildings, not far away.

The House of Mercy was a member of the Church Penitentiary Association; these institutions were also known as Penitentiary’s, a name that seems very negative today. Yet, I don’t think that was the connotation meant in the nineteenth century; at least, not as far as our own House of Mercy was concerned. The girls were called penitents, not to condemn them, but because that was what they were supposed to be: penitent, sorry for what they had done wrong. This was not a Reformatory, but somewhere girls who wanted to change their way of life could be helped to achieve that. I know that for a fact, as it comes up regularly in the Annual Reports for the House of Mercy, proving that it was not always the case. Nevertheless, the terms Penitentiary and Penitents were not a judgement on the girls, but a symbol of their repentance for the past. Quite what the background of these girls were, and how many nowadays would be seen as ‘doing wrong’, I don’t know. We have very little information, if any at all, on why a girl came to the House of Mercy. It was, as the name suggests, intended as a place of Mercy, where girls could find help needed to live a better life. As far as I can tell from the Archives, they were treated kindly, although it was not easy work, and what we have of the girls’ own reactions comes through only in Community documents. Yet, some kept in touch, and others gave donations to the House after they left, implying that they valued their time there.

In time, the name was changed to St Michael’s Home (later House), and the work was adapted as the years went on, closing in the 1980s and becoming a retreat house. Yet, in some ways, the original name was still relevant throughout its use. Whatever and however Mercy was seen and worked out in its’ early years, the idea of a House of Mercy, as a place where God’s love and compassion could be found was – and still is – highly relevant, and vitally important. I hope that all those girls who came to the House of Mercy, or to St Michael’s, felt something of that Mercy themselves, however difficult their lives may have been, and however hard it may have been to grasp. Today, the Community has moved away from the Ditchingham site, yet I hope that those we come into contact with, or who stay in our houses, still find something of God’s love and mercy there. It is a prayer that we can all hold onto: that we can experience God’s mercy to the depths of our hearts, as we can then go on to spread that mercy to those we meet. Indeed, that we can all, in our own ways, become individual ‘houses of mercy’ spreading knowledge of God’s forgiveness.