TAYLOR, FRANCES MARGARET. — In religion Mother Mary Magdalen, foundress of the Poor Servants of the Mother of God, born at Stoke-Rochford (Lincolnshire) on 20 January 1832, died in London on 9 June 1900.
Of Protestant family, she spent her childhood in works of charity toward the poor of the parish, of which her father was vicar; in 1854 she went out to the Crimean War as a nurse and assistant to the troops; there contact with Catholic priests, nuns and soldiers opened her eyes to the truth, and she was received into the Catholic Church by Fr Sidney Woollett. On her return to London, encouraged by Cardinal Manning, she devoted herself to the poor, who lacked all assistance; then, in order to care for and educate her protégés more effectively, she visited the works of various religious institutes in Ireland, Belgium, France, Germany and Poland, and finally, in 1869, with the cooperation of Lady Georgiana Fullerton, founded the Congregation of the Poor Servants, whose spiritual formation Cardinal Manning entrusted to the Jesuits, in whose house the new Institute was established. To obtain the means of multiplying her houses—refuges, retreats, schools, orphanages, hospitals, etc.—she took to writing books: stories, biographies, short ascetical treatises, with which she sought especially to spread devotion to the Sacred Heart and the practice of the apostolate of prayer. In 1864 she had launched The Month, the first illustrated periodical, giving it ample space for fiction; but once the Congregation was founded, of which she was superior general until her death, she handed it over outright to the Jesuits, who gave it a higher cultural tone (v. MONTH, THE, THE).