TAYLOR, FRANCES MARGARET. - In religion Mother Mary Magdalene, foundress of the Poor Servants of the Mother of God, b. at Stoke Rochford (Lincolnshire) on 20 Jan. 1832, d. in London on 9 June 1900.
Of a 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 left for the Crimean War as a nurse and aide 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. Having returned to London, encouraged by Card. Manning, she devoted herself to the poor, who were deprived of all assistance; then, in order to be better able to care for and educate those in her charge, she visited in Ireland, Belgium, France, Germany and Poland the works of the various religious institutes, and finally, in 1869, with the cooperation of Lady Georgiana Fullerton, she founded the Congregation of the Poor Servants, whose spiritual formation Card. Manning wished to entrust to the Jesuits, near whose house the new Institute stood. In order to have the means to multiply her houses: refuges, retreats, schools, orphanages, hospitals, etc., she took to writing books: stories, biographies, brief ascetical treatises, with which she sought above all to spread devotion to the Sacred Heart and the practice of the apostolate of prayer. In 1864 she had started The Month, the first illustrated periodical, with ample space granted to fiction; but, once the Congregation was founded, of which she was superior general until her death, she handed it over without more ado to the Jesuits, who gave it a higher tone of culture (v. MONTH, THE).