‘Poor Fallen Women’: Rehabilitation and ‘salvation’ of women and girls admitted to Clewer House of Mercy between 1850 and 1899 by Dr Alison Pedley, University of Roehampton

This talk explores the work of the Sisters of the Community of St John Baptist at Clewer, near Windsor. Popularly known collectively as the Sisters of Mercy, there were several separately founded communities of Anglican nuns in nineteenth-century England. The various communities had established and managed orphanages, schools, convalescent hospitals, a church needlework business and homes for ‘fallen women and girls’ throughout Victorian England. The ‘rescue homes’ were designed to rehabilitate ‘fallen women’, a term which not only encompassed sexual outlaws or victims of violence but also alcoholics, female prison-leavers, sexually violated women and others incarcerated for attempted suicide.

The Clewer House of Mercy, near Windsor, was run by the Community of St John Baptist and, at various times, had a close relationship with the administration at Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum. The Institution’s records reveal that, while following the founding disciplinary and moralising functions of the home, the emphasis was aimed at behavioural correction and the inculcation of ‘virtue’ and abstinence, rather than at punishment. Utilising Broadmoor and Clewer’s records, this paper suggests that the Home not only provided a corrective and rehabilitative space outside the criminal courts and carceral institutions but also was a place of refuge and safety to its inmates. It illustrates how institutions mediated an intersection of gender, class, and moral governance as social norms, exercising control over patients’ and inmates’ lives, and highlights shifts in social and cultural understandings of crime and deviance in late Victorian England.

To join in this branch meeting, you will need a computer device which has a microphone and speakers. Ideally, also a webcam. You also need to be able to access emails from this device. First time users will be asked to download a small piece of software to join the meeting.  The meeting link will be emailed to you in advance. Technical help is available for those who need further assistance, please contact booking@berksfhs.org.uk .