Priscilla Lydia Sellon, 1821-76, was a Anglican nun who played a part in the English Catholic Revivalist movement of the 19th century and founded an Order called the Sisters of Mercy. Devoutly religious, she had intended going abroad as a missionary but instead was “called” to work amongst the poor naval families at Devonport, being particularly active during the cholera year of 1849. She was suspected of being a convert to Rome which aroused much controversy, even bigotry. It was stated with ill-concealed satisfaction that a mob had pelted her house in Plymouth, threatening to raze it to the ground. It appears however that male churchmen, who never went into the slums themselves were active in stirring up such events. Rev Hobart Seymour denounced Miss Sellon from the pulpit in Bath, calling her “unladylike” “a petty despot” and likened her to a crafty old owl who caught her Sisters “poor little mice” in her claws. Another clergyman said “God forbid we stop the flow of Christian Charity but we much protest against the system of drawing young ladies from their homes.” As well as feeling threatened by Miss Sellon’s alleged Roman Catholicism it appears to me that newspapermen and clerics alike were even more outraged because she was a woman.

The papers were delighted when things went wrong, as when a Miss Bowring “daughter of Dr Bowring, now in China” had left the Order and returned to her mother in Exeter. It was said she had “been unhappy in the home of her adoption and is now seriously ill.”

Miss Sellon opened several houses in Bristol, at 7 Park Row (unlisted in 1851) and 14 College Green (lodging houses in 1851) when an Irish woman, Catherine Callahan, a Roman Catholic, who seems to have been taken on as a maid of all work described at length and in lurid detail, certain practices supposed to prove that the “Lady Superior” now adhered to Rome but the “evidence” becomes somewhat suspect when it later transpired that Callahan was suing the Sisters for wages which she said were owed to her. A court at Stroud awarded her £1. 5 shillings, which the Sisters appealed, saying she was and always had been aware that they did not pay wages!

In July 1854, the Bristol Mercury reported pompously “Miss Sellon, whose migrations from house to house in Bristol have been so exceedingly numerous that she must have over and over again experienced the truth of the adage that ‘two removes are as bad as one fire’ has made another change of residence and taken the large house in The Fort on St Michael’s Hill which has long been untenanted.”

For the decade 1850-60, Miss Sellon was a celebrity, as well known as Florence Nightingale. She declined to go to the Crimea with Miss Nightingale as she felt to do so might lead to a division of authority, however, the party which left for the war in October 1854 included “a number of recruits from Miss Sellon’s establishment”. 

After 1856 when there was another reported move to The Priory in Bath, Miss Sellon dropped out of the limelight.  It was said that her experiences during the cholera epidemic of 1849 had weakened her and subsequently she could only sit for short periods at a time. She often took her meals in a reclining position, eventually becoming paralytic. It is not possible to say whether this affliction was hysterical but it does seem to compare with the experience of other Victorian lady “invalids” like Harriet Martineau and   Florence Nightingale herself. Miss Sellon died at Malvern in 1876 aged 55.

Miss Sellon should have made appearances in the censuses 1841-71 but I have failed to find her. Her father, William R.B. Sellon, a retired Commander RN and a Magistrate who had changed his name from Smith because of an inheritance can be found under neither name in 1841. In 1851 he was at Gravesend, Kent, aged  60, with his second wife Martha, 43, children Anna, 33, Frederick, 16. John, 14, Gertrude, 8, Elizabeth, 7 and Melville, 4. Another daughter, Caroline aged 10, was living at the Orphans’ Home, Wyndham Place, Plymouth where Catherine Chambers, an associate of Miss Sellon was Matron. Despite her tender years, Caroline is tellingly described “Sister”. Of Miss Sellon herself, there is no sign. It seems she was determined not to be counted. The Plymouth Journal describes the woes of the enumerator who called at her establishment and was greeted by a nun, all in black, who told him Miss Sellon was away and had taken the papers with her. He called again with two forms to be completed but the same nun again refused, “determined to brave the law rather than disclose the secrets of the prison house”, he added, “there is a great mystery as to who is who in the Eldad Nunnery.”

I had not heard of Miss Sellon before I discovered that she had considered taking a house in Brislington which is one of my principal local interests. Nothing seems to have come of it, but I cannot but wonder if it was the forerunner of the Convent at Arno’s Court which became a reformatory for Catholic girls in the late Victorian era.   I think that Miss Sellon, despite the topic being unfashionable nowadays would make a good subject for someone’s dissertation!