Frances Margaret Taylor
British nurse, writer, editor, nun, foundress, Roman catholic venerable (1832-1900)
The Vatican record
- 12 June 2014 — Heroic virtue declared — title Venerable (decree list, 2014)
Who they were
Frances Taylor, daughter of a Lincolnshire vicar, went with Florence Nightingale's nurses to the Crimean War in 1854, where contact with Catholic priests, Sisters of Mercy and soldiers led her to the Catholic faith.
Back in London she worked among the poor and, with Lady Georgiana Fullerton, founded the Poor Servants of the Mother of God, opening refuges, convents and schools, and writing for the Catholic press. From 1892 she bore great suffering with patience, and died in London on 9 June 1900.
The miracles
The Catholic Encyclopedia does not describe her cause.
Why that counted as sanctity
A war nurse and convert who founded a congregation for the poor.
The cause
The cause continues. No postulation address is published here yet. Favours received through this person’s intercession, and offers of help, are best sent to the religious order or congregation they belonged to, or to the diocese where the cause was opened; either will pass them to the postulation.
- Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), via New Advent - Mother Mary Magdalen Taylor
- Dicastery for the Causes of Saints — promulgated decrees (causesanti.va), summarised in our own words
- Wikidata Q5478833 — dates, feast day and identifiers (CC0)
- English Wikipedia — Frances Margaret Taylor (CC BY-SA)
Checked against the sources listed on 21 September 2026. Corrections welcome.