Letters to Reverend Mother from friends and colleagues, 1854-1983

The file consists of letters from Florence Nightingale to M. Clare Moore RSM, with some letters to M. Helen Ellis RSM, M. Aloysius, Gonzaga Barrie RSM, M. Thomas More RSM, M. Stanislaus Jones RSM and M. Benedict J. Meyer RSM, dated November 1855 to March 1899, have been encapsulated and bound into a volume. The volume also contains a few letters written by the Sisters of Mercy at Bermondsey by Mary Shore Smith and Mary Stanley. An envelope containing two pages (seemingly torn from a notebook) appear to be written in Florence Nightingale's hand, being a prayer in Italian and spiritual notes in English and Italian. Glued to the reverse of one sheet is a brief list of Sisters who went to the Crimea from Bermondsey in 1854 and 1856.

Letters from various other friends and colleagues are arranged chronologically in a folder, with letters dating from 1854 to 1978. Authors include Joseph [or Thomas] Pauline (1854), M. Griffen of the 63rd Regiment at the "Camp before Sevastopol" who mentions Father Strickland (28 April 1856), Selina Bracebridge (circa 1856), Mary Goldsmid (1859), Sister Maria of Arlon telling of ill-treatment at the hands of French communists (07 November 1879), Charles Stephen Leslie asking for information about Lady Barbara Eyre (26 February 1898), and Sister Marie Joseph de l'enfant Jesus (1915), besides many more. One letter asks for more teaching Sisters in Stamford. Some letters are about a loan to a student in Whitstable, others the pension of a former teacher in Camberwell, a few ask for the history of the Crimean War and foundation of the Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth. An envelope within the file contains letters from parishioners and priests on the closure of Chislehurst Convent in 1978. Olive Kielty, writing in 1981, remembers life as a pupil at the Camberwell Convent of Mercy during the First World War (1914-1918).