Medical dates:

Medical character:

In September 1851 she acquired a house in Mortimer Street and moved in on 18th October 1851, this date later becoming the Foundation Day for the All Saints Sisters of the Poor.

On 27th December 1851 she was joined by Sarah Easton - and this was the beginning of the community.  The chief religious vocation of the Sisterhood was 'to provide a Religious Asylum for aged and infirm persons in destitute circumstances'.

The first years of the community were spent helping and caring for the needy, but gradually more helpers joined.  On 5th May 1856 Harriet Brownlow Byron, Sarah Easton and Ellen Wilson were professed by Revd William Upton Richards  (1811-1873), the first vicar of All Saints Church in Margaret Street.

On 3rd August 1856 the Society elected Harriet Brownlow Byron as a 'Mother for Life'.  On the following day the community - Sisters, girls in training, orphans, elderly women and incurables - moved to All Saints Home at Nos. 82, 83 and 84 Margaret Street, which had been made into one religious house.   The house in Mortimer Street became St Elizabeth's Home for Incurables.  (Later, another St Elizabeth's Home for incurables opened in Mayfield Avenue, North Finchley.)

The community continued to expand and a dispensary was established for poor people to obtain medical care.  The mortuary chapel received the dead before burial (for those who could not afford funeral parlours the body of the deceased had to be kept at home, usually on the kitchen table due to lack of space).

From 1862 the Sisters undertook responsibility for the nursing care and training at University College Hospital (this ceased in 1899).

In 1869 the Sisterhood established the All Saints Convalescent Hospital in Eastbourne.

In 1881 the Sisters took over the running of the St John the Evangelist Hospital for incurable women of the middle and upper classes in Cowley St John, Oxford.

St Elizabeth's Home for incurables was also established in Homefield Road, Seaford, East Sussex.

By 1896, as well as its convent at Nos. 82-84 Margaret Street, the Sisterhood ran an orphanage for 36 girls aged 6-14 years at No. 74 Margaret Street and a Training School for Girls (aged 14 years and upwards) at No. 77.  All Saint's Children's Hospital for small boys with incurable disease had been established at No. 4 Margaret Street and St Agnes Hospital for fallen women in need of medical aid at No. 3.

The Sisterhood also ran St John's House in Norfolk Street, Strand, from where trained nurses were sent out to private families.  Its nurses also worked at the new Metropolitan Hospital in Kingsland Road.  The All Saints Convalescent Home in Beckenham received married women with their infants.  A Maternity Home had been established in 1877 at Cheyne Walk in Chelsea, which took in poor married women for their confinement; there was also accommodation for poor ladies. (In 1883 it moved to No. 10 Queen Anne Terrace, Battersea).  A Nurses' Home for trained nurses was set up at No. 3 Fitzroy Square and, in Lewisham, the All Saints Orphanage for boys.

Orphanages were established by the Sisters in other cities -  St Saviour's Orphanage for 30 girls aged between 3 and 15 years in Leeds, and St Margaret's Home, an Industrial School orphanage, in Liverpool.

All Saints Missions were set up in various parts of London - Lewisham, Westminster, Hammersmith and Finsbury Park - as well as in Edinburgh, Wolverhampton, Helmsley, Bradford, Nottingham, Chatham and Liverpool.

The Sisters also went to the United States, South Africa and India, working with missions run by the Society of St John the Evangelist.

In 1901 the Society of All Saints moved its headquarters to the newly built All Saints Convent in London Colney, thereby allowing a reduction in size of its metropolitan properties (all leased from the Howard de Walden estate).

Present status (May 2017)

On the south side of Margaret Street, No. 84 is now London Fo Guang Shan Temple, a Korean Buddhist temple, while Nos. 82-83 have become the Jesus Centre.  Nos. 77 and 74 contain shops and offices.

On the north side, Nos. 15-16 are now offices.  All Saints Church is very much extant at Nos. 7-8.  Nos. 4 has become an office block and No. 3 is a Happy Science temple.

The Nurses' Home at No. 3 Fitzroy Square is now a private residence.

As national and local authorities began to provide welfare services during the 20th century, the Society decided to sell its convent in London Colney and moved the Mother House to Oxford in 1976.

There the community initiated a number of projects, which are now run as independent charities, including Helen House (the world's first hospice for children), Douglas House (a hospice for young adults aged from 16 to 35) and the Steppin' Stone Porch Centre (a drop-in centre for homeless people).

St John's Home, a residential care home for the elderly, is located in the grounds of the Society's Mother House.