| Description | Contents The archive of the Sisters of the Poor Child Jesus includes, provincial records, including minutes of meetings, reports and other papers of the provincial council, letters from the Vatican, circular letters from the Mothers Superior, personnel records, and wills and legacies; papers relating to the Convent of Our Lady, Southam, including financial papers, building records, papers relating to the chapel and school, registers, and papers relating to the history of the convent; farm records; papers of St. Michael’s Convent, Finchley, its school; other communities; unpublished and published works; papers relating to the embroidery room; and photographs. Although the archive contains some records of the mother-house in Aachen, the papers predominantly relate to the administration of the English Province. |
| Admin_History | The congregation of the Sisters of the Poor Child Jesus traces its origins back to the founding of a Poor School by Clare Fey, Leocadia Startz, Wilhelmina Istas, and Aloysia Vossen in Aachen in 1837 (all four entered religious life seven years later). It received state approval from the King of Prussia in 1847 and was given ecclesiastical recognition by Cardinal Johannes von Geissel, the archbishop of Cologne, in the following year. In 1852, the state also enabled the Association to change its name to the Poor Child Jesus. In 1869, Pope Pius IX issued a decree conferring his blessing on the congregation. The mother-house was based in Jakobstrasse, Aachen, with the Order quickly spreading to Bonn, Derendorf, Düsseldorf, Neuss, Cologne, Coblenz, Landstuhl, Luxembourg, Stolberg, and Vienna. A broad range of activities was undertaken by the congregation including a school, the training of domestics, homes for girls in business, modelling of wax figures for statues, and notably church embroidery, the designs of which were furnished by A.W. Pugin amongst others. In the following decades, provinces were founded in Austria (1891), Holland (1920), Belgium (1925), England (1931) and America (1948). The English Province developed rapidly after the Second World War and, aside from the community in Southam, homes and schools were also founded in Sheffield, Leeds, and Boston Spa, as well as a rest home in Penmaenmawr (Wales). |