UCL BLOOMSBURY PROJECT

History

It was founded by Ellen Ranyard (née White) in 1857 to bring religious education to the poor (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

Ranyard was shocked by the squalor of the area she walked through with a retired physician in 1857, and applied to the district City Missionary, Mr McCree, for a “good poor woman” to distribute Bibles (Elspeth Platt, The Story of the Ranyard Mission, 1857–1937, 1937)

“It was to be a woman’s mission to women...nothing was to be given – the people were to be helped to help themselves” (Elspeth Platt, The Story of the Ranyard Mission, 1857–1937, 1937)

The first woman Ranyard worked with was Marian B–, who was an orphan living with her younger sister in “a low lodging house in St Giles”, and who married at age 18, earning money by making wax flowers; she began her work as the first Biblewoman on 10 June 1857 (Elspeth Platt, The Story of the Ranyard Mission, 1857–1937, 1937)

By November 1859 there were 37 Biblewomen across London, the whole organisation run from Ranyard’s home in Hunter Street, but each Biblewoman also supervised by a Lady Superintendent (Elspeth Platt, The Story of the Ranyard Mission, 1857–1937, 1937)

Originally each was granted 10s from the Bible Society, but from December 1859 instead they got free all the Scriptures they could sell; the organisation had been renamed the Female Bible and Domestic Mission, with Ranyard as Hon. Secretary and Lady Superintendent. (Elspeth Platt, The Story of the Ranyard Mission, 1857–1937, 1937)

The Mission soon took off elsewhere in the United Kingdom, then in Europe, Egypt, Palestine, and India (Elspeth Platt, The Story of the Ranyard Mission, 1857–1937, 1937)

Meanwhile, Ranyard continued to expand the Mission’s activities in London; in 1859 she established the Dudley Street Working Girls’ Dormitory in Dudley Street, St Giles, which later moved to larger premises, and in 1868, she began the nursing of the sick poor in their own homes, in response to what the Biblewomen saw of the sick (Elspeth Platt, The Story of the Ranyard Mission, 1857–1937, 1937)

Biblewoman Nurse was an awkward name but they “were everywhere welcomed by the doctors” (Elspeth Platt, The Story of the Ranyard Mission, 1857–1937, 1937)

“By 1867 there were 234 Bible women working in London. They were the first group of paid social workers in Britain” (Mark K. Smith, ‘Ellen Ranyard (“LNR”), Bible Women and Informal Education,’ Encyclopaedia of Informal Education)

In 1871 the Mission was badly off, and some districts were closed, but in 1872 the Mercers Company gave them cash, having formerly given donations of food to the nurses’ home at 2 Regent Square

After Ranyard’s death in 1879, her niece Mrs Selfe Leonard became Hon. Secretary and General Superintendent; she had been involved before and after her marriage (Elspeth Platt, The Story of the Ranyard Mission, 1857–1937, 1937)

By 1887 there were 147 Biblewomen, earning £32 10s per year, and 61 nurses earning £39 per year (Elspeth Platt, The Story of the Ranyard Mission, 1857–1937, 1937)

The organisation continued to train nurses until 1907 (Mark K. Smith, ‘Ellen Ranyard (“LNR”), Bible Women and Informal Education,’ Encyclopaedia of Informal Education)

It also helped to found the East End Relief Society in 1868, cooperated with the Mothers’ Union, founded in 1896, and helped to establish the Central Council for District Nursing in London in 1913 (Elspeth Platt, The Story of the Ranyard Mission, 1857–1937, 1937)

Convalescent homes by the sea were opened in the 1880s, and in 1896 the organisation formed a Medical Council to oversee the training of nurses; Sir Russell Reynolds, Sir William Broadbent, and Frederick Treves were all members (Elspeth Platt, The Story of the Ranyard Mission, 1857–1937, 1937)

In October 1900 it was renamed the London Biblewomen and Nurses’ Mission (Elspeth Platt, The Story of the Ranyard Mission, 1857–1937, 1937)

In 1916 the British and Foreign Bible Society withdrew its grant, which meant an end to free copies of The Bible in the World; the grant to the Ranyard Mission was the last it ever gave (Elspeth Platt, The Story of the Ranyard Mission, 1857–1937, 1937)

In 1917 the organisation was renamed The Ranyard Mission, a title it had used unofficially for some time, and the Biblewomen became known as Mission Workers

In 1965 the Ranyard nurses were taken over by the London boroughs’ district nursing services

What was left of the funds of both the Ranyard Mission and Ranyard Nurses became the Ranyard Mission Fund, which then combined with the Ranyard Memorial Charitable Trust, set up in 1958 by an admirer of the Ranyard Nurses, A. C. Parker of Lewisham, to build a nursing home there