1. 4
W
hen the St Vincent de Paul Society (SVP) was
set up in England and Wales in 1844 poverty
was rife. Dependence on child labour was
widespread and children worked long hours in harsh and
often dangerous conditions. Without a Welfare State to help
look after vulnerable members of society, there was an
urgent need for organised help for families and individuals
suffering physical, mental and financial hardship.
So when an Englishman by the name of George Wigley
was inspired by Blessed Frédéric Ozanam’s French model
to set up the first SVP Conference in England and Wales,
the situation for the poor was dire. Wigley wanted to
defend the poor and bring their situation into the
consciousness of the wealthy. He
encouraged the editor of The Tablet,
Frederick Lucas, to write a series of
articles describing the harsh
conditions endured by the
vulnerable. The articles give us a
good insight into challenges of
marginalisation and exclusion
witnessed by the poor. They refer to
the ‘apathy of the State’ toward
people living in poverty and the
‘indifference’ of influential
Catholics. How hard
things were is
illustrated further by a
Royal Commission
of 1832 which
concluded that
too much money
was being spent on
the poor. The
resulting Poor Law of
1834 was designed to
discourage people from
claiming relief.
SVP founder Blessed Frédéric
Ozanam himself, after he visited
some of the London slums, wrote
of the prejudice that those in
poverty experienced: “What
courage the English
brothers need to shake
hands with the down-and-outs, in
an aristocratic land, where contact
with the poor is thought to declass and
degrade.”
It was against this sombre and austere
backdrop that the SVP came into being in this country. As
well as visiting those in need, which remains the core work
of the Society today, the SVP quickly became involved
in special works. Education was not free in the 19th
century and the SVP began to found schools, run
evening classes, and educate children in the
Catholic faith, as well as accompany inmates from
work-houses to Mass. An Orphanage Patronage
Committee was established as a special work for
the English SVP in 1850. It began by looking after
50 orphans who had been removed from asylums and
Union Workhouses and aimed “to shield the children
of the poor from corruption when they first go to work
and to instil spiritual values by means of advice and
help”. When children needed to work away
from home, the Patronage Committee found
suitable homes for them. Visits were
arranged from SVP members to ensure
that the children were looked after.
Although in 1847 an Act had
limited the work of children in coal
mines to maximum of 10 hours a day,
this regulation was generally
disregarded and did not become practice
for a further 30 years. The Catholic Black
Shoe Brigade was founded by SVP
Conferences in London in the 1850s. It
ensured employment for around 50 children who
the SVP annual report describes as the “poorest of
the poor, many from parents who were a harmful
How the SVP and poverty in
England & Wales has evolved
The Society of St Vincent de Paul is an international Christian voluntary organisation,
working with people in need. In this article Anita Boniface explains the continued
work of its founder, Blessed Frédéric Ozanam and patron, St Vincent de Paul
Bust of Frédéric Ozanam.
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>
influence or who had rejected them
since birth.” The SVP organised a
schoolroom for these boys, giving
them lessons in reading, writing and
maths, and religious instruction. This
was a far cry from the exploitation
that so many children were enduring
in the work place.
By the early 20th century the SVP
was also active in youth
evangelisation, running youth clubs,
scouts, Sunday Schools, catechism
classes, a guild and boys’ brigades.
Today, the SVP continues to provide
Christian guidance to young people
through the Young Vincentians
programme.
Examining how the SVP has
changed over the years, some active
members of the society have given
their perspective of what’s different
now – the challenges and the benefits.
Tom Turnbull, former President of
Our Lady and St Joseph’s Conference,
Lymington, spoke to its current
President, Patrick Swinden about how
the SVP has changed since he became
a member in the 1960s. Tom
explained how the SVP blossomed in
close-knit communities where the
SVP badge of honour was passed
down through the generations. Tom
says: “Times were hard in those days.
We didn’t have the Welfare State
safety net. We had each other and we
had a strong community spirit based
on family and parish inter-
dependence. Basic, good neighbourly
concern unearthed the vulnerable and
those chats at the school gates led the
SVP to many local, non-coping
families. Having said that, it was
much easier to identify needy folk –
they almost always came to the SVP.
Protocols were much more relaxed. I
could walk into the Admissions Office
of the Frimley Park hospital and
simply run my finger down the list to
identify the Catholic patients, and off
I went on my rounds. I once worked
in a parish where three generations
were helped by the SVP.
Nowadays the core problem is that
it is becoming difficult to find and
engage with the vulnerable in society.
Yes, poverty in the community is still
with us but yesterday, it was ‘poverty
of the body’. It was physical. Today it
is more often ‘poverty of the mind’. It
is called ‘loneliness’. Previously,
those in need came to us but today we
have to go out and find them. I
believe that our mission is to try and
fill the void in society created by the
current ‘out of sight, out of mind’
culture. In answer to the question: “Is
there a need for the SVP into the
future?” the answer is a definite ‘yes’
but first we need to move from a
passive support role to one that pro-
actively searches out and befriends
those lonely folk. Listening is a
Ministry and in the same way that the
Church is encouraging us to ‘reach
out’ to evangelise, we in the SVP need
August/September 2015 - Catholic Life 5
Tom Turnbull.
Minute Books from the first
SVP board meetings in 1844.
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3. 6
to reach out to serve the vulnerable in our community.”
Jim McEvoy of St Augustine of Canterbury Conference,
Chelmsford, echoes Tom’s account of the changes in
society over the decades. Jim recounts how in the years
gone by the SVP was one of the only sources of debt
advice and financial support in the absence of other
charities.
“I joined the SVP in 1966. A neighbour told me “it is not
sufficient to be a Catholic, you need to perform acts of
mercy”. That inspired me to sign up for the local SVP. Over
the last 50 years I’ve been a member of four different
conferences in three different dioceses. I’ve taken on all
kinds of officer roles and I’m now President of Chelmsford
District Council.
“The SVP has changed considerably since I became a
member. For a start, the first mixed conferences where
women were enabled to work along side men, was in 1968
and the SVP is now made up of more women than men.
“When I joined there were few other charities to look
For further information visit http://svp.org.uk
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St Vincent de Paul.
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4. August/September 2015 - Catholic Life 7
after older people and the sick. If you
were in debt and having money
problems you’d seek help from the
SVP whereas nowadays you can go to
the Money Advice Service or the
Citizen’s Advice Bureau.
“That meant that the SVP was more
heavily relied upon to provide support
and the need for support was more
visible. Now you have to go and look
for people to help.’’
As Jim says, mixed conferences
were only officially recognised in
1968 and whereas there were no
women holding office at National
level at that time, there are now three
women on the board.
Ann Harris has been a board
member since 2013 and a member of
the SVP for the past five years. Ann
speaks about some of the challenges
faced by the board: “Today’s board
finds themselves operating within the
Vincentian ethos while having to
make some hard business decisions.
There are tensions between being
Vincentian and functioning in the
modern world. But in spite of this, the
important thing is that we are able to
reach out and help those in need in
our local communities.”
Looking back at the SVP, earlier
times saw it as the only lay
organisation in the Church. Nowadays
the Catholic laity is in a much
healthier position, with large
international lay charities such as
CAFOD and Caritas doing a variety
of works. As well as having the
Welfare State we now have many
secular organisations working for and
with the poor. The challenges are,
however, as great as they were 170
years ago, and as society has evolved,
so too has the SVP. The SVP is now
present in 150 countries worldwide.
In England and Wales, nearly 10,000
lay members carried out 800,000
visits to lonely, isolated, often unwell
people last year alone. Members
befriend those in need, getting to
know families and individuals they
serve and so providing a very
personal service. This is a far cry
from the State’s provision where
home visits are often few and far
between, extremely time limited and
rushed.
Today, there are SVP support
centres in Leeds, Bradford and
Newcastle, which provide free
English language teaching, cookery
classes, IT lessons, and debt advice to
empower local people in need.
Housing for the homeless, and
rehabilitation for former offenders are
also part of the SVP work. There are
now 45 SVP community shops around
the country, based in areas of
deprivation and providing work and
voluntary positions to the local
community and providing affordable
goods.
Modern day charities such as the
Catholic Rescue Society (originally
St Vincent’s Home for Destitute
Boys) in London and St Vincent’s
Housing Association in Manchester
were founded as SVP special works
before the society withdrew its direct
involvement so that it could focus on
other works. Former SVP President
Dr Austin Fagan says: “This
withdrawal follows in the tradition of
St Vincent de Paul himself. He often
launched new works and, once they
had become established, he stood
back and allowed others to develop
these further. In one of the prayers
said during SVP Conference
meetings, we pray ‘for the grace to
persevere when disappointed or
distressed, and never to claim that
our work springs from ourselves
alone’.”
The SVP continues to provide a
means by which anyone who cares
can do something practical to help
people in need. Indeed, fittingly, the
Vincentian motto is to ‘Turn Concern
into Action’, just as it has been doing
in England and Wales for the past 171
years. n
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The SVP based at the parish of Our
Lady of Mount Carmel in Redditch
supported by parishioners from St
Anne’s and St Catherine’s in
Birmingham served a dinner last
Christmas to the many men and women
finding themselves alone or homeless.
The event was put on in partnership
with another Christian Church from
South Birmingham.
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