Their common interests of writing and work among the poor brought them close together. Lady Georgiana encouraged Fanny Taylor in her desire to form a religious order for poor girls in London and in her journey to Poland to look at a model for her proposed community.

The order which became. The Poor Servants of the Mother of God was accepted by the Church in 1870, and Fanny Taylor became its first Mother Superior, Mother Magdalen Taylor.

The Order's first home was in Cavendish Square where they took in washing to support themselves. Someone wondering how best they could help the new community was told by Lady Georgiana with "her practical common sense and not, perhaps without a touch of humourous malice, "Give her a good mangle, my dear, that will be the help she will most value."

In 1866 her sister Susan (Lady Rivers) and brother-in-law Lord Rivers died within two days of each other. Of their four sons only the youngest, Henry, survived his parents. He succeeded to the title but died three years later at the age of seventeen. The title went to his uncle, and the estates after his uncle's death to Lt-General Augustus Henry Lane Fox-Pitt-Rivers, the anthropologist and archaeologist.

The four sons all died in their 'teens from a "gradual diminution of all muscular strength." (Were they early victims of Muscular Dystrophy?)

In the early 1870's the Fullertons were spending more time in Bournemouth, so in 1875 they gave, up Slindon and two years later bought a house in St. Peter's Road (then Gervis Road) called Ayrfield. The house, which was demolished in 1989, included the site on which the Alexandra Hall stood. In Bournemouth, as elsewhere she and her husband lived, she worked to support the Catholic Church and the poor and needy. She wrote of Bournemouth:

"This place is full of sorrows and sad destinies. It would be depressing but for the opportunities it gives of perhaps doing a little good ... and now there is an Irish family in a shed on the common without anything - five children ill with the measles - mother dead. I am going to drive there this afternoon. But time, time, it is just as bad in Bournemouth as in London, to get a moment to write or read."

One of her early involvements was with an order of French nuns (the Religious of the Cross) who, probably as a consequence of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, fled with many others to England. Four of the Order found refuge at Blandford Square, London, but Father Mann SJ of the Bournemouth Mission with Lady Georgiana's help persuaded them to move to Bournemouth and set up a Convent in Branksome Wood Road.

They were joined there by other members of their community and soon established a private school for girls on the premises. French refugees from the war were of great concern to Lady Georgiana and her friends, and apart from supplying shelter for them in this country, supplies were sent to France of "everything that could be of comfort to the sick and wounded."

Her next major step was to establish a convalescent home in Bournemouth for poor Catholics from London. This would supplement the many existing for Protestants. Lady Victoria Kirwan, an aunt of the Duchess of Norfolk, who became a close friend of Lady Georgiana after she came to Bournemouth recalled: "... When she settled in Bournemouth her one idea was how much good she could do to everyone.

She begged in all directions till she got enough money to start the little house, St. Joseph's ..." (Lady Kirwan lived at 3, Richmond Gardens at the top of Richmond Hill.)



St. Joseph's Convalescent Home started in a house called "Blenheim" on the corner of Madeira Road and Lansdowne Road opposite the present Police Station. The Matron was a Miss Mary Shea. And it was in this house that a school for poor Catholic children was held. In a letter to Mother Magdalen Taylor in 1877 Lady Georgiana wrote,

"A little Catholic school is opened at St. Joseph's Home taught by a clever young schoolmistress, a convert of Father Gallwey's who had broken down in health. She is quite strong enough to teach twenty four children in a small room. We keep her in the double capacity of patient and schoolmistress.

The subscribers to the school pay the Home a rent for the room. It is a very nice picture of a thorough little Catholic school ...."



Of Lady Georgiana Fullerton and the Home, Magdalen Taylor wrote, "This was the last work to which she was able to give personal attention; and she was untiring in her constant visits, bestowing smiles, words of encouragement for the patients, bringing them books, pictures, little dainties, and in the cases of severe illness praying and reading by the sick bed."

The Convent in Branksome Wood Road, the Convalescent Home of St. Joseph and the Church of the Sacred Heart were the main interests of her life in Bournemouth. She wrote to a friend: "On Wednesdays ten or twelve ladies meet at the Convent here to work and converse. Last time we decided to have a Crib for the Chapel, a Christmas tree at the Convent for seventeen or eighteen children comprising all ranks is all we can muster."

Her biographer and old friend Mrs. Craven wrote of visits to her in Bournemouth, "At the end or our drives we stopped sometimes at the Convent of some French Nuns who had charge of the Catholic poor school or more often at the Convalescent Home which Lady Georgiana had founded."

Although quite ill during her years in Bournemouth she took an active part in the life of the Parish forming a sewing group where, "through her worst sufferings she always came to work meetings and would sit and work at flannel petticoats or knit stockings - she always bought the flannel, calico etc - when I (Lady Kirwan) suggested we should all subscribe one shilling she said, "No, my dear, I don't think so, a shilling is very important to some people."

She started a society for young women called the Guild of St. Walburga and would attend the monthly meetings to talk to them about different aspects of religion. She provided their Christmas treats and planned and paid for an excursion each summer.

Lady Georgiana 's support for the little school conducted at St. Joseph's Home led to a search for a separate site on which it could be established. A letter from a Mr. J.H. Wynne addressed to the Father Procurator in 1878 concerned Pine Cottage at No. A Branksome Wood Road (now St, Stephen's Road).

His letter written during negotiations for the purchase of this property describes it as a "piece of freehold land not quite an acre having three cottages - one of the cottages could be adapted for school purposes - a good school might be built on a site of the present stables.