# A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Sellon, Lydia

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SELLON, LYDIA.
This lady deserves a place in our record of female excellence and ability, as one who has devoted her means, talents, and energies to the work of charity and benevolence. She is the daughter of an officer of the royal navy of Britain, and possessed of considerable property, who, deeply moved by the destitute condition of the lower classes as regards education, responded to the srirring appeal put forth some years ago by the Bishop of Exeter, for help required in his diocese to teach and elevate the ignorant and debased. With ​the full consent of her father. Miss Sellon commenced her career of usefulness by establishing schools in the town of Devonport. into which, with great exertion and importunity, she drew the poor destitute children of the vicinity. Her success at first was small; she had to contend with the apathy of the parents and the disinclination of the children to habits of restraint and mental discipline; but eventually her pupils numbered three hundred, comprised in an infant and male and female industrial schools, the teaching carried on in which had a most beneficial effect on the morals of the neighbourhood. Miss Sellon's next benevolent enterprise was the taming and civilizing a set of young savages, as they might well be called, who worked in the Government dockyard, and on whom a zealous clergyman had exerted his influence in vain. By degrees these rude boys were brought completely under control, and relinquished their evenings' amusements to attend the course of secular and religious instruction provided for them at Miss Sellon's school. Other ladies, animated by her example, desired to assist In these good efforts, and to place themselves under the direction of one who had proved herself so devoted and able. In these offers of co-operation originated the idea, which was shortly carried out, of the establishment of a community of Protestant Sisters of Mercy, of which Miss Sellon was the head. These charitable ladies adopted a peculiar garb, had property in common, and were free to abandon their self-imposed duties at will, but bound while they remained members of the order to yield obedience to the regulations and commands of the superior, and they were under the visatorial control of the Bishop of Exeter. They devoted themselves entirely to the relief of the temporal and spiritual wants of the poor of Plymouth and Devonport, and to the conduct of Miss Sellon's educational establishments; they took charge of a large number of orphan children, whose "home" was beneath their common roof. Much public attention was a few years since called to this benevolent sisterhood, in consequence of a charge brought against them of certain Catholic practices. At the express desire of the bishop of the diocese, with whose sanction the institution had been formed, Miss Sellon replied to the charge in a pamphlet, in which she ably defended her conduct and regulations, and declared her strong attachment to the Protestant scriptures and canons of the Church of England. Whatever difference of opinion may prevail on this head, all must acknowledge that the efforts of Miss Sellon are most praiseworthy, nor can there be a doubt of the purity of her motives, any more than of the large amount of good which she has effected.