Background
Her father, Daniel Ferard (1788-1839), was a solicitor.
Her father, Daniel Ferard (1788-1839), was a solicitor.
Although Saint Paul mentioned deaconesses at Cenchreae, and Saint John Chrysostom considered the model appropriate for both sexes, deaconesses vanished for hundreds of years until revived when Theodor Fliedner founded a deaconess community among Lutherans in Kaiserswerth, Germany in 1836. Episcopalians in Baltimore, Maryland, started similar work in circa 1855. The nineteenth century deaconess movement involved women living in community while carrying out traditional deacon ministries, especially teaching and serving the poor in industrializing cities.
In 1858, Ferard visited the deaconess community at Kaiserswerth.
There, deaconesses taught girls and ministered to the sick. The institutions became as an alternative, practical and religious lifestyle for women, without becoming a nun.
With the help of a wealthy relative (Rev Thomas Pelham Dale) and other benefactors, Ferard founded the North London Deaconess Institution in 1861, based at Burton Crescent (now Cartwright Gardens) near King"s Cross, which became known as the London Diocesan Deaconess Institution in 1869, and then the Deaconess Community of Saint Andrew in 1943. The women dedicated themselves to the Church, to teach and care for the sick, but without taking formal vows.
Ferard was ordained a deaconess on 18 July 1862.
She first worked in a poor parish in the King"s Cross area of London, and moved to Notting Hill in 1873. She nursed and taught in Bloomsbury, Kings Cross, Somers Town and Notting Hill. Resigning as head of the Diocesan Deaconess Institution in 1873 due to her own ill health, Ferard later ran a convalescent home for children in Redhill.
She died at 16 Fitzroy Square in London on 18 April 1883.
The Community of Saint Andrew still exists today, albeit forced to move to in 1873 due to its growth and clearance of much of Somers Town for Street Pancras railyards. Isabella Gilmore (1842-1923), in the diocese of Rochester led an alternate style of deaconess life for she preferred a more parish-based model.
The deaconess movement spread worldwide, to many American cities as well as South Africa, China, New Zealand and the Philippines, among other places. Ferard died on 18 April 1883, but Anglicans celebrate the anniversary of her ordination, since the anniversary of her death often occurs during Holy Week.
Sources differ as to whether her ordination occurred on 3 or 18 July 1862, and the earlier date is the feast of the apostle Saint Thomas.
Henceforth the community was known as the "Community of Street Andrew".
The first members of the institution were Ferard, Ellen Meredith and Anna Wilcox.