Caroline Hopton

A carte-de-visite portrait of Caroline Annie Hopton, a Sister of Mercy at the House of Mercy, an Anglican convent at Bussage near Stroud in Gloucestershire. Born at Montreal in Canada in or about 1850, Caroline was the daughter of Charles Edward Hopton, a Captain in the 23rd Welsh Fusileers, and his wife Mary Jane née Vaughan, daughter of the Church of England clergyman and social reformer David James Vaughan. Caroline’s aunt Grace Anne Poole – Mary Jane’s widowed sister – was the convent’s mother superior.

A diocesan home for reformed prostitutes and girls whose home background necessitated moral training, the Bussage House of Mercy was founded in 1851 by the Reverend Robert Suckling, perpetual curate of Bussage, Reverend John Armstrong, vicar of Tidenham, and Mrs Grace Anne Poole of Brownshill House, at the latter's expense. Mrs Poole superintended the Home and acted as the convent’s mother superior. On her death in 1900, the Wantage Community of Sisters undertook management until the Home closed down in 1949.

Caroline Hopton died at Brownshill House on 9 January 1934, aged 84. She left effects valued at £2597. According to the abstract of her will, probate was granted to her brother Charles Ernest Hopton, Archdeacon of Birmingham.

Photographed by T. Jones of Hereford and Ludlow.