Day 73: Praying for mothers and children (1946)

Join with Salvationists of the Wales Division for day 73 of 150 days of prayer.

• ‘I am always near to you. You hold my right hand, as my guide’ (Psalm 73:23, EasyEnglish Bible). 

1946

The October-November Deliverer caried an article called ‘For Mother and Babies’:

‘Years ago, a young unmarried mother, an outcast from a very respectable family, was visited by one of our women’s social officers as she lay in the workhouse infirmary. “Has it come to this?” exclaimed the girl, and her piteous look of distress went straight to the officer’s heart. 

‘From that moment she left no stone unturned until a building suitable to be a maternity hospital as well as a home was acquired. So Northlands in Cardiff began its merciful work [in 1922, see Day 49]. Now, as a busy centre of all modern methods for assisting the mother and child, it is to be enlarged because of ever-increasing demands upon its accommodation.

‘The officer was Lieut-Colonel Agnes Swain … [Her] earliest appointments as an officer … included one at our first women’s shelter in Hanbury Street, London’s East End, in the days when “Jack the Ripper” was one of the night terrors for women in that neighbourhood.’

We know very little of the story of this young unmarried mother who was treated as an outcast by her own family. We do know that she motivated Agnes Swain to ‘do something’. 

Prayer

• Thank God for your mother or the person who was a mother to you.
• Pray for single mothers who are struggling with relationships within their own family group.
• Pray for those mothers whose husbands have died suddenly, leaving them with young children to bring up.