ABSTRACT
Parish work was the foundation of the Company of the Daughters of Charity, but within a few years of the inception of the Company, its mission expanded. The Daughters of Charity came to serve as both the directors and staff of many large institutions for poor relief including schools, foundling homes, and hospitals. In order to serve the sick and poor whose families could not meet their needs at home, Daughters directed orphanages, worked in prisons, managed insane asylums, and administered hospices. Service in large institutions like municipal hospitals proved important in securing the Daughters' active vocation. The Company of the Daughters of Charity was not France's first religious community to use nursing as an expression of its spiritual vocation. The choice of laymen to be Fathers of the Poor did not instantly resolve the administrative problems at the Angers. The first hospital staffed by the Daughters of Charity was the Hotel-Dieu in Angers, one of France's oldest hospitals.
