Overseas Department

Despite the Mothers’ Union growing outside the British Isles from the 1890s, the Overseas Department only came into being in 1912. Its purpose was to administer and co-ordinate the work overseas as well as to establish personal links between the membership overseas and at home. In 1994 the Department became part of the new Action and Outreach Unit which was set up to deal with all the Mothers’ Union social action and policy activities. Researchers should note that the integrity of these records as originally created has been compromised as a result of subsequent departmental reorganisation. Initially it seems overseas papers were mainly organised alphabetically by the name of diocese. Files relating to different aspects of MU work in each diocese were kept together. In addition these files may have been grouped according to the province. Due to interim storage and an initial sorting of the material on non-archival principles, it is not now possible to trace with absolute certainty how the files were first created and organised. Nevertheless, files relating to a particular diocese have been catalogued by province and then by diocese. There are also some non-diocesan files which concern more general aspects of overseas work.