Susan O’Brien, Leaving God for God: The Daughters of Charity of St Vincent De Paul in Britain, 1847–2017, London: Dartman, Longman & Todd, 2017, pp. xiv + 448, £20, ISBN: 9780232532883

faith, came under threat when an ‘odious woman’ [muliercula] in pursuance of a feud with the man who was shielding him, told the authorities where to find him and ‘described the features of the his face’ [eiusque lineamenta vultus descripsit] so they could not mistake him. He was arrested and imprisoned in chains. But ‘certainly he did not eat his bread in prison as a man of leisure, for he was doing God’s work daily. Thus Catholics were allowed entrance on the pretext of a visit and he daily heard the confessions of many and offered Holy Mass’ (pp. 877–8). He even converted a Cambridge graduate (who had fallen on hard times and was in prison for debt). After several months in prison, Fr Shelton was transported to Barbados but ‘after completing his sentence he returned to Holland and to Ireland’ (p. 878). There is a lot more to these volumes than tales of extraordinary courage and witness.