deaconess-house

English

Alternative forms

• deaconess house

Noun

deaconess-house (plural deaconess-houses)

1. (chiefly historical) A house inhabited or operated by deaconesses, providing basic medical attention, care for the poor and sick etc.
   • 1999, Emmy Arnold, A Joyful Pilgrimage, Plough Publishing, published 1999, page 8:

     At the age of twenty (in June 1905), I began working as a probationer nurse at the Halle Deaconess House, as I had now reached the required age.

   • 1993, Marianne Tallberg, “Nursing and Medical Care in Finland”, in Nursing History Review, University of Pennsylvania, page 175:

     Some years later, the famine of 1867 gave a flying start to the deaconess-house in Helsinki. Aurora Karamsin was to fulfill two goals, one was to meet the need for care for the poor and sick, the other was to provide women, including those from the educated classes, with an opportunity for “self-sacrificing work in the service of humanity”.

   • 1889, Jane Marie Bancroft, Deaconesses in Europe and their Lessons for America, Cranston & Stowe, published 1889, page 86:

     The first of the Conferences was held in 1861, just twenty-five years after the founding of the first deaconess house at Kaiserwerth.

Translations

house inhabited by deaconesses

• Dutch: diaconessenhuis (nl) n