At first, the original members of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul were organized so that each one was in charge of a family to help.

Frederic Ozanam was entrusted with a family of a mother, who worked ceaselessly, with five children, and a father who, as she told him, “daily, arriving home from his escapades, dead drunk, almost always hits us all, me and our children.”

Frederic found out that the couple was not married and, with the agreement of the woman, advised the local justice to try to free her from “that ignoble and hateful yoke.”

Through a collection, he mustered sufficient means to allow the woman to return to her native Britain, bringing with her the three younger children. Frederic managed to employ the two older sons in the pressroom of Emmanuel Bailly, first president of the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul.

Author: Juan Manuel Gómez,
SSVP president.

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