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  3. History of the Deaconess Foundation
  4. Sisters’ home

Sisters’ home

Sister’s home was a community where women who came to the Deaconess Foundation lived, were educated as deaconesses, and where they were sisters among themselves, daughters of the Sisters’ home. The home system was abolished in 1959, but it did not end until 2025.

Sisarkoti oli sisarten yhteisö. Kuvan kaksi diakonissaa oli sen jäseniä. Heillä on yllään samanlaiset vaatteet, pitkä leninki, esiliina ja pitsikoristeinen päähine.

Sisters’ Home

Care

The Home had the “mother” and the “father”, directress and director. The daughters of the home were sisters from students to ordained deaconesses. The sisters committed to remaining unmarried and working in the institution in the various roles to which the Deaconess Foundation assigned them. They didn’t receive a salary until the late 1940s, just a small allowance. The Deaconess Foundation, in turn, took care of them until the end of their lives. Engagement or marriage meant leaving the Sisterhood. An ordained deaconess lost the title of deaconess.

Community at work and leisure

At a time when women’s living space and mobility were limited, Sisters’ home offered its residents a community. And the opportunity to work outside the home. It provided security, but it also had a formative significance – communal life shaped character. When service work took the sister elsewhere in Finland, contact was kept with home, initially by letter and later also by phone. The Deaconess Foundation’s Sisters’ home operated from 1897 to 1959 in Kallio, Helsinki, earlier from 1867 onwards in the foundation’s shorter-term premises. Nowadays the building which was originally Sisters’ home has been transformed into a modern office space.

The Deaconess Foundation had shared holiday homes for its sisters, the longest-standing of which was Heponiemi located in Karjalohja. In the picture below, vacationing at Heponiemi, with accommodation at the oldest cottage.

Mustavalkoinen kuva, jossa mökki ja edessä roikkuva riippumatto, taustalla istuu henkilö mökin portailla.
Normal working life also began to attract the sisters.

The Sisters’ home system was abolished in 1959

After the Second World War, legislation and attitudes changed dramatically. Time passed the Sisters’ home by. The system was discontinued, but one could still remain in the institution and care based on a separate agreement. Those who remained were called A-sisters. The Deaconess Foundation took care of them until the end of their lives, as promised long ago. The last A-sister, deaconess Rauha Venetmäki, died in August 2025, marking the end of the Sisters’ home system.

Black and white photograph showing several women sitting and swinging in a hammock in a wooded environment.
Sisters spending leisure time in the early 20th century.
Black and white photo showing a group of deaconesses or nurses dressed in traditional uniforms, gathered outdoors around a table enjoying a coffee break.
Having coffee outside in the Sisters’ home yard in the 1910s.
Two smiling deaconesses in a black and white photograph, standing outside in a garden holding bouquets of flowers.
Two newly ordained deaconesses in front of Sisters’ home in the 1950s.
Black and white photo of the 1950s Diakonissalaitos dining hall, showing women and girls serving and sitting at tables.
Meal time in the Sisters’ home dining hall in the 1950s.
Black and white photo showing a group of women sitting together outdoors sewing or doing handicrafts, all dressed in traditional nurse uniforms and headwear.
A sewing moment outdoors in the garden.
Neljä hymyilevää diakonissaa perinteisissä asuissaan ulkona, taustalla sininen taivas.
Gunnel Stenbäck at the right was a sister years 1934–2024.
Black and white photo showing a group of women sitting side by side in a room, smiling or laughing.
Doing handicrafts together in the 1950s.
Black and white photo showing four young women standing outside in front of trees and a building in the 1960s, all smiling and looking in different directions.
Residents at the 1960s Sisters’ home.
Diakonissalaitoksen diakonissojen hauta-alue, jossa kivistä muodostettu polku, pensaita ja keltainen kyltti, jossa lukee hauta-alueen perustamisesta vuodesta 1923 alkaen.

Remembering Sisters

The Deaconess Foundation has a burial area for Deaconesses at Malmi Cemetery in Helsinki. The foundation commemorates the sisters who have found their final resting place there and at Hietaniemi Cemetery with summer and autumn flowers, as well as candles at Christmas.