These nuns with the distinctive headgear, called cornettes, are the Sisters of St Vincent de Paul. You can see why some people called them the “butterfly nuns”. They worked at a hospital on the Queen Square in Bloomsbury, founded in 1884 by Giovanni Battista Ortelli, an Italian businessman, to provide medical care to poor Italians.
Incredibly, a bed was dedicated to Benito Mussolini in 1933, having been paid for by a group of British Fascists. But by 1941, as Italy entered the war, it had to close. Today, the building is the Sight and Sound center, owned by Great Ormond Street Hospital.
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