SENSATION IN ST. PAUL'S.

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20904, 11 July 1933, Page 9

SENSATION IN ST. PAUL'S.

PROTEST AGAINST SLUMS. WOMAN NOVELIST'S OUTBURST. (b'KITED PRESS ASSOCIATION—BY ELECTRIC TELEGRAM— COPYRIGHT.) (Received July 10, 8.3 p.m.) LONDON, July 10. The middle-aged novelist, Joan Conquest (whose real name is Mrs Leonard Cooke), author of The Naked Truth, an exposure of slum evils, created a sensation in St. Paul's Cathedral. She rose and walked towards the pulpit, holding her book aloft, and gesticulating, as the Bishop of Winchester began his sermon. He was preaching on the occasion of the centenary of the Oxford Movement. His sonorous voice drowned Mrs Cooke's interrup tions, except "I protest." Two officials took her outside after she had crashed the book on the floor before the pulpit. She left the Cathedral shouting. The Bishop afterwards said that he did not see her and was entirely unaware of her protest. Mrs Cooke later declared that her experience as a slum nurse justified the protest, which was directed at the problem of the slums, and did not concern the centenary. She added, "I said that this book is a challenge to civilisation and Christianity. It demands that the Church take up the cause of Great Britain's 'untouchables.' When the Bishop took no notice, I said, 'I can only assume that the Church is cowardly, and criminally neglectful of the salvation of human beings so desperately in need.' "