The Female Impostor.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 4, 25 January 1900, Page 3

The Female Impostor.

From what has been already paid, the candid reader will readily perceive that Joseph Slattery is a hopelessly unreliable witness. But there are two further matters which throw a curious Bide-light on the man and his mission. The one is his association in thie crusade of filth with a proven impostor ; the other is his ludicrous endeavour to cover up the most discreditable personal facts of hia history with, random and inapplicable testimonials.

The woman who accompanies him gives her maiden name as Mary E. McCabe. In her Convent Life Exposed * (p. 1) she tells us, among other things, (I) that she was ' born on the 2nd March, 1867, near the town of Cootehill, County Cavan, Ireland' ; (2) that her mother's name was Katherine O'Neil and her father's (p. 2) James McCabe ; (3) that in 1883 she was (p. 42) a novice and afterwards a nun in the Convent of Poor Clares, Cavan, Ireland ; f (4) that there were at that time in the Fame convent nuns named Mother Joseph, Sister Loyola, Sister Ursula, Sister Justine, and an 'Hon. Blanche Coote,'who was known as Sister Mary Frances; (5) that she (Mrs. Slattery) was ' rescued' from the convent by her cousin, Lady Morton, who, she tells ua (p li) was wife of the Right Rev. Sir Robert T. Morton, of Devonshire, 'a bishop of the Anglican Church.' And more which will be dealt with in detail in our article on this bold impostor Now there is overwhelming evidence available to prove on oath that these and other statements of the alleged ex-nun are inventions pure and simple. (1) Wo person named Mary E. MoCabe was born in the town or district of Cootehill on March 2, 1867. (2) No person named James McOabe, with a daughter named Mary E. McCabe and a wife whose maiden name was Katherine O'Neil, has resided within living memory in the neighbourhood of Cootehill. (3) No Mary E. McCabe from that district ever entered the Convent of Poor Clares, Cavan, or ever lived in it as postulant, novice, or nun ; and no person known as Sister Mary Elisabeth was ever an inmate of the convent or a member of the community. (4) There never was in the convent a Mother Joseph, or a Sister Loyola, or a Sister Justine, or an ' Hon. Blanche Coote' who was known as Sister Mary Prances. If these were living persons and not —as they are —fictions of a vulgar impostor's imagination, Mrs. Slattery's career would long ago have been stopped by the operation of the law of libel. (5) No professed nun ever left the Convent of Poor Clares, Cavan, or was ' rescued ' from it, or ever needed 'rescuing' from it. Moreover, the Blue Book and other official lists give the lie direct to this imaginative ' Mary E. McCabe' ; for they show that there is and has been no baronet in Great Britain named Morton. Even the Clergy List is against her ; for no such name as that of Rev. Robert J. Morton is to be found in it. The names ' Lady Morton' and the ' Right Rev. Sir Robert J. Morton' were published in the American edition of Convent Life Exposed. They were judiciously omitted from the English edition, % which was published in a country where the story of the triple-tiered Dorsetshire bishop-squire-baronet could not stand the light for half an hour. Now this woman has been lecturing as a former member of the Convent of Poor Clares, Cavan. Money was charged for admission to those lectures. That money was, ia plain terms, obtained under a false pretence. The woman is, in point of fact, an impostor and fraud. It may be argued that Slattery has no knowledge of this fact. But the nature of the evidence against the bona fides of ' Sister Mary Elisabeth' has been brought before him by pamphlets, by registered letters, by large displayed posters (one of which is in our possession), and by repeated public challenges both in Europe and Australia, some of which he has referred to in the Press and on the platform. Thus far he has taken no step? to clear his wife of the serious and well-proven charges levelled against her on three continents. And she is still termed on his handbills ' the Escaped Nun.' Iv the circumstances it is extremely difficult to free Slattery from the imputation of being either the silly tool or the willing accomplice of a notorious impostor. Those 'Testimonials.' Slattery makes a half-hearted pretence of defending his character in that curious publication which he entitles his Complete Refutation of Popish Lies. We have already indicated the nature of the' defence' he essays against three of the charges which have been made against him. For the rest, his sole reply consists in the publication of a list of random testimonials that refuse to give the testimony which he most urgently needs. They remind one of the illogical defence of the oft-quoted individual who, when charged with being a materialist, replied : ' I am not a materialist ; I'm a barber.' It is thus with Slattery's testimonials. They are simply an example of the fallacy of proving the wrong conclusion—a fallacy which, as Professor Jevons reminds us, 'is very common with orators and those who have to make the best of a bad case.' The testimonials may be briefly dismissed with the following remarks :—: — 1. Not one of his testimonials touches or in any way qualifies or palliates the serious charges that he was dismissed from the ranks of the Catholic clergy for intemperance, that he was imprisoned in America for the sale of indecent literature, that he is a wholesale and self-convicted perverter of pacred truth, and that he is the dupe, if not the abettor or the accomplice, of an itinerant female impostor. 2. All his testimonials, without a single exception, are subsequent to his dismissal by Archbishop Walsh. The great bulk of them are dated 1889 and 1890. Fire only are dated 1897. Between 1890 and 1897 no information is forthcoming. Tie reader will make a mental note of this. 3. Four of these so-called certificates of character are undated ; a goodly number of the collection make no direct reference whatever to his personal character or history ; and at least two do not mention his name or give the signature or address of the persons by whom they are alleged to have been written. Doubts have, therefore, been not unreasonably cast upon their genuineness.

* The references hereunder, unless where otherwise stated, are to the American edition of this scurrilous and mendacious book. t The title-page of her Convent life Exposed f American edition) runs as follows.: 'Convent Life Exposed. By Mrs S'attery. otherwise Sister Mary Elisabeth Abbey of Poor Clares, Cavan, Ireland. Published by Mrs. filattery, Oliftondale Mass., 1892' Wo have been in communication with witnosses who can testify on oath that at her meetings in Glasgow, Manchester, and Edinburgh she said she -was a nun in the Convent at Cavan. % See pp. 9, 22,128, English edition.

4. By far the greater part of these testimonials are from persons who employed him to lecture against Popery, and whose acquaintance with him was of a very passing kind. They are, briefly, a commendation of his noisome profession of itinerant slanderer, and their value may be estimated by the fact that most of the writers roundly assert that Slattery is ' courteous to Romanists,' 'avoids all abuse' of them, 'does not give offence' to them, that his vile crusade has brought great blessings, etc., etc. Most of these ' characters ' come from individuals and associations \) engaged, like* himself, in violent crusades of vituperation against ' Rome.' Among the former is the notorious Justin D. Fulton, whom Slattery terms 'a great Christian hero.'* This Fulton, according to Mr. Britten, X S G-., ' was lecturing for a short time in England some few years back, but his discourses .were too bad even for the Protestants who like that kind of thing, and he soon went back to America. The late Bishop of Colchester severely censured an Anglican clergyman for being present on the platform at one of Fulton's lectures.' f Fulton is the writer of a production which is described by Mr. Britten as 'even more vile, if that would be possible, than Slattery's prohibited pamphlet.' The Boston Pilot of March 19, 1898, says of this book tha,t it ' had to be expurgated and fumigated before even the strong nostrils of Apaism could stand it. A certificate of character from Justin Fulton is valuable only when it does not commend the recipient of it.' So much for Slattery's certificates of character. As regards the personal charges referred to above, they leave his character just where they found it.