THE STORY OF AN INFAMOUS PLOT.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 9, 1 March 1900, Page 3

THE STORY OF AN INFAMOUS PLOT.

Last week we gave the substance of the wild anti-convent story attributed to Maria Monk — a story which is being circulated in this Colony by the notorious impostor and sham nun who accompanies ex-priest Slattery upon his tour. We likewise proved, from the sworn affidavits of Mrs. Monk (Maria Monk's mother), of Di. Robinson, J.P., and of other residents of Montreal that Maria Monk —whom Mrs. Slattery belauds as an angel of light — was a halfwitted creature, a thief, vagrant, notorious liar, and prostitute, and of such evil life and morals that she had to be dismissed even from a refuge for fallen women. The small beginnings of this filthy romance falsely attributed to her are to be found in the following portion of the affidavit of Dr. Robertson, of Montreal, which was sworn before Benjamin Holmes, J.P., on November 13, 1835 :—: — 'On the 9th of November, 1834, three men came up to my house, having a young female in company with them, who, they Baid, was observed, that forenoon, on the bank of the canal, near the extremity of the St. Joseph's suburbs, acting in a manner which induced some people who saw her to think that she intended to j drown herself. They took her into a house in the neighbourhood, ■where, after being there some hours, and interrogated as to who she was, etc., she said she was the daughter of Dr. Robertson. On receiving this information they brought her to my house. Being from home when they came to the door, and learning from Mrs. Robertson that she had denied them, they conveyed her to the watch-house. Upon hearing this story, in company with 6. Anldjo Esq., of this city, I went to che watch-house to inquire into the affair. We found the young female, whom I have since ascertained to be Maria Monk, daughter of W. Monk of this city, in custody. She said that, although she was not my daughter, she was the child of respectable parents, in or very near Montreal, who from some light conduct of hers (arising from temporary insanity, to which she icas at times subject from her ■infancy') had kept her confined and chained in a cellar for the last four years. Upon examination, no mark or appearance indicated the wearing of manacles or any ether mode of restraint. She said, on my observing this, that her mother always took care to cover the irons with soft clothes, to prevent them injuring her skin. From the appearance of her hands she evidently had not been used to work. To remove her from the watch-house, where she was confined with some of the most profligate women of the town, taken up for inebriety and disorderly conduct in the streets, as she could not give a satisfactory account of herself, I, as a Justice of the Peace, sent her to gaol as a vagrant.' Thus, when she found that, owing to the personal attendance of Dr. Robertson, her story as to her relationship to him could not be maintained, she serenely shifted her ground and represented herself as the daughter of other persons in Montreal who had kept her lot four years chained in a cellar. Later on she gave up the cellar story for one which, it was pointed out to her, would be much more profitable. She then represented herself as having been an inmate of the Hotel Dieu during the very four years that shs had previously said she had been chained in a cellar by her ' cur-ru-el parients.' A week or two later — towards the close of November, 1834, she became an inmate of the Magdalen Asylum, a home for reclaiming fallen women to a virtuous life. She remained there until dismissed for bad conduct in the following March. According to the affidavit of Mrs. McDonnell, the matron of the institution. Maria Monk never once hinted, during all this period, ' that she had been an inmate of the Hotel Dieu convent, or of any j convent whatever.' The new version of her older melodrama story ! of her father's cellar forms a notable chapter in the history of shams and swindles. It arose in the following way :—: —