MARIA'S MISERABLE END.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 9, 1 March 1900, Page 5

MARIA'S MISERABLE END.

Little more remains to be said. Maria Monk was not allowed to profit by the financial success of Hoyte's unclean enterprise. Her death was, as might be expected, of the same complexion as her life, The sad account of the close of her career of sin and shame is told as follows in Jh>/m,ot's Jieytster of Ootober I>. IH4«> : 'Two months ago or more the police book recorded the arrest of the notorious but unfortunate Maria Monk, whose book of Air/id Disrlomrcs created such excitement in the religious world some years since. She was charged with picking the pocket oi a paramour in a den near the Five Points. She was tried, found guilty, and sent to prison, where she lived up to Friday last, when death removed her from the scene of her sufferings and disgrace. What a moral is here indeed ! ' And thia is Mrs. Slattery's heroine and ' famous nun ' and ' valiant woman ! ' Behold thy gods, 0 Israel ' ' Appleton's Cyrlojw dta says ■ ' The Knownothing party used it [Maria Monln to make political capital r in the fifties 1, and the burning of Roman Catholic churches in various cities was Indirectly the result of it. Happily, religious passions are not so easily aroused now as they were half a century ago. Cut the purpose of the circulation of this book by the Orange Society is undoubtedly at root the same as that of their congeners, the Knownothings— to arouse public hatred against the Catholic body. For roving impostors like Mrs. Slattery the chief value of the book would probably lie in the appeal which its contents would make to the lewd as well as to the bigoted.