AN ANTI-CATHOLIC LECTURER AND HIS FRIENDS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume 07, Issue 23, 7 June 1900, Page 27

AN ANTI-CATHOLIC LECTURER AND HIS FRIENDS.

Notwithstanding the many and withering exposures to which • exmonk Widdows, 1 alias Nobbs, has been subjected from time to time by Iruth and other English joo*u£& he is still patronised and supported m many parts of the United Kingdom by persons and associations who cannot be ignorant of his antecedents. Backed up by the Rev. Jacob Primmer he instituted proceedings recently •gainst the Kirkcaldy Town Council for breach of agreement. The Council let a hall to Widdows for a lecture, but getting to know of his career they cancelled the letting. Laf proceedings were threatened against the Council, who stood tor their dee Moo, with the result that the case was withdraw* at die lait moment, Widdows not having any desire evidently, like"oQ»ew of his class, to face the ordeal of a cross-examination. Notwithstanding his notorious character, Nobbs was received with open arms in Belfast a short time ago, where he lectured against <$& Catholio Church under the auspices of what is known as the Belfast Protestant Association Nobbs is highly recommended by similar associations and persons in England, among his most prominent patrons being a retired colonel in Swansea or thereabout*, who suffers from an ' Indian ' liver and a bad attack of no- Popery. The following question put in the House of Commons recently to the Attorney -General for Ireland and the answer thereto will give our readers some idea of the class of man 'ex-monk Widdows' is : —

Mr. Samuel Young asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he was aware that a man calling himself 'ExMonk Widdows ' has lately been preaching and lecturing in Belfast under the auspices of the Belfast Protestant Association, and that his real name is Nobbs ; whether he was sentenced in Toronto, Canada, to five months' imprisonment, and sentenced again in 1888 by Mr. Justice A. L. Smith to 10 years' penal eerritade f«r«n unmentionable crime : and whether, seeing Widdows, alia* Kobbs, was never a monk, the Government will proceed against him for obtaining money under false pretences. The Attorney-General for Ireland.— At'the request of my right hon. friend I will reply to this question. I am aware that an individual calling himself Ex-Monk Wjddows has been recently delivering lectures in Belfast. I am unable to say whether he is an accredited agent of the Belfast Protestant Association, though I observe he has been associated on several occasions with Mr. Arthur Trew, also who, I believe, is a prominent member of that body. It is a fact that Widdows was convicted and sentenced in 1888 for the crime mentioned, and though I have not been able to procure a copy of any oonviction against him in Canada I have no reason to doubt that he was convicted and sentenced in Toronto for a similar offence. There are some legal difficulties in the course suggested in the last paragraph of the question, but the matter has been placed in the hands, of the police. . As Widdows will very probably find the vattentton of the English polios authorities interfering with his <JOmfort,:it is«ot at all unlikely that he would be prepared for a oonssdjgrjiJ*a,& come to thepe colonies on a lecturing tour. Patrons of "such adventurers would find the present time very opportune for engaging the exconvict. Widdows would no doubt give them his word that his life has been im-naculate, and that Mr. Labouchere, the Attorney' General for Ireland, the Kirkcaldy Town Council, and the English police were the slaves of the Vatican.