America’s Fake ’’ Nuns

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 33, 23 August 1923, Page 15

America’s “Fake" Nuns

IMPOSTOR'S WHO BATTEN ON BIGOTRY. The latest American files to hand describe the unmasking of another "ex-nun," who sought notoriety and cash by appealing to the ignorance of the bigoted antiCatholic citizens. Needless to say, the woman had never been in a convent, except as a subject for charity. As a return for being befriended when she and her baby were. destitute, she invented the usual tale of "escapes," etc. We suppose in due course this yarn will reach Sydney (says the Freeman's Journal) and appear in a journal which caters for the Nesst;s and the Bartons. As Catholics are too well aware the "walled-up nun," the ''escaped nun," the "nun kept by force in the convent," furnish titles for a romantic story as well as topic? to draw a curious crowd to a lecture hall. Whenever you read in tho daily press of an "escape from-a convent," put it down that some girl (generally a Protestant) ran away from a reform institution conducted' by the Sisters. The girl was sent there by parents, guardian, or court, in preference to a State institution. There was no intention on the part of the girl to become a nun, and no willingness on the part of the Sisters to allow her to become a nun. And when the "Escape from Convent" supplies material for- a thrilling story you are safe in drawing one of two conclusions: either the writer is imposing on the uninformed which will insure her many readers, and therefore' money, or enemies of the Church have engaged her services. Some of the "Fakes." It is not uninteresting to review some of these "fake" nuns who have recently illustrated the book of bigotry. Strangely enough, America appears to be the home of most of the newest. Let us make a start with Helen Jackson, who appeared on the stage a couple of years ago. Her real name is Helen Barnowska. At the. early age of fifteen years she was committed to a Sisters' Reformatory at Detroit by her sister, because she was unmanageable. This was in September, 1895. In December, 1897, she was permitted to return to her sister, then living in Pittsburg. Later she returned to the Good Shepherd Home, but this time to the Carthage, Ohio, Home, because her former Superioress, whom Helen liked, was transferred to that Home. Even after she left the reformatory the last time,, in fact even after she married, she and her husband called at the Detroit Home, and were most friendly. Like the other insincere people on the anti-Catholic platform, she saw, during a wave of bigotry, a chance to make easy money. Helen now lectures in. a. garb, which she represents as her nun's garb (of course, she was never a nun); it is only a renlica of the costume worn by the peasant women and girls in Normandy, France. The Sisters of the Good Shepherd allowed their charges to wear that garb as a uniform during the period in which they are "on good conduct." No one who enters the reformatory under the Good Shepherd Sisters is ever permitted to become a member of their Order. This impostor brought a 20,000 dollar damage suit against the Ypsilant Press for defamation of character. In the trial, in the early part of 1921. before Judge Sample, Wachtenaw Circuit Court, Mich., it was developed that Helen's character was anything but the best. She was committed to the Good Shepherd Home for incorrigibility, and after her "escape" frequented low dives in Chicago. Jury rendered verdict "No cause for.action," against the Michigan editor, who had referred to her as a "woman of the street." Helen Jackson has been repeatedly exposed in different communities at the very time she was speaking to big audiences," yet enemies of the Catholic Church encourage her to go ahead. How dishonest and wicked! Mabel McClish. Mabel, like the Helen noticed above, was an inmate in a reformatory, which usually suggests early badness. She posed as a "converted nun," but declined to accept an ofier of 15,000 dollars, made at her own meeting by Father Conroy, of Crawfordsville, Indiana, for proof that she had ever been a nun. ' • '/

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Burke McCarthy. of nS" laS w- 1 Wh ° sometimes 'P ar ades under the na no of 0 Connor-Wiley, was never a nun. In announcing her coming she styles herself "ex-Romanist, author, lecture:-, editor. She really was editor of The Gopher, an unpietentious, but hot monthly sheet, published in Los Angeles Her speeches teem with the usual misrepresentations and exaggerations. She stresses the importance of taxing Catholic Church property in the United States, which she holds to be worth billions, while, according to the 1916 U.S report, it is considerably under one-half billion. Mary E. Slattery. Mary E. Slattery, wife of Joseph Slattery, of Boston, has frequently appeared with her husband under the auspices of the "patriots." Occasionally Airs. Slattery sought to make a hit by debating with a Miss Nelson, who, while pretending to defend the Catholic Church, was actually in sympathy with Slavery's work. Mrs. Slattery claims to be an ex-nun, but the records of the convent, which she claims to have entered, do not contain her name, Maria Monk. The following is the account of .Maria Monk given in Appleton's Encyclopedia of liiography, the standard work of biography in America. From page 357, vol. 2, we take the following: "Monk, Maria, impostor, born about 1817; died in New York City about 1850. In 1835 she asserted in Montreal that she had escaped from the Hotel Dieu Nunnery in that city, of which she claimed to have been an inmate for years, and told a shocking story of the crimes that had been committed there. . Her stories met with no credence in Montreal, and she was shown to be a woman of bad character, whereupon she' came to New York and repeated her story, whicu many believed. She gained an entrance into good society, and received many attentions from those who gave credit to her tale, but it was conclusively proved to be a falsehood She had even gone so far as to publish a plan of the interior of the Nunnery, which was shown by careful examination to be incorrect in every particular, and in her second publication she described an island in the St. Lawrence River that had no existence. In the midst, of the excitement that her story caused, Colonel William L. Stone, then editor of the Commercial Advertiser, made a special journey to Montreal to investigate matters, with the result that he refuted Maria's story in Maria Monlc and the Nunnery of Hotel View (New York, 1836). This raised against him a storm of abuse from her adherents, and Laughton Osborne made a bitter assault on him in The. Vision of Bubcrta (Boston, 1838), a clever but scurrilous poem. Maria's adherents believed in her after she had been repeatedly exposed by men of high reputation and the Protestant residents thought it necessary jo deny her allegations in a public meeting held for the purpose. Her imposture, considering the internal improbabilities of her story, is one of the most remarkable on record. The Know-Nothing party used it to make political capital, and the burning of Roman Catholic churches in various cities was indirectly the result of it. Tier ' disclosures ' wore published in Awful Disclosures by Maria Maul; (New York, 1836), and Further Disclosures, with an introduction by Rev. J. J. Slocum (1836). Of the various editions of this book, it was estimated by Cardinal Manning, in 1854. that from 200,000 to 250,000 copies had appeared in England. and America. Maria left a daughter, who published an autobiography, entitled Maria Monk's. Daughter." New York, 1870.) Even to-day many of our benighted countrymen get their information (?) about the Catholic Church from the books of Maria Monk, Chiniquy, Fresenborg, etc. j Margaret L. Shepherd. ( This character, who for many years lectured against ( the Church in England, Canada, and the United States, ? who represented herself as an ex-nun, was never a member j of any Catholic Sisterhood, but she Mas a worse woman than any of your acquaintance. 1. Her life before entering the Bristol House of the Good Shepherd Reformatory was that of a common prosti- j tute) a swindler and a forger. 2. She went under the following names: Mrs. Parkyn. ' Mrs. Westly, Miss Probyn, Louisa Egerton, Margaret Her- i bert, Mrs. Riordan, Mrs. Shepherd, Isabella Marrow, and j Miss Truefitt. J

3. She was always, since she was first known, a confirmed toper. 4. She was confined for a time in Hoxton Lunatic Asylum. o. She forged cheques on Mr. Truefitt, Sir Astley Cooper, and Lord Archibald Douglas. 6. She spent some time in Bodmin and Tothill (Millbank) prisons. 7. She was afterwards taken by the Salvation Army from a life of shame. Florence E. Booth, of the Salvation Army, says of her : "She has never been a nun. She was taken as a prostitute into the Roman Catholic Penitentiary at Bristol, from which place she ran away, and on request was returned to us by our Bristol branch, and remained in lodgings provided by us until she left England, as before stated." 8. She had two, probably three, husbands, living. Referring to her trial at Toronto, where she "exposed herself" under oath, the Toronto Empire says: "The unlovely witness in last week's slander suit has been financially benefited to even an unusual extent by this malodorous sort of thing. Sooner or later the exposure was. of course, hound to come, and it is to be hoped that, as it is self-confessed, it will serve to make those who have contributed to past advertising properly ashamed of themselves."