Publisher's Synopsis
Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal A narrative of the horrors, mysteries, and cruelties of convent life By Sarah J Richardson An Escaped Nun I am well aware that my reader will hardly credit my statements, but I do solemnly affirm that I relate nothing but the truth. In this room were placed several large iron kettles, so deep that a person could sit in them, and many of them contained the remains of human beings. In one the corpse looked as though it had been dead but a short time. Others still sat erect in the kettle, but the flesh was dropping from the bones. Every stage of decay was here represented, from the commencement, till nothing but a pile of bones was left of the poor sufferer. Think of it, reader, and conceive, if you can, the state of that community where humanity is a crime-where mercy is considered a weakness of which one should be ashamed! If a pirate or a highwayman had been guilty of treating a captive as cruelly as I was treated by those priests, he would have been looked upon as an inhuman monster, and at once given up to the strong grasp of the law. But when it is done by a priest, under the cloak of Religion, and within the sacred precincts of a nunnery, people cry out, when the tale is told, "Impossible!" "What motive could they have had?" "It cannot be true," etc. But whether the statement is believed or otherwise, it is a fact that in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal the least exhibition of a humane spirit was punished as a crime. The nun who was found guilty of showing mercy to a fellow-sufferer was sure to find none herself.
