Maria Monk's Awful Disclosures... : Nineteenth-Century America Was Outraged by a Young Woman's Lurid Tales of Abuse at the Hands of Montreal Clergymen. But the Truth Was Even More Troubling

Type of resource
Author/collaborator
Title
Maria Monk's Awful Disclosures... : Nineteenth-Century America Was Outraged by a Young Woman's Lurid Tales of Abuse at the Hands of Montreal Clergymen. But the Truth Was Even More Troubling
Abstract
In 1836, Maria Monk published her purportedly autobiography titled "Awful Disclosures at the Hotel Dieu Nunnery of Montreal" about her life as a nun. The book became a sensation with the anti-Catholic American nativistic movement in pre-Civil War United States. Monk (1816-1849), born in Dorchester, now part of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, asserted she had been a nun at Montreal's Hotêl Dieu Convent and had been forced by her superior to kill a companion nun who refused to submit to the sexual demands of the priests at the Séminaire de Saint-Sulpice. She also claimed that children born to the nuns as a result of the liaisons with the priests were immediately baptized and then strangled. Some 300,000 copies of the book were sold before Monk was discredited and the book proven to be a hoax.
Publication
The Beaver
Volume
Vol. 88
Issue
no. 6
Date
2008
Pages
28-33
Language
en
Citation
Pelchat, André. “Maria Monk’s Awful Disclosures... : Nineteenth-Century America Was Outraged by a Young Woman’s Lurid Tales of Abuse at the Hands of Montreal Clergymen. But the Truth Was Even More Troubling.” The Beaver, 2008.
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