Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1880-04-09
THE ESCAPED NUN"
Telling What She Knows About Convent
Life.

AhC dHuOuuCeIueuG GudI -uISS AuACi
O'Gorman, claiming to be an "Escape'
Num- by which designation she is com
monty known to the public, would appea
in this city last night, coupled with tn
further statement that ladies would b'
admitted to her lecture gratuitously, "bu
not to front seats, had the effect of crowd
ing the lower portion of the opera house
with an audience the greater portion Of
which belonged to the gentler sex. Mis-.
O'Gorman has delivered her lecture, which
is entitled ''Life in Convent, in this city
before, and her narrative last evening die
not vary materially from what she has pre-
viously told our people, and indeed the peo
pie of almost every large city in the coun.
try, concerning her alleged experience in
convent life. Miss O'Gorman is an ordinary.
looking woman of perhaps thirty-odd years
with nothing very striking either in her
personal appearance, mode of dress, man
her Ofspeaking, or other characteristics. S.
She was quietly attired in a neatly fitting
black dress, with little or no Ornamcntation
fully back from her forehead. She is a
demi-brunettc, about the medium height,
and Il trile too stout for shapeliness.
According to Miss OGorman's S narrative,
which was delivered with great volubility,
she scarcely pausing a moment from the
time she began until she had finished, she
entered the convent of st. Josepll's, at Jer-
sey City, in January, 1868. At that time
she was young girl, an ardent Catholic,
filled with all the pure inclinations and de-
sires after holy living incident to the pc
rod of youth in one who has
been piously trained and carefully nur-
tured in the faith of her church. She en-
tered the convent, she says, with the high
est and hOlicst aspirations, and, in assum-
ing the vows Of chastity, holy poverty,
etc, required of all candidates for admis-
sion into these institutions, imagined that
she had entered upon life only less rap
turous than that of the angels, in
which all her efforts and energies
were to be consccrated to God
and to His service. Miss O'Gormans
narrative appeared to indicate that her
dream of blissful felicity was of very brief
duration. She says she soon discovered
that her antici patiuns had been a dclusiOn
and a snare that tine goodness and holi-
ness that she, in common with thousands
of other pure-mindcd Catholic girls,
had believed to exist within the
four walls of the convent were wholly
imaginary. TO the minutest detail, the
50 Escaped Nun" then proceeded to give
an account of life as she claims to have
seen and experienced it within St. Joseph's
convent. The unnatural and rigorous dis
ciplnc enforced upon the nuns, the repres-
sion of all holy impulses and desires to do
good when it was discovered that their
qualification administered to their pleasure
these were only a portion of the horrors
that she found to be her lot within 4 brief
period after her entrance into the convent.
The atmosphere of this particular institu-
tion, and by implication of all similar insti-
tutions, Miss O'Gorman says, reekcd with
the most disgusting and loathsome i'm
purity. If a sister should be SO unfOrtu-
nate as to fall in love with priest she is
Obliged by her VOWS to confess it to him, and
the poor unhappy girl is then at his mercy, a
condition of affairs, Miss O'Gorman assert
ed, that some of the priests were not slow to
take advantage of age. She devoted con-
siderable attention to the clergy and cX-
posed what she designated as the shams,
hypocrisy, seltishness and impurity Of the
craft. Many priests, she says, receive in a
week pay for more masses than they could
say in Il year, and while the decent honest
priests will sell to some young priest or
curate those masses which lack of time
prevents him from saying himself, others
take their parishioners' pay for one, Or
ten, or fifty masses, and in all probability
that would he the end of it. Miss O'Gor-
man declared that during her residence at
St. Joscph's she had incurred the vindic-
tive enmity of the superior, Sister Mary
Joseph, who i'll consequence subjected her
to constant torture, humiliation and indig-
nifty, and Miss O'Gorman said that her
constant prayer, morning, noon and night
was that she might bc relieved by death
Evidently Miss O'Garman has not forgot
ten the alleged abuse heaped upon her by
Sister Mary Joseph, rs considerable por-
ton of her lecture was devoted to that
parsonage, paying back old scores, as
it were, and imputing to her the most I'M
worthy character and immoral actions.
After relating the causes that led to her
final escape and release from the miseries
Of convent life as she had portrayed them
in the most vigorous English, with occa-
sional slips i'll her syntax, and in tone
of voice that carried the animus of the
speaker with it, Miss O'Gorman wound
up in pylotechnic display of abuse of the
whole system of the Catholic church, from
its fountain head through all it's ramitica-
tiOns and connections.
A glance over the audience that listened
to the discourse thus hastily outlined re-
vealed the entire absence of Catholic hear
ers. The lecture was simply diatribe of
abuse, and though an occasional "smart "
saying would call out some applause the
audience was rather an undcmonstrative
one. There exists no cOrrObOrative proof
that Miss O'Gorman is what she claims to
be, outside Of her own declaration, and peo-
pie who see and hear her are at perfect
liberty to conclude that she is either an
apostle of revelation or monumental
fraud. You pays your money and you
f.,1 vpur nbnioo