THE SUPERVISION OF CONVENTS ON THE INDUSTRIAL SIDE.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—In your issue of September 23rd (p. 415) you speak with approval of Miss E. Mary Young's "vigorous and timely plea for the supervision of monasteries and convents in this country on their industrial side" in the Times of Saturday, September 16th. As resident in France, and having taken the opportunity of following the question in the reports of the Parliamentary discussions and in the Press, I shall be glad if you can find room for the following observations.
The case instanced by Miss Young was qualified ten days later by Mr. W. S. Lilly, also in a letter to the Times, as looking "rather dubious." Unfortunately, the qualification very typical would seem to be more appropriate. That such cases as the story of the monastery at Caen are by no means exceptional any one who cares to do so can verify for himself by referring to the official reports of the discussion in the Chambre des Deputes, as recorded verbatim in the Journal Officiel of the last Parliamentary Session. This discussion was occasioned by the "recent terrible revelations of the French Law Courts," already alluded to in May of this year in the Times by Mr. T L. Corbett, M.P., who also cites illuminating evidence quoted from the report of the Bishop of Nancy.
No one who has read the official reports published in France regarding the state of affairs prevalent in the so-called charitable institutions of the religious Orders, now in great number expelled from the country, can fail to contemplate without alarm and concern the transference of so many of them to England, and that under the unique condition of their being subject to no inspection whatever. It needs but to ascertain what has taken place under a system of, at least, nominal inspection to conclude what will occur when not even nominal inspection is imposed.
In the monastery at Caen "those over school age were em-
ployed in sewing often for 13 or 14 hours a day." This is sad ; but there is sadder still, as many children are taken into the convents at a much more tender age, and are employed in sewing from the very first, the fact of their being under school age being altogether ignored. Thus, the well-known organ, Le Mafia, in its issues of November 2nd and 18th last, publishes with regard to the orphanage of La Providence at Aix, in Provence, the depositions of witnesses examined by its special correspondent. One of these witnesses states that she was placed in the convent when she was five years old, together with her two sisters, the younger of whom was only three years old. They were at once taken to the workshop, where each of them was set to some sewing, and upon the slightest accident, such as breaking their needles, were cruelly beaten. "There was no torture that we had not to suffer," continues the witness, and— besides the cruel beatings, and the evidently favourite punish- ment of being forced to lick crosses on the floor—she speaks Of their being compelled to lick filth, to eat the bad food they had vomited, to stay kneeling with outstretched arms ; of their having pailfuls of cold water thrown over them in the yard even in winter ; of their being rapped over the knuckles with hard metre-measures when they found it difficult to sew, because their hands were chapped and covered with chilblains, of their being kicked until they recovered consciousness, when they had fainted, which often happened; and, in a word, of other maltreatment which space and decency forbid us to detail here. The same and other witnesses deposed to the fact that nursing was withheld until the patients were nearly dying, and that nearly all taken to the hospital died there within a few days, if not hours ; and appalling is the harvest reaped by death, as shown by a list of the most conspicuous cases. As long ago as November' 1890, a Member of the Chamber of Deputies put on record the futility of inspection as carried out up to that time by the French Government, by exposing the methods of evasion resorted to by the Superiors of the institutions in question, which successfully reduced the inspector's visit to a mere farce. Hence the absolute necessity of a rigid enforcement of inspection on a system precluding the possibility of deception.
I have not spoken of the after sufferings of those who
survive such years of martyrdom, when with shattered health they are turned out on to the streets, resourceless, both materially and otherwise, to meet a world of which they know less than nothing. For the present let it suffice to plead their cause also by appealing to all those who will listen, as others have listened before—and listening have come to the rescue—to the "cry of the children," who
"Are weeping in the playtime of the others In the country of the free."
—I am, Sir, &c., M. C. DAWES.
26 Rue de Marignan, Boulogne-sur-Mer.
[Whether all the allegations made in regard to the treat- ment of the labouring children in the French convents are true we cannot, of course, say. We should, however, expect a good deal of exaggeration. Be this as it may, it seems to us that we ought to insist that a real, and not nominal, inspection shall be applied here to all religious houses which employ child labour. The convents should welcome such inspection. Since it will be carried out by women, it will involve no interference with the rights of conscience.— ED. Spectator.]
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