UNCANNY INFLUENCE

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 2, 18 January 1937, Page 12

UNCANNY INFLUENCE

Nuns to Fly From "Evil" Convent "There is something terrible about the place and we feel we should alt leave as soon as possible. Since the day we came we have never felt happy. The convent seems to have some evii influence over us. It is uncanny." Sister Mary Frances D 'Alton, Sister Superior of the Kelvedon Hall Convent, near Ongar, Essex, was in tears as she said this following the eulminating tragedy in four years t>f 111fortune. Mrs Catherine Callivan. of HigiK street, Walthamstow, a resident at the convent, was found beneath her window, dying — it was the end, the convent is to be sold without delay. Sister D 'Alton told the story of those years. "In February Sister May • Primavesi was found drowned in the pond," she said. "A verdict of- accidental death was returned at the inquest. "Two years ago a little girl, Teresa, was playing in the sehool we had and fell over. Within a week she had died from tetanus. • "One of our woAmen otit his hand. We were not insured, and we ihad to pay him 12s 6d a week for the rest of his life. ' ' Again, the sister# w«re sawing wood when a piece fleW up and struclc one of them in the eye, and for three days she hovered between life and death. "Another little girl, Patsy, • developed pnenmonia, and in three days she died." At the inquest on Mrs Gallivan it was alieged that she had been shut up in one room and given only bread and water because she had left the gronnds of the Hall without permission. The verdict was that she died from multiple injuries through falling from a window, and that there was not sufficient evidence to show how she got out of the window. "To stiggest that she was treated badly is wicked," Sister D 'Alton told a Daily Sketch reporter. "As for bread and water — Mrs Gallivan had exactly what W6 all had. "If Mrs Gallivan had wanted to go home We would never have stOpped her.' '