Untitled

Manawatu Standard, Volume IX, Issue 28, 3 January 1885, Page 2

Until quite recently, we were under the impressiou that the Hon. Miss St. Ledger was the first and only woman who had witnessed the mysteries of f ree-> masonry. The following advertisement which we reprint from the Newcastle Currant, of January 4, 1770, gives us a decided contradiction, and a page from the history of freemasonry which is not to be found m the records of the craft : — " This is to acquaint the public —That on Monday the first instant, being the lodge (or monthly meeting) night of tho Free and Accepted Massons of the 22nd Regiment held at the Crown, near Newgate (Newcastle), Mrs Bell, the landlady of the house, broke open a door (with a poker) that had not been opened for some time past ; by which means she got into an adjacent room, made two holes through the wall, and by means of this stratagem, discovered the secrets of freemasonry ; and she, knowing herself to bo the first woman m the world that ever found out the secret, is willing to make it known to all her sex. So any lady who is desirous of knowing the secrets of freemsaonry, by applying to that welllearned woman (Mrs Bell that lived fif-c teen years m and about Newgate) may be instructed m the secrets of freemasonry."