Nuns to Fly from ‘Evil’ Convent

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 329, 9 January 1937, Page 3

Nuns to Fly from ‘Evil’ Convent

BLACK 'INFLUENCE’ OF THIRD TRAGIC LEATH

"There is something terrible about the place and we ireel we should all leave as soon as possible. Since the flay we came we have never felt happy. The convent seems to have some evil Influence over us. It is uncanny.” Sister Mary Frances D’Alton, Sister Superior of the Kelvedon Hall Con; vent, near Ongar, Essex, w-as in tears she said this following the culminating tragedy in four years of illfortune. Mrs Catherine Callivan. of High street, Walthamstow, a resident at th 3 convent, was found beneath her window, dying—it was the end, the convent is to be sold without delay. Sister D’Alton tMd the story of those years. "In February Sister May Primavesi was found drowned in the pond,” she said. **A verdict of accidental dea'.h was returned at the inquest. "Two years ago a little girl, Teresa, was playing in the school we had and fell over. Within a week she had died from tetanus. "One of our workmen cut his hand. We were not insured, and we 'had to pay him 12s 6d a week for the rest cf hxs life. t( Again, the sisters were sawing L wood when a piece flew up and struck ’one of them in the eye, and for three days she hovered between life and deaflh. "Another little girl, Patsy, developed pneumonia, and in three days she died.” , At the ,inquest on Mrs Galli van it was alleged that she had been shut up in one rdom and given only bread hnd water because, she had left the grounds of the Hall without permission. The verdict was that she died from multiple injuries through falling from a window, and that there was hot sufficient evidence to show how she got out of the window. "To suggest 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 we all had. **lf Mrs (jallivan had wanted to go home we would never have stopped