CONVENT LIFE.—CURIOUS CASE.

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 500, 6 May 1869, Page 3

CONVENT LIFE.—CURIOUS CASE.

i When the English mail left, the Court of Queen's Bench was occupied i with a case that at first excited the attention of the nation, but has from the monotonous squalor of its details long since ceased to interest any body but the court, the counsel, the unfortunate jury, and the parties. The trial is called " Saurin v. Starr." The case is a Eoman Catholic one, and the plaintiff is a nun. The defendant is the mother superior of a convent at Hull. The complaint is that Miss Saurin, having incurred the displeasure of her superior, was subjected to such a fearful and protracted series of petty persecutions, penances, insults, and outrages, that her health was injured, and that these were part of a conspiracy to drive her from the sacred convent. The answer is that Miss Saurin is a wilful, worldly, " disedifying," " imperfect " young person who revolted from the abject submission which she had vowed to practice and that she exaggerates much what she had undergone, but that much of it was necessary to tame her proud spirit, and make her truly pious. The details are afflictingly paltry, and whichever way the verdict goes, it is clear that convent life in the present day must be a wretched business, fit only for the smallest-minded women. Miss Saurin claims heavy damages. The verdict was not given in time to be forwarded by the mail, but Sir Alexander Cockburn has intimated that he shall ask the jury, first, whether there was a conspiracy to drive out the peccant nun by the mode she describes, or, secondly, to do so by submitting, as it is alleged was done, false charges against her to the bishop. But if, on the whole, the jury find thatthe superior and her assistants acted honestly, according to their lights, they are not to give the plaintiff a verdict merely because common sense revolts at the convent system. ,