A Lecture on Nunneries, (with Mr. Ransom presiding) was delivered to a crowded audience at the Market Hall, on the 27th of January, by the Baron de Camin, L.C.O. of the Legion of Honour, late supporter in secret of the Inquisition in the Order of Dominic, South of France. He said he was willing to meet in discussion any Roman Catholic, even the great Cardinal Wiseman. The Roman Catholic Bishop of Northampton had pronounced him to be worse than Luther. He was not so great as Luther, nor as Dr. Cumming, but he could tell them what Popery was by his own experience, which Dr. Cumming could not. Concerning his own history, he confessed that at one time he was a great hater of England and its religion. A Frenchman always has the battle of Waterloo in his heart. His father was a general in the French army under Napoleon, and his name was recorded in History. His father’s dying wish was that he should enter the army, but his mother wished him to enter the Church. He entered the army and served in Africa. He was in 18 battles and received 15 wounds. His escape from death he at that time attributed to the protection of the Virgin Mary. In 1840 he entered the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church. In 1849, he came to England, where Father Gavazzi instrumentally converted him. Since he had renounced Romanism he had suffered great persecution, for which he was prepared. Leaving his personal history, the Baron described the architectural and subterranean arrangements of Continental nunneries, and detailed the course through which the candidates of the veil had to pass, and made some horrible relevations (sic) of the coercions and machinations to which the unhappy nuns were made the victims. The nuns, he said, were violated, their offsprings murdered, the nuns themselves most cruelly used and often put to violent deaths. He declared that he himself had seen nuns smothered to death in religious services, and had never known them to take either the white veil or the black without being ill for some months after. He accused the Monks of the foulest crimes; and, as an agent of the Inquisition, he said he had put God’s dear children into boiling oil. – thus, like Paul, persecuting the Church of Christ, and thinking he was doing God service. He emphatically asserted that in every monastery and nunnery arms and ammunition were concealed in readiness for use against Protestants if occasion served, and he warmed into vehement exhortation against any further concessions to English Roman Catholics.
Aerial Navigation. On the 9th of March, Mr Joseph Pitter delivered a lecture on Aerial Navigation to a numerous audience in the Swan Assembly Room, and also exhibited a model of his “Archimedian Balloon”.
Phrenology. On this subject, and in connection with the Mechanics Institution, a lecture was given by Mr. Marriott on the 7th of March.
The Abomination of Popery was the title of a Third lecture by the Baron de Camin.
