Rumor, Fear and the Madness of Crowds

By J.P. Chaplin

Martians, a reincarnated Irish woman, a dead movie star, an insane anesthetist, and an obsessed U.S. Attorney General ― these disparate characters have something in common. Each was at the center of an incident of mass hysteria, in which frightened, grieving, and otherwise disturbed people abandoned their common sense. This fascinating book by a prominent psychologist explores several intriguing case histories of mass hysteria, from "The Great Disappointment" of 1926, in which thousands of believers dressed in white to await Jesus' return, to UFO sightings and other extraordinary phenomena.
Author J. P. Chaplin examines historical incidents of mob mentality, including "The Last Days of Rudolph Valentino," which culminated in a New York City riot of 80,000 mourning fans; "The Secrets of the Nunnery," involving the sack of a Boston convent by an angry crowd in search of children's skulls; "The Martians Invade New Jersey," in which a radio drama was mistaken for a news broadcast; and other remarkable instances of mass delusion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Release date: Nov 17, 2015
• ISBN: 9780486808031

Book preview

follow.

1: The Secrets of the Nunnery

THE RIGHT REVEREND BENEDICT J. FENWICK, D. D., eased his three hundred pounds of solid flesh into the massive leather chair he usually reserved for visitors. He sighed, partly with contentment and partly because he was bone-tired. It had been a strenuous day—a day that frequently taxed the Bishop’s cheerful, vigorous disposition but never found him wanting. He reflected for a few moments on the ceremonies of his consecration that morning as Bishop of Boston, and allowed himself the luxury of a glow of pride. His new appointment was the culmination of years of strenuous work devoted to the interests of his Church. He could look back with satisfaction to the very beginning of his priestly career in New York City following his ordination at twenty-six. During his eight years in the metropolitan area, he had helped draw the plans for St. Patrick’s Cathedral, had acted as a trouble-shooter in a southern diocese where a serious rift threatened to develop between two foreign-born factions, and had taken part in a dramatic, though unsuccessful, attempt at a death-bed conversion of the famous atheist and hero of the Revolution, Tom Paine.

These and other glimmerings of leadership led to Fenwick’s appointment to the presidency of Georgetown University and his ultimate elevation to the Roman Catholic hierarchy. But on this first evening of his career as prelate, the newly-consecrated Bishop looked not so much to the past as to the future, and the future would have discouraged a lesser man. Boston, the site of his bishopric, had been a city for only two years though it boasted a population of over fifty thousand. Drunkenness and brawling were common among its heterogeneous masses of immigrants. There was bitter anti-Catholic prejudice among the Boston blue bloods and high caste descendants of the Colonists. The Gunpowder Plot, hatched among Catholics in England in revenge for stringent anti-Catholic laws, still rankled in their descendants. While Guy Fawkes* Day was being celebrated in England to commemorate the event, Americans, until recently, had their corresponding No Pope Day on which His Holiness was burned or hanged in effigy. Often rival factions sponsored rival Popes and brawls broke out over which group would have the honor of hanging its effigy in the public square. Finally, there was a strong spirit of nationalism spreading over the United States, and the Roman Catholic Church was looked upon as a dangerous, subversive faction whose allegiance was given to a foreign power.

Aside from having to live with this prejudicial environment, there were many other problems already claiming Fenwick’s attention. As yet no assistants had been appointed to help in the administration of his see. Seminaries for the training of priests were inadequate, and he would have to prepare young men for ordination himself. There were churches to be built, parishes to be founded, cemeteries to be acquired, and the difficult problem of providing educational facilities for Catholic children to be solved. But on that happy evening of personal triumph, the Bishop little knew just how stormy and difficult his reign was to be. As events were to prove, it probably would not have daunted Fenwick’s Himalayan constitution and spirit in any case; but as he retired that night in 1825, he must have thought the evils of the day were more than sufficient thereof.

Four years later, in 1829, Fenwick had already accomplished much in the way of strengthening and improving his diocesan organization. A number of new churches had already been built or were under construction; novitiates were in training for the priesthood, and the Catholic faith was spreading, though slowly, in the face of bitter opposition.

One of the highlights of the Bishop’s accomplishments was the erection of a new convent for young girls in Charlestown, Massachusetts. Fenwick was not the school’s founder; it had been a going concern since 1820, five years before he was called to Boston. But Fenwick had decided at once that the original quarters in Boston were entirely unsuited to the purpose for which the academy had been established. At the time of Fenwick’s appointment the sisters were living in an old residence, near the cathedral, which was neither large enough nor suitably located for a girls’ school. Therefore, in 1826, Fenwick purchased twenty-seven acres near Bunker Hill in Charlestown on which to build a new convent. The property included an old farmhouse which the sisters occupied for a year and a half while their new home was under construction on the crest of the hill that sloped up from the old farmstead.

The new structure was worthy of the highest admiration. It stood three stories high overlooking vineyards, terraced walks and vegetable and flower gardens, including small individual plots for the students. A lodge for the Bishop had also been built a short distance front the convent Fenwick, who was of a scholarly inclination, had acquired a fine library over the years which he installed in the lodge. The convent school was conducted by the Ursuline sisters who were noted in Europe for their efforts on behalf of the education of young females. Nor was this devotion lavished on Catholic girls alone; the good sisters attracted pupils from the best upper-class families of various religious persuasions. They were so highly regarded as educators, that when certain European governments ordered all convents in their principalities closed, the Ursulines were specifically exempt from the order and even encouraged in their work.

Much of this same attitude carried over to the Charlestown convent. It had been an immediate success and was drawing pupils from the best Protestant families in Boston and some from distant parts of the United States and Canada. The Mother Superior, otherwise known as Mary Edward St. George, ran the institution in a highly efficient, if somewhat totalitarian, manner. The future looked bright indeed.

There had been only one untoward incident to mar the brief history of the convent, and this occurred at the time the sisters occupied the little farmhouse before the completion of the main building. One of the Selectmen from Charlestown became so inflamed at the thought of a nunnery in his bailiwick, he threatened to gather a force of thirty or forty men to burn the house down. But the mild deportment of the nuns as they took their evening constitutionals on the hill soothed his ruffled feelings, and the ugly incident had long since been forgotten.

Yet, in spite of these accomplishments, the year 1829 heralded the appearance of the first storm clouds on the New England horizon that were to develop into a hurricane of anti-Catholic prejudice during the five years to follow. The spirit of nationalism was intensifying; thus there was correspondingly more anti-Catholic feeling directed against a church which was held to be essentially extra-national in its purposes and organization.

To make matters worse from the point of view of the Catholics, vicious anti-Catholic propaganda began streaming in from abroad. The very titles of these works—Master Key to Popery, Jesuit Juggling, Forty Popish Frauds Detected and Disclosed, Female Convents, with the sub-title: Secrets of Nunneries Disclosed—insured the widespread popularity of the books and at the same time fanned the fires of prejudice and hate. The book on Female Convents was typical of the lot. It was a kind of latter-day Decameron purportedly written by Scipio de Ricci, an ex-priest. Filled with allegations of debauchery on the part of nuns and priests, it told of the discovery of infant bodies in hidden vaults under European convents and denounced Catholic educational institutions as Roman Jugend organizations in disguise.

By 1829, feelings in Charlestown were running so high that the Bishop’s purchase of three acres on Bunker Hill for a Catholic cemetery produced such violent opposition Fenwick had to take the matter to the Supreme Court of Massachusetts. During the legal proceedings a stable on the convent grounds was burned by anti-Catholics; the houses of Irish Catholics in Boston were stoned for three nights in a row, and street brawls between Catholics and non-Catholics were frequent.

The next year saw the crystallization of anti-Catholic feeling to the extent that a semi-formal organization was founded along with an official weekly publication, The Protestant, to spread the gospel of hate. Other newspapers took up the cry, attacking Rome, the Pope, the Church, the priesthood and, of course, convents, or to use the preferred term of opprobrium, nunneries. Events moved so quickly that in 1831, a formal New York Protestant Association was chartered. The organization proved popular and attacks on it by Catholics and their supporters only served to strengthen the bonds of prejudice which held it together.

During the next few years, the Protestant nativists gained ground rapidly. They had developed powerful leaders who were also first-rate orators and debaters. These merchants of prejudice used their pulpits to deliver violent tirades against the Catholic Church and attempted to engage priests in one-sided public debates. One of the mightiest of these harbingers of violence was the Rev. Dr. Lyman Beecher—more famous today as the father of Harriet Beecher Stowe, but in the early 1800’s as a leader of anti-Catholics and a man who epitomized everything the extremists in the movement held dear. One of his favorite oratorical flourishes during a sermon was to repeat over and over the phrase, the Devil and the Pope of Rome. It was against this background of prejudice and ugly rumor that violence erupted on the hills of Bunker, Breed and Benedict in 1834. It was a conflagration that spread through the entire nation and which took thirty years to extinguish and only then when it was swept into the greater holocaust of Civil War.

The fuse that detonated the explosion was the appearance in Charlestown of an escaped nun from the accursed convent. The fugitive in question, Rebecca Reed, was neither a nun nor an escapee; but against the background of religious intolerance and in the face of rumors that were beginning to circulate around Charlestown and Boston about the dark goings on in the convent, escaped nun she became—at least in the popular mind. The fact of the matter seems to have been that she was a rather stupid, lazy girl who was employed in no higher capacity than that of a menial in the institution’s kitchen. Apparently, she had entertained aspirations about becoming a member of the Ursuline Order but showed neither the requisite talent nor necessary industry to fit into the life of the convent. The opinion among objective observers was that she was lazy and found the work too hard. In order to escape censure as a failure, she put her imagination to work instead of her muscles and thereby found a way to get out of her intolerable position with honor. She decided to flee the convent and spread the story that she was being forced to take orders against her will. Once out, she quickly got into the clutches of the Beecher group, and stories were soon circulated that told of forced conversions, cruel and unusual penances imposed upon the nuns by the monster Fenwick, and hints of the presence of mysterious vaults under the convent whose dark purposes were left to the listener’s imagination. The results of her experiences were later published in a book entitled Six Months in a Convent, There seems to be little doubt that she enjoyed considerable editorial help from her anti-Catholic mentors during its preparation.

Tales of the unholy activities going on in the nunnery became progressively more distorted and provocative. Threats, at first vague and under cover, then specific and in the open, began to circulate in Charlestown and Boston. Posters appeared in the streets whose wording was calculated to fan the flames of rising hysteria. The following example is taken from Billington’s history of the era:

Go Ahead! To Arms!! To Arms!! Ye brave and free the avenging Sword unshield!! Leave not one stone upon another of that curst Nunnery that prostitutes female virtue and liberty under garb of holy Religion. When Bonaparte opened the Nunneries in Europe he found cords of Infant skulls!!!!!

In spite of all that had happened thus far, it is possible that things might have quieted down if there had been no additional provocation. There were many who took Miss Reed and her wild tales with more than a grain of salt; but then a nun who had taken the veil did flee the convent, and from that time on passions reigned unchecked.

The fugitive’s name was Elizabeth Harrison who, as Sister Mary John, taught music in the academy and suffered a mental breakdown as a result of overwork at her assigned task. She had been preparing her pupils for an exhibition and had been giving fourteen music lessons a day of forty-five minutes duration each—enough to drive anyone of normal sensibilities to distraction. This formidable schedule gave rise to a brain fever just before school was dismissed for the summer; but under the ministrations of a physician and the sisters she had apparently recovered—in fact, seemed quite happy in spite of the music lessons until the psychotic episode of her flight shortly after school re-opened for the fall term.

After leaving the convent surreptitiously on July 28th, 1834, she took sanctuary at the nearby home of Edward Cutter, a gentleman whose daughters had been among her former pupils. According to one account, Miss Harrison burst in on the Cutters at suppertime clothed only in her nightgown and in a state of feverish distraction. Mr. Cutter, after Miss Harrison had been partially restored to her senses, took her at her own request to the home of an acquaintance living in West Cambridge. Cutter then notified Bishop Fenwick of the nun’s defection and returned to his amazed family.

The convent at the time of these disrupting developments was flourishing. The original faculty of three sisters had been expanded to ten, two of whom were lay sisters acting as housekeepers. The student body consisted of approximately fifty girls, three-fourths of whom were upper-class Protestants whose families looked upon the academy as a kind of finishing school for their daughters, The pupils were charged $125 a year for tuition and board and were educated in eighteen subjects including the more delicate arts of Japanning, oil painting, music, needlework, and painting on velvet, satin and wood. There was also instruction in the more abstract subjects of chemistry, astronomy, botany the use of globes, and rhetoric. No doubt the high tone of the establishment helped seal its fate, since half the townspeople were ignorant, unsophisticated laborers who were jealous of their betters and afraid of things they could not comprehend. There was, however, no substantiated evidence that the sisters were in any way proselytizing their charges to become members of the Catholic faith, though there were many rumors to this effect.

Once the news of Miss Harrison’s escape got out, the rumors flew thick and fast. It was alleged that Bishop Fenwick had recaptured her and that she was held prisoner in a dungeon in the cellars of the convent. The following somewhat garbled account appeared in the Boston Mercantile Journal shortly after Miss Harrison’s defection:

MYSTERIOUS—We understand that a great excitement at present exists in Charlestown, in consequence of the mysterious disappearance of a young lady at the Nunnery in that place. The circumstances as far as we can learn are as follows:—The young lady was sent to the place in question to complete her education, and became so pleased with the place and its inmates, that she was induced to seclude herself from the world and take the black veil. After some time spent in the Nunnery she became dissatisfied, and made her escape from the institution—but was afterwards persuaded to return, being told that if she would continue but three weeks longer, she would be dismissed with honor. At the end of that time, a few days since, her friends called for her, but she was not to be found, and much alarm is excited in consequence.

On the Saturday after Miss Harrison’s disappearance, placards appeared on the streets of Charlestown bearing the following inflammatory exhortation:

To the Selectmen of Charlestown! Gentlemen—It is currently reported that a mysterious affair has recently happened at the Nunnery in Charlestown. It is your duty gentlemen to have this affair investigated immediately; if not, the truckmen of Boston will demolish the Nunnery Thursday night—August 14.

In the meantime, the object of this violent solicitude had come to her senses and had been conveyed back to the convent at her own request. She apologized to the Bishop and Mother St. George for having caused all the fuss, and her two superiors more or less considered the matter closed. They seemed to discount the threats and newspaper articles as no more than a further sporadic outcropping of the prejudice which had dogged the convent from its inception. But whether it was complacency or trust in the powers of righteousness, they failed to understand that the situation was fast approaching a climax. The smoldering prejudice had flamed into mass hysteria and was about to spell the convent’s doom.

On Saturday, August 9th, passions were so inflamed that the Selectmen thought it advisable to follow the recommendations on the placards and conduct an investigation. Since the rumor that Miss Harrison was being held against her will seemed to be the chief cause of popular consternation, the Selectmen appointed a committee of five to demand an interview with her and at the same time to inspect the convent—no doubt to search for the vaults.

The accounts of the inspection vary considerably depending upon the source consulted. Shea, in his History of the Catholic Church, reports a number of evil-disposed men of the dregs of society in company with some of the Selectmen appeared at the convent shouting, Down with the Convent! Down with the Nuns! They demanded to see Miss Harrison, and when the Mother Superior produced her and they were informed by the girl herself that she was not being held against her will, went away satisfied. Another historian (Catholic) claims that the Mother Superior invited the Selectmen on her own initiative and had Miss Harrison conduct them on a three-hour tour of the establishment.

However, the most engaging, if not entirely accurate, account was provided by Louisa Whitney, a pupil in the academy, who later published her reminiscences of the fateful events leading to the convent’s destruction. She recounts that the committee of Selectmen was given a glacial reception by Mother St. George while the girls watched delightedly from hidden vantage points. When the Selectmen tried to assure the Superior of their good intentions she overwhelmed them with a torrent of invective, charged them with responsibility for the wild stories that were in circulation, and refused to allow them to search the cellar for the dungeons and cells of iniquity. Miss Whitney goes on to report that Miss Harrison finally calmed the enraged Mother Superior and reassured the Selectmen of her own liberty. She then offered to conduct one of them through the cellars, but as he approached the gaping pitch-black entrance he lost courage and departed in company with his fellow Selectmen.

Whatever the exact nature of the inspection tour, there seems to be little doubt that in spite of their failure to reach the convent’s underground passages the Selectmen were indeed satisfied Miss Harrison was not being detained against her will. In fact, they wrote a report vindicating the convent which was supposed to have been published in the local newspapers, but either through carelessness or deliberate malfeasance did not appear until after the convent was a smoldering mass of ruins.

For the next day, which was Sunday, we have only Miss Whitney’s account of the state of affairs within the convent. According to her, things were relatively quiet. The girls attended Mass in a body as was customary although the majority who were Protestant spent the time reading from their own Bibles or prayer books. In the afternoon there was the usual influx of visitors, most of whom were parents and relatives of the girls. They brought gifts or conferred with the sisters on the scholastic progress of their daughters. If Miss Whitney’s memory is to be trusted, several of the parents warned the Mother Superior of the dangerous temper of the townspeople and the increasingly pointed threats of the convent’s impending destruction. However, Mother St. George appeared calm and reassured everyone that in the unlikely event of an attack there was a sufficient force of Irish laborers in Boston to come to their defense and repel the truckmen. So far as is known, none of the parents attempted to remove their children from the convent in spite of repeated urgings to do so on the part of more apprehensive or prescient friends. An almost unbelievable complacency seemed to have hypnotized not only the parents, but the Mother Superior, Bishop Fenwick and the civil authorities as well.

On Monday, the final day of the convent’s existence, we must again depend upon Miss Whitney’s diary for an account of the institution’s internal state during the daylight hours. She recounts that the girls were awakened as usual (very early), by the voice of Sister Mary Austin as she walked slowly down the aisle of the dormitory reciting matins and pulling the bed clothes off the sleeping girls. They made their ablutions in the heavy bedside crockery which served for plumbing in those days, and were then paraded to a classroom for morning prayers. Next they marched to a breakfast which consisted of dry bread and a mug full of milk. For the rest of the morning the girls were occupied with classroom activities.

Apparently some of the hysteria that was rife in the town had at last penetrated the walls of the convent in spite of the Mother Superior’s lofty air of assurance. There was a lack of discipline evident in the classroom that morning, and little learning had been accomplished by the dinner hour. Miss Whitney, like all students at all institutions in the world, dwells on the unpalatability and insufficiency of the establishment’s cuisine. She did not recall the specific menu for that particular day, but dinners in general followed this pattern: Soup with vegetables, or soup-meat mixed with vegetables. On Fridays and fast days, salt fish or hasty pudding. For dessert, they were served a dish of dried figs or prunes, so tough the girls were convinced they must be chopped-up bits of the nuns’ old shoes.

After this unsatisfactory meal, there was a period of relaxation followed by afternoon classes and then another recess before supper. During the afternoon, alarming rumors and reports kept filtering into the academy from outside. A Mrs. Barrymore, the dancing mistress and a townswoman, did much to increase the