Weird Tract Number 83: "Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk" by Maria Monk (published by The Patriotic Defense League)

Troy Davis writes:

A century and a half before supposed former Catholic priest Alberto Rivera spread sensational tales of Catholic depravity and conspiracies to control the world, there was Maria Monk (1816-1849). Monk claimed she was a former nun from Montreal who suffered sexual abuse from priests from the nearby seminary. She weaved inflammatory tales of depravity in which infants born from these illicit congresses were baptized then euthanized and buried in a series of tunnels connecting the nunnery and the seminary. The original book, published in 1836, was one of the inspirations of historian Richard Hofstadter's quip that anti-Catholicism was "the pornography of the Puritan."

The publication of the book created a furor but subsequent investigations (notably by a Protestant newspaper reporter) found that Monk was a fabulist who most likely was a front for anti-Catholic writers. Nevertheless, subsequent printings of the book remained popular in anti-Catholic and nativist circles. This undated paperback edition, published by The Patriotic Defense League of Chicago, was probably printed in the 1910s, the heyday of the group.

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