Page:Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk (Truslove & Bray).djvu/49

47 that room, as I well know, having helped to carry them in, after the yardman had filled them. A door beyond enters into a store-room, which extends also beyond this apartment. On the right another door opens into another passage, crossing which you enter by a door —

8. A room with a bed and screen in one corner, on which nuns were laid to be examined before their introduction into the sick-room last mentioned. Another door, opposite, opens into a passage, in which is a staircase leading down.

9. Beyond this is a spare room, sometimes used to store apples, boxes of different things, &c.

10. Returning now to the passage which opens on one side upon the stairs, to the gate, we enter the only remaining door, which leads into an apartment usually occupied by some of the old nuns, and frequently by the Superior.

11. and 12. Beyond this are two more sick-rooms, in one of which those nuns stay who are waiting their accouchment, and in the other those who have passed it.

13. The next is a small sitting-room, where a priest waits to baptise the infants previous to their murder. A passage leads from this room on the left, by the doors of two succeeding apartments, neither of which have I ever entered.

14. The first of them is the "holy retreat" or room occupied by the priests while suffering the penalty of their licentiousness.

15. The other is a sitting-room to which they have access. Beyond these the passage leads to two rooms containing closets for the storage of various articles; and two others, where persons are received who come on business.

The public hospitals succeed, and extend a considerable distance to the extremity of the building. By a public entrance in that part priests often come into the Nunnery; and I have often seen some of them thereabouts, who must have entered that way. Priests often