Rebecca Theresa Reed (1813-1838) was an American escaped nun and author of the memoir Six Months in a Convent, which influenced the first of many anti-Catholic waves.
[clarification needed] Reed’s book vividly describes her experience in an Ursuline convent and has sold thousands of copies.
Her Puritan family struggled with money so when Rebecca’s mother got sick, her father, William Reed, could no longer pay for her and her sisters’ education.
Reed first turned to the Ursuline Convent in 1831 when her mother died from cancer and her sisters married or went to live with other relatives.
An advertisement for the school stated, “Particular attention… is given to orthography, plain and fancy needlework, plain and fancy ornamental inserting arithmetic, geography, French and English history, composition, rhetoric.”[3] In the beginning, mainly poor Catholic girls and postulants attended, but later established a student population of wealthy and middle-class girls.
[6] The actions and beliefs toward Mary Francis alerted Reed that Mother Superior and the Bishop may not resemble what they seemed, and she began to grow her own suspicions.
[14] Initially, she had left an anonymous card at various newspapers that threatened to expose the "actual truths" about Reed's experience and the convent.
Moffatt claimed her book depicted the Ursuline Convent as corrupt and wicked, bruising the church’s reputation.
[3] The Church refuted that they did not withhold authentic versions of scriptures, yet Reed discussed having to throw out any books and belongings she arrived with.
[14][page needed] Many people blamed Reed for the Ursuline Convent Riots, which ultimately resulted in her publishing her writings, in order to clear her name.
The Ursuline Superior condemned the rioters as “the dirt vagabonds of the city,” and believed they could never amount to anything but causing chaos.
[19] Reed wanted to expose the inner workings of the church and set the record straight on the series of events that lead to this destruction.
[22] The first wave of Anti-Catholicism, which inspired the burning of the Ursuline Convent in Charlestown, Massachusetts, came to be called “Nativism.” This campaign against the church had slowly grown for years, fueled by accusations from Protestant leaders that priests used nuns to “evade their vows of celibacy,” and that “monasteries were dens of vice and iniquity.” A great deal of propaganda against the Catholic church circulated, reaching the more easily influenced lower class.
Women who entered the convent were also expected to give up their self-identity and conform for the greater good of the religious community.
[16] Reed brought up concerns to her superiors about situations that bothered her, and in return, they punished her for holding onto “worldly ideas.”[26] The wave of anti-Catholicism that Reed contributed to, paved the way for other movements, including the anti-slavery movement, and gave rise to a writing called Uncle Tom’s Cabin of Nativism.
[28] After Reed’s death, her book grew in popularity in the anti-Catholic world and only increased the attention to the presence of the Roman Catholic religion in the United States.