convent but was not part of the community. During this time a nun slept outside her room and she had was denied a fire or any books. Her treatment was leading to starvation and under medical advice and the legal advice of her brother (Patrick) she left the convent without ceremony or discussion with Starr or Kennedy. Nuns who leave convents can find that they lose all of their social standing. Court case The "Great Convent Case" opened on 3 February 1869 at Westminster Hall with the Solicitor General William Digby Seymour representing Saurin and Queen's counsel representing Starr and Kennedy. Saurin was claiming £5,000 in damages. Starr's portrait was caricatured by "Ape" and accompanied the story in Vanity Fair. Saurin accused Starr and Kennedy of lying to the Bishop of Beverley, assault and imprisonment. and the court heard of the Bishops enquiry which was held to be a "parody of justice". The Bishop was reprimanded for not fixing the “miserable squabbles of a convent” and Starr was found to have misused Saurin's vow of obedience to inflict cruelty on her. Saurin was awarded fifty pounds in damages. The Daily Telegraph made a special publication on the "Inner Life of the Hull Nunnery Exposed" to cover the trial. Saurin died in Harrow on the Hill. She died as a nun as she had adopted the name of Mary Brown and joined a convent in Bristol. The case was a cause célèbre in a Victorian society divided by different Christian perspectives and an abundance of anti-Catholic sentiment. Charles Newdigate Newdegate's "campaign for the regulation of Catholic convents and monasteries shows that his anti-Catholicism was widely shared in and out of Parliament in the early 1870s." References 1829 births 1915 deaths People from County Meath Sisters of Mercy 19th-century Irish nuns 20th-century British Roman Catholic nuns 19th-century British Roman Catholic nuns