classes beginning in 1828. By 1834 there were 47 students, only six of whom were Catholic. According to Jenny Franchot, the author of a history of the riots, the lower classes of Boston, predominantly conservative Trinitarian Protestants, came to see the convent school as representing a union between two classes of people - upper class and Catholics - both of which they distrusted. The antipathy toward Catholics was fanned by anti-Catholic publications and by prominent preachers, including Lyman Beecher. Anti-Catholic violence occurred in Boston at a low level in the 1820s, with attacks on the homes of Irish Catholic laborers taking place in 1823, 1826, and 1828. Boston's mayor was petitioned in 1832 to take steps against the recurring violence. Charlestown, then separate from Boston, was not immune to the sectarian violence, seeing several attacks on Irish Catholics in 1833. Its population of about 10,000 was predominantly lower class Protestant laborers. Specific acts of violence committed against the convent and the Catholic establishment in Charlestown included the killing of one of its dogs in 1829, the burning of its stable in 1830, and the destruction of an Irish bar in 1833 by Protestant rioters. There was also simmering hostility over the establishment of a Catholic cemetery on nearby Bunker Hill, with local Protestants agitating that it be closed. These tensions were further heightened by a court case concerning the cemetery, in which the district court ruled in 1833 in favor of the diocese and against a restrictive law enacted by Charlestown selectmen. Rumors Roman Catholic institutions, especially convents, were frequently rumored by anti-Catholics to be dens of immorality and corruption, and the Charlestown facility in particular was seen by the lower class Protestants as a place where Catholics and wealthy Unitarians conspired against them. A Boston newspaper in 1830 published a false story of a Protestant orphan spirited into the facility after manipulating a large sum of money from its caretakers. The story of Rebecca Reed, a young Episcopalian woman from Boston who attended the school in 1831 further inflamed resentment against the institution. She attended the school as a charity scholar: a day student for whom the convent waived tuition fees. In 1832, she declared her intent to enter the Ursuline novitiate, but left the convent after six months as a postulant (originally one who makes a request or demand, hence a candidate). At some time after her departure,