Old Wilkes-Barre Convent Fire Story

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Tarpeian_Rock

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A local anti-Catholic radio preacher has recently been repeating a story about a Wilkes-Barre convent fire years ago, which led to the “discovery” of bodies of dead babies whose skulls had been punctured by nails. This struck me as an old “Maria Monk”-type falsehood that likely had been floating around for decades. Does anyone know what the real story was that formed the basis for this slander?
 
Tarpeian_Rock said:
A local anti-Catholic radio preacher has recently been repeating a story about a Wilkes-Barre convent fire years ago, which led to the “discovery” of bodies of dead babies whose skulls had been punctured by nails. This struck me as an old “Maria Monk”-type falsehood that likely had been floating around for decades. Does anyone know what the real story was that formed the basis for this slander?
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A quick search shows the fire happened in 1920 and no where does it mention “skulls”. Given this was ca. 100 years ago I doubt there is any primary source material (meaning the preacher can make up anything his wants or more charitably, maybe his facts are just wrong.

I doubt you are going to find anything too detailed from a reputable source.

By the way, you need a news source to be in this section of the forums I believe. Better to move this to Apologetics.
 
You can easily google this. I found a newspaper article from 1936, that gives details of a fire in a convent from Wilkes-Barre.

newspapers.com/image/103892936/

Even is it were 1920, there are usually still newspapers available from that time period. They are more easily found now due to a lot of digitization projects.
 
27lw said:
You can easily google this. I found a newspaper article from 1936, that gives details of a fire in a convent from Wilkes-Barre.

newspapers.com/image/103892936/

Even is it were 1920, there are usually still newspapers available from that time period. They are more easily found now due to a lot of digitization projects.
Click to expand...
Thanks. The link comes up saying that I need a subscription to view the page, but I will do some Googling.
 
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