The Roman Catholic confessional has often intrigued those who have little or no experience of it and some of those who have an intimate acquaintance with the device. From time to time exposes have appeared of what actually takes place in the confessional; after all, in more dissolute times the confessional was used by randy priests as a means of recruiting likely women. In the nineteenth century a number of publications, mostly of poor quality, appeared claiming to reveal what went on in nunneries, monasteries and the confessional. One such was the "Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk": the author claimed to have been a nun in the Hotel Dieu in Montreal. Her disclosures, first printed in New York in 1836, were reprinted again and again in the U.S. and Europe and by 1851 more than a quarter of a million copies of the book were in circulation. A leading Catholic called the book "blasphemous fiction" and it was mentioned during debates in Parliament. In 1874 a certain Father Chiniquy published a book called "The Priest, The Woman, and the Confessional:" harrowing accounts were given of sex in the confessional. A more sensational book had appeared in London ten years earlier - "The Confessional Unmasked: showing the Depravity of the Romish Priesthood, the iniquity of the Confessional and the Questions Put to Females in Confession."