The Myth of the Walled-up Nun was written partly as a riposte to material contained in the novel Montezuma's Daughter (1893) by H. Rider Haggard, but generally as an attempt to dispel the belief that Roman Catholic nuns were ever immured while still alive. One of the passages that Herbert Thurston found objectionable in Haggard's book related to the intended mercy killing of a nun who had been condemned to immuration for breaking her vows. The hero of the story is approached by a nun who explains,

-In our convent there dies to-night a woman young and fair, almost a girl...