Emily Loveday

Emily Mary Loveday (1799–1850) was an English woman at the centre of a case where her father accused her Parisian boarding school of seducing her into the Roman Catholic church. The case attracted wide interest in England and France but it was rejected and she continued to live in a Paris convent.

Life Loveday was born in 1799. She was baptised at St Pauls church in Hammersmith in London in February 1800. Her parents were Eliza (born Sharp) and Douglas Charles Loveday. Her father would become a lawyer in the Middle Temple in 1812 and four years later he bought land near Paris at Auteuil. In 1817 her father became a French citizen. He documented his accusation and sent it to the Chamber of Deputies.

Emily decided to leave and join a convent.

12,000 copies of his accusation were printed and the affair was discussed in British newspapers including The Times. In France over twenty pamphlets were published It was published by William Hone to expose the "priest-ridden Bourbon regime". By 1822 the issue was mentioned in parliament and the press published accounts of what Emily had said and the headmistress's defence.

French law had a principle of paternal authority, but as Emily was an adult the chamber of deputies and the chamber of peers did not uphold her father's case. Emily remained at the convent in Paris.