During Montagu's time in the Ottoman Empire, she saw and wrote extensively concerning the practise of slavery along with the treatment of slaves by the Turks. Montagu wrote many letters with positive descriptions of the various enslaved people that she saw in the elite circles of Istanbul, including eunuchs and large collections of serving and dancing girls dressed in expensive outfits. In one of her letters written back home, famously from the interior of a bath house, she dismisses the idea that slaves of the Ottoman elite should be figures to be pitied. In response to her visit to the slave market in Istanbul, she wrote "you will imagine me half a Turk when I don't speak of it with the same horror other Christians have done before me, but I cannot forbear applauding the humanity of the Turks to those creatures. They are never ill-used, and their slavery is in my opinion no worse than servitude all over the world."