"ONLY A PAUPER."

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1004, 20 December 1910, Page 4

"ONLY A PAUPER."

■ DESECRATION. OF. THE DEAD. IDy Tcfeeraph.— Press Association.! Dunedin, December 19. ■ An act of desecration of Hie dead came'. ;to light to-day during'..the. course of » burial at the, southern cemetery.' It appears that after'an interment' at "the cemetery, and ■'when', everyone,'iwith; tha . exception of the officiating clergyman.had left, detectives, acting apparently on information received, .proceeded. to a burning pile adjacent to the nte- grave, .and, lifter probing twhongst the embers, discovered /some small pieces of bone, and the unrecognisable ' part'of a coffin plate amongst the remains. On further iflves- . tigation by the defectives,, it .\ras. discovered: that the remains were those of . a body, .which' had -been removed from the •gray#''to 'make- room for. tji'e liewly-in- j terred corpse.- .An examination of the .cemetery register'disclosed the'fact that V the remains,were- 1 those of a pauper, who had been buried some seven years -and , three days, H. man. of seventy «ars .plage. The-pauper had been buried m,-a grave with a concrete wall round it, but. , the .presence..of..a wall' round the' firavn is accounted Xor, by the fact that the - wall was intended .for. another ■'. grave, : wherein a man .of th» same, name bad , been buried: ' The gruesome' part of -tta ; affair is- that while-the burial-service, was proceeding- at yesterday's burial, the remains of the, pauper were smouldering at a distance.of only five yards away. It is also asserted that the fire had beep burninc since . Saturday. The clergyman - ivh'o officiated;'at the burial' insisted on the small pieces of bone taken from the ■ tire being-again interred.. Aa in4uir|. will probably be held.