PAUPERS’ FUNERALS IN SAN FRANCISCO.

Dunstan Times, Issue 938, 9 April 1880, Page 3

PAUPERS’ FUNERALS IN SAN FRANCISCO.

The San Francisco correspondent of the Now Zealand Herald writes:—“ Perhaps it will not be believed that here, in the nineteenth century, in the City of Gold, there are more disgraceful proceedings with regard to paupers’ funerals than in any other place in the world. Economy in these cases being the order of the day, our wise (?) supervisors, for reasons best known to themselves, decree that people dying in the hospital shall be conveyed to the undertaker s establishment, and buried at his convenience, instead of being interred right away from the place of their demise. For this business bids are received, and the present coffin-maker who is the lucky holder of the contract buries the dead for the small snm of Idol Sooonts per body. This sum, I need hardly say, does not pay for the wretched interment, but the contract is considered to bo advantageous in other ways. To proceed : The poor dead Who are thus bargained for are scarcely cold when they are stripped naked and tumbled into a coarse, rough box, and carried away into the coffin shop, where they afe th-own into' a cellar, and kept until there is ‘a good load,’say six bodies. When such is complete, an express waggon is loaded with the terrible freight and carried away at night to the Potter’s Field, -where the boxes are dumped pell-mell. A poor Woman whose son lay dying at the City Hospital used to go every day to see him. One night last week he grow worse, and begged the attendants to send for his mother, but they paid no heed to his wail for the one loved form. He died in a few hours, and when the mother came next day' her boy was dead. She asked to see him, but his body bad been taken by the coffinmaker. To him she went, wishing to follow the loved one to the grave, but that was not allowed ; in fact, be could not say when he would be buried, as they were waiting for “a load.” if anyone dies whose friends can afford to pay lodols for burial, the coffin dealer makes his profit here. And this, too, in a Christian country. Why, they pay more for the disposal of dead animals than they do for the disposal of the human dead. It is disgustim l and brutalising to think upon, and acryiuo disgrace upon the authorities of the city.

Still it happens under the lee of palaces, whose turrets and pinnacles look down loftily upon the horrible scenes enacted beneath them ; under the eyes of the cormorants who have Stripped the people, who often die thus, of every penny, to raise their costly constructions on tlio crest of ‘ Nob ’ and other hills. While women with downcast eyes veil their debauchery beneath the silken garments of shame and sin, their fellows are huddled into the dark and unsightly hole, without even a rag to cover their nakedness. To cry shame ! shame ! is a word all too mild.”