OUR AUCKLAND LETTER

Franklin Times, Volume 9, Issue 713, 10 March 1922, Page 5

OUR AUCKLAND LETTER

THE NEW ZEALAND RAFFLES,

(From our own Correspondent.)

Charles Campbell Dawkins, the self-confessed amateur burglar, is known in Auckland as well as in the three other great centres of the Dominion. What induced this educated and cultured young fellow to adopt the calling of a “cracksman?” An impression is prevalent here that E, W. Hornung, the novelist, was really responsible for Dawkins’ departure from the paths of virtue, and that it was the exploits of the fascinating but unprincipled Raffles, as described in the story and depicted on the screen at the Cinema Theatres, that led Dawkins to embark on a life of crime.

Raffles was certainly a most engaging person, and the way in which he continued to defy the police every time and make them look foolish was enough to make every member of the force blush. Raffles, if I remember aright, was never caught, “for keeps,” as the Americans say, but his New Zealand imitator was less fortunate. He “fell in” after a comparatively brief career. Really our popular novelists ought to be careful. They may do a great deal of mischief without in the least intending to. It is chronicled that after the publication of Harrison Ainsworth’s once popular, but now well-nigh forgotten romance of “Jack Sheppard,” numbers of London ’prentices took to “the road,” and scoured Hampstead Heath mounted on donkeys and armed with pistols. Thus equipped they boldly “stuck up” pedestrians with “your money or your life!” They were all ignominiously run in by the bobbies. CHEMISTS IN CONFERENCE. I understand that the fourth Annual Conference of the New Zealand Pharmaceutical Society will open in this city on the 20th inst.,v End that the Auckland Division will introduce a remit to the effect that an extra dispensing fee be charged on _ Sunday. if this proposal is carried I do not fancy the new department will meet with much favour at the hands of the general public. Chemists’ charges are already notoriously high, many drugs in every-day use showing a profit to the vendors of hundreds per cent. If you want to know what the profits on drugs really amount to, I would direct your attention to a most valuable and instructive little book entitled “Secret Remedies,” which gives m detail the actual composition of about a hundred of the widely advertised cures for various ailments. This book shows conclusively that many famous brands of pills, tabloids, mixtures, and so forth, costing from a shilling and three-half-pence to four or five shillings per box or bottle can be made for a penny, and in some cases for a half-penny, or even less, or if they cannot be made for a penny or a half-penny, those coins represent the actual value of the drugs employed. The cost of the card boxes, wrappers, etc., must of course be added, and these extras are worth a good deal more than their contents. Bearing in mind then, the huge profits on drugs, it seems unreasonable to expect the public to pay still higher prices for medicines supplied on Sundays.

CREMATION. At no distant date, Auckland will possess a Crematorium, our City Fathers having at last authorised the erection of the latter. I don t know for how many years those who favour cremation have been battling to get the system adopted here, but there has been a society in existence in Auckland, for a very lon o- time whose one aim and object has been to get this reform introduced in this city. One of the chief advantages of cremation, as a correspondent of a local paper iecently pointed out, is its cheapness as compared with earth burial, although, of course, the establishment of our crematorium at such a distance from the city as Waikumete must add considerably to the cost of this method of dealing with the dead. Surely it would have been better for us to have adopted the practice pursued in some of tne American cities where crematoria are found in the main thoroughfares, thus enabling cremations to be conducted at a minimum of cost to those concerned. The Wellington Crematorium is situate at Karon, and although the cremation fees are very moderate, it seems that bereaved persons are charged about £ls for a coffin, which latter is not burned, but becomes the perquisite of the undertaker, and *m)y be used over and. over again. course, no expensive coffin is required at all. All that is needed is a light, thin shell of wicker-work or something like that, which can be consumed with the body. This is the sensible plan adopted in England, on the Continent, and in America, and it is to be hoped that it will be adopted in Auckland. c nm e dav a crematorium will be found in'every city the world over, and the disgusting and insanitary practice of consigning the bodies ot the dead to the earth will cease. And then we shall get rid of oui cemeteries. Sooner or later all cemeteries will disappear. Even now, before cremation is at all geneialij, adopted, in London old Pancras Cemetery, after being in existence f o v venerations, at last vanished, and its “site is now a playground for children, and where mouldering craves, with their tumble-down old tombstones, once were, are now trees and flowers and broad expanses of green turf—a happy change.