GRUESOME SCANDAL.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 1012, 1 July 1911, Page 3

GRUESOME SCANDAL.

BODY LEFT UNBURIED. Christchurch, June 29. An extraordinary story was told to a reporter this afternoon to the effect that recently a dead body had been permitted, by the public authorities, to be unburied for a fortnight. The report was that the body had been taken to.the morgue and left there tor identification. Then it had been forgotten, and it was not until a fortnight later that the body was re-discovered. This seemed to be so like a story from Auckland that no credence was attached to it. The public morgue authorities gave the story an emphatic denial, but irom another source it was discovered that the body was that of a man who had died of consumption, and had laid unburier 1 for ten or eleven days at the Christchurch Hospital.

The authorities at the latter institution, however, state that the report is exaggerated. The body of an elderly man, who had died of consumption, was lying in the hospital tor over a week while inquiries were being made tor relatives or friends. The fact that the body was lying there was not forgotten, but in the cold weather it was not considered necessary to hurry the burial, which, being in a place provided for the reception of dead bodies, there being no fear of contagion.