A PUBLIC SCANDAL.

Shannon News, 7 March 1924, Page 3

A PUBLIC SCANDAL.

DESECRATING WANGANUI BURIAL GROUND. BONES IN A KEROSENE BOX. SIX SKULLS IN A TUB. Some time ago when the old Wanganui Anglican Church was removed from its site in the Avenue a feeble attempt was made to locate human remains in the locality and two or three skeletons were removed. The search was of a very haphazard nature and no one seemed to be particularly interested as to the identity of the bodies. Even the Council did not step in" and cause inquiries to be made as to whether there were any old residents alive in Wanganui who could give fuller information on the subject and perhaps point to the likely location of further graves.

On Saturday morning Councillor D. J. Eeardon hailed a "Wanganui Herald" reporter and said, "come along, I have something gruesome to show you." The reporter, ever willing to undertake any kind of job on the spur of the moment, accompanied the Councillor on to the x section already indicated.

"What do you think of that?"' said the Councillor as he lifted a sack and exposed to view a whole heap. of human bones in the kerosene box. Alongside was th)e tub, wherein the skulls were placed. One of these is the.skull of. a young woman, and from what was learned subsequently by the reporter, the remains were obviously those of Miss Nicholls, aged 13 at the time of her death, who was the daughter of the first Anglican minister in Wanganui.

The other human remains were those presumably of soldiers who were all buried near the back boundary of the section.

When the first lot of bones was discovered, the least that could have been done was to make provision to have these gathered into separate coffins and transferred to a proper burial place in this cemetery. This is a duty the Borough Council should have undertaken so that the mortal remains of persons associated with the early history of Wanganui could have been decently and properly exhumed and, re-buried. In the excavation work a dray jolted over what was left of a coffin and its contents. ' The woodwork has nearly all rotted away and the handles of the coffin are lying in the sand and a few bones are strewn arounu. Probably as the excavations extend more bones will be found, and it is to be hoped that they will be treated far differently from those already referred to.

Later in the day two business men were taken by a "Herald" representative to the site of the excavations. One of them, after the position was explained(, remarked, "deplorable, deplorable." He then went on to state that when it ' was thought that _ the Turks were deseecrating the soldiers' graves on Gallipoli, cables, seething with indignation, were flashed throughout the world. "How much more sacred," he asked, "are the remains of those solders on Gallipoli than those of the strapping young men who came out to New Zealand, in the early days, facing all sorts of hardships, and who laid down their lives on the very foundation stone of colonisation." "I hope," ho added, "that instead of tossing their bones about like skittles, the proper thing will now be done and a neat little stone will be erected at the expense of the community to mark their final resting place."