Waiting Burial for Twenty Years.

Te Aroha News, Volume I, Issue 43, 29 March 1884, Page 3

Waiting Burial for Twenty Years.

A revolting discovery has been macta in a house in Villa-street, Hockley, near Birmingham, which has been occupied for some eight or nin3 months past by an old man of solitary habits, named William Owen. The man has lately fallen into extvemely necessitous circumstances, and but for the assistance of some neighbours and occasional presents of food and money by the Key. C. G. Baskerville, the vicar of the parish, he would have been in a state of starvation. A week or two ago Mr Baskerville w rote to the Aston Union, calling attention to the man's condition, with the object ot gaining for him some parish relief. The result was a visit to the house from the Aston relieving officer, whose attention was at once arrested by a large coffin-shaped box which was placed against the wall in the dining-room, facing the door, and which exhaled a sickly smell. He asked Owen what the box contained,and after some hesitation the old man replied that it was the body of his sister, who died in London 20 year? ago. The woman's name, he said, was Ellen Perry, and she died in Islington Workhouse in 18'i3. She had always expressed a great horror at the idea of being buiied by the parish. Owen, who was then living in London, pi'omised his sister shortly before her death to remove her remains from the workhouse and have them buried in Birmingham. When she died in 1863 he bought a zinc coffin, and got a friend to make a common wooden coffin, and the parish authorities offered no objection to his removing the body to Birmingham, where he expected his brothers to assisthimto defray the expenses ofthofuneral. He could not induce them to do so, however, and as he had no further means himself, lie made up his mind to keep the corpse in the house as long as he lived. It has been ascertained that a woman named Ellen Perry died at Islington Workhouse in 1868, and the certiiicate of death is in Owen's posoession. The old man has been removed to the workhouse, and the body buried.