Strange Discovery of Human Remains.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 76, 15 November 1884, Page 5

Strange Discovery of Human Remains.

The workmen engaged in making some sewer connections at St. Albane came upon a pit containing a very large quantity of human remains. Strange to say, they consisted almost entirely of skull and limb bones, only one rib being found, the skulls being certainly more than a hundred in number, and the whole find amounting to quite a cartload. The faot that skulls, leg and arm bones alone were found would lead to the supposition that some wholesale process of decapitation and dismemberment had been carried on in some bygone days, The remains were interred but four feet from the surface and about two from the roadside, and in very close proximity to the foundation of the wall which, in the Roman period, surrounded Verulara. The pit containing the remains, which are clearly those of both old and very young persons, is about four feet in diameter. Some twenty years ago a similar quantity of human bones were found. It is recorded that in the year 1745, at the time of Charles Edward's rebellion— to which period the bones apparently date— a number of execucutions took place in immediate proximity to the spot where the remains are now found, but this would in no way account for the large number found, as only about ten executions took place here

The large sum of £1,500 will be paid by his publishers to Max O'Rell for the right to publish his new book simultaneously m Paris, London, and New York. Humorous sketches of English society will fill the volume.