THE PENGUIN DISASTER.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 24, 22 February 1909, Page 4

THE PENGUIN DISASTER.

DESECRATION. GHOULS OX THE BEACH. STRONG -PRESS COMMENT. Chris-tchurch, Thursday. The Star to-night says: ''The shameful scenes whioh the Wellington papers regretfully record as having been enacted at the cemetery during the ■progress of the public funeral of the victims 01 the Penguin disaster make it almost a, pity that the burial was* not conducted privately. Women and children in particular, we are told, struggled and fought to get a nearer view of the coffins and the graves, and the service itself even was interrupted on one occasion by an appeal from ail officiating clergyman for a. little more orderliness and 1 less noise.. "We do not like this reflection upoji the national character; but unfortunately the evidence is so strong that it is impossible not to accept it. Probably it 'Was <piite as much the result of thoughtlessness as of morbid curiosity; but this docs not make the scene at the graveside less reprehensible or less inexcusable. It is not a pleasant subject to .reflect upon, hut it is one that cannot be overlooked. "Unfortunately, the desecration did not end here. The übiquitous photographer carried his camera to the scene of the wreck and proceedad to record it pictorially. The pictures of the site of <the disaster, of the steep and barren cliffs, and the rock-strewn beach, of the •cruel fanged sea, of the upturned boats and rafts, oi' the rescuers and the res■ciued, are all of interest—and legitimate interest—but when the photographers turned their attention to the dead they exceeded the bounds of common decency. Copies of some of tLci pictures takc'i 'have been received in Christclmrch, and it would be difficult to imagine anything more grossly vioJatory of all taste 'and feeling tliam those counterfeit presentments of the dead. Women and children lying in the temporary shelter of the roeks, with shrouded features only, just as flieir poor battered bodies were east up by the sea, have been ruthlessly snapshotted, and even the last quiet dignity of death denied them. They had so little left that surely this last indignity might have been spared to 'them and to their sorrowing relatives and friends. The secure and measureless contentment of t'lie dead saves them 'this pain,, of course, 'but the living who are left have heart* and j'eelings which will resent most strongly this outrage utfon public decency. '•The photographs are indescribably mean and indescribably ca-llous, and it is difficult to imagine the frame of inlnd of those who perpetrated them. It is even more difficult to reach the point of view of the individual who, pipe in mouth, has flosed himself deliberately in several of the photographs with the obvious intention of being 'in the picture.' These ghouls might just as well have robbed the bodies of their personal belongings as to have sought to rob them of that pathetic dignity of death 'which was their last earthly possession. ' "We can only hope that the spirit 'which prompted the taking of the pictures was one of misguided professional 'enthusiasm, and that those who are refor t'hein will «n more mature 'consideration hasten to destroy the rv'cords they have made. We caamot afford that this' reproach against us as 'ft people. should go abroad in other lands."