DESECRATION AT DUNEDIN

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 215, 20 December 1910, Page 5

DESECRATION AT DUNEDIN

A GRAVEYARD SENSATION. PAUPER'S REMAINS DISINTERRED AND BURNED. By Telegraph.—Press Association. Dunedin, Last Night. An act of desecration of the dead came to light to-day during the course of a burial at the Southern Cemetery. It appears that after an interment at the cemetery, and when everyone with the exception of the officiating clergyman had left, detectives, acting apparently on information received, proceeded to a burning pile adjacent to the new grave. After probing amongst the embers, they discovered some small pieces of bone and the unrecognisable part of a coffin plate amongst the remains. On further investigation by the detectives, it was discovered that the remains were those of a body which had v been removed from the grave to make room for the newly-interred corpse. An examination of the cemetery register disclosed the fact that the remains were those of a pauper who had been buried some seven years and three days, a man of 70 years of age. The pauper had been buried in a grave with a concrete wall round it, but the presence ol a wall round the grave is accounted for by the fact that the wall was intended for another grave, wherein a man of the same name had been buried. The gruesome part of the affair is that while the burial service was proceeding at yesterday's burial, the remains of the pauper were smouldering at a distance of dhly five yards aw&y. It is also asserted that the fire had been burning since Saturday. The clergyman who officiated at the burial insisted on the small pieces of bones taken from the fire being again interred. An inquiry will probably be held, and it is further likely that the person responsible for disinterring the body will be proceeded against.