FORGOTTEN GRAVES

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —In your issue of Saturday last, there appeared a somewhat brief but quite historic item of news concerning the proposed re-erection, at Lower Hutt this time, of the once-familiar memorial stone which once marked in the Bolton street cemetery the burial-place of Sergeant Ingram. Eventually the stone was overthrown and subsequently carted to the inner recesses of the mortuary chapel near adjacent, wherein for many years have likewise, lain, hid from public view, go many other equally-prized and sacred relics-of days of yore. Sergeant Ingram was one of the six members of the historic 58th Regiment killed, in May, 1846, during a surprise attack at dawn. Upon that occasion Lieutenant Page and some fifty members of the regiment were left behind^at their'post, Boulcott's Farm, Lower Hutt, to guard . the Hutt Valley and citysfrom attack by rebel natives, whilst their two hundred other gallant .comrades were garrisoning a stockade in the Horokiwi district, where Rangihaeta and his warriors were being kept under strict surveillance nearer their stronghold at Pahautanui andthreatening to raid Wellington. In your supplement, some five years back, an article of mine contributed thereto drew attention to the neglected state of many historic grave-plots, of soldiers and others, in the Bolton street cemetery j and to' the fact of the headstones "of Colonel William Wakefield, Sergeant Ingram, of the 58th, George C: Eliott Eockhart, R.N., William Minifie, and other members of H.M.S. Calliope, being huddled out of sight within the dusty interior of a mortuary chapel, likewise historic and in an equal state of disrepair. This article was instrumental some years later, through the medium of your powerful support, in securing for at least one of the sad. relics so long reposed therein its rightful place of re-erection, with a new arid fitting ceremony thrown in.

As it is now proposed to re-erect Sergeant Ingram's headstone upon the historic site of battle, at Lower Hutt, where he and his five gallant comrades fell,and thus leave for ever unmarked the identical grave-plot in the Bolton street cemetery where his mouldering but honoured bones are lain, it might also seem fitting to record thereon the name of Bugler Allen, one of the six, who added so great a lustre to the 58th Regiment's immortal fame. ,Or, better still, leave Sergeant Ingram's headstone at the Lower Hutt site .temporarily until a more imposing tribute to Bugler Allen's memory is raised, when the original regimental tribute—a priceless relic—can be restored once more to its really proper sphere. That is, provided the persons ,who were responsible for its removal in the first, instance can at this lapse of time identify the sacred plot from whence* it came.—l am, etc., N.J.B. 30th December, 1923.