HUMAN RIDDLES THAT HAVE VEXED THE WORLD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 156, 3 July 1937, Page 4 (Supplement)

HUMAN RIDDLES THAT HAVE VEXED THE WORLD.

Alex. T. Stewart —What Became of His Corpse? The Mystery of Christopher Columbus. (By VINCENT TOWNE—AII Rights Re.erved.)

TOMB ROBBED. MERCHANT PRINCE. NEW YORK MYSTERY. IX 182.'! there 1;»iido.I in New York an Irish immigrant youth of 20 who in the Emerald Isle had studied fur the ministry, hut had decided t hat he was Hot fitted for the cloth. llis name was Alexander Tuniey Stewart. When lie put foot ii[urn the "Land of the Free," he had no definite plans for his future,' and afler drifting about for a while became teacher in a select school of i New York. Keaehing his majority, he returned to Ireland for his share of the i email fortune his father had left. Theu he returned to New York, opened a ! Broadway store for which lie paid £50 j a year rent. His capital amounted to 1 £600. He slept in the rear of his shop, \ •which proved to be tho nucleus of the greatest dry-poods establishment in the ! world. During the early years of the Civil War he built a store costing £55,000 and employing 2000 persons. He , *« by this time the owner also of numerous mills and factories. His i income -was now £400,000 a year. H® spent vast sums in philanthropy,! eent a whole shipload of provisions to j relieve the great Irish famine, and dis- I

* crime were ideal. The only possible lelues to the vandals' identity were an lii on >11 o v el, a small bull's-eye lantern '<Uid a newspaper that they had, left I' aiiid. A carefully devised police net !iii iin I'd i-11 ely stretched about the metropolis tailed to catch any one willing to :.»tato that he had seen or heard, anv | .suspicious personages or actions tha't | might lend to the solution of the mvsi tery. It seemed improbable that any persons of a. character that would have engineered such a gruesome enterprise could have passed the city or rural I'oliee without arousing somp interest or leaving at least a memory of suspicious activity, et the thorough investigation of the authorities of New York and neighbouring States failed to elicit anv results whatsoever. The police failed ,1o discover that any anonymous . demands for ransom were ever received by any one interested in the case. Many Rumours. Comment was aroused by Judge Hil- | ton's stubborn refusal to make' overtures that might tempt the ghouls to ; return their ghastly relic. Most emj phatically the executor announced that ,he would not subject the Stewart estate to blackmail, and finally, when per- ! siioded to offer £500 reward for the body, he added the condition that the ;sum would not be paid unless he was given information leading to the appre- : hen-ion of the guilty persons. j 'ict it was. whispered about the i metropolis that secret negotiations with (the vandals were conducted. Dame i Oossip. under her breath, 'whispered i that the body had been recovered and re-entombed in the stately Cathedral

■ ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■'■I patched another vessel laden with flow to feed the France aftei that country'* defeat by the Germans. Fifth Avenue Mansion. His marble Fifth Avenue mansion was regarded at the time as the finest private house iri the world, and contained an art gallery that ranked among the moat valuable in the country. It was in this house that ho entertained the Emperor of Brazil and one of the great scions of the house of Rothschild.' Just at the time wben Mr. Stewart was interested in building a milliondollar home for working girls on Fourth Avenue, and while he was erecting the village of Garden City, Long Island, as a model settlement for his, many employees, he died on April 10, 1876. He left a fortune of £8,000,000. He was survived by a widow, but no children. In fact, he had no blood relations. Many legacies were left to his employees, and he made provision for various public charities. Soon after her husband's death Mrs. Stewart erected in St. Mark's churchyard a handsome mausoleum, in which his body was entombed. In November, 1878, about two years and a half after Mr. Stewart's entombment, Judge Henry Hilton, his executor, rushed into the New York Police Department with the sensational news that ghouls had broken into Stewart's mausoleum. Upon inquiry, the police learned that Judge Hilton had previously tampered with and had caused a large slab resting above the coffin to be removed to another place. This false tomb had been inscribed "A. T. Stewart Family Vniilt," in the hope that it would deceive those who. for some mysterious purpose'appeared eager to carry away the bones of the dead merchant prince. * v Only four persons were supposed t$ have shared knowledge of this stratagem, but later developments proved tjuit tin- .-lub's reniovaL had been witnessed by the conspirators. Excavations Traced. As soon hm the alwrtn was given the police investigated the unmarked giave of Mr. Stewart, and discovered that ghouls had (here made excavations with « mathematical precision that proved their hlk ute knowledge of its location. They bad dug down on all sides to within a traction of an inch of a Hags tone covering the real grave. The multi-millionaire's corpse had been encased in a casket covered with black cloth, fringed with gold braid. This coffin had been placed' in a leaden case enclosed by n heavy wooden box. Pile lid of the outer box had been unscrewed, the leaden casket cut open and tile inner cofiin robbed of its jrrncsome contents, 'lhe famous merchant was 73 years old when he died, and his body was so emaciated by his fatal illness that it weighed only 801b. and hence it Would haw bi'cn iin cosy matter to have carried I lie Imhlv a way in n sack. Th- ni-Ji' tl-i: act of v::mblism had In n j-1 • I; I if been .! »; k and rainy. the conditions for ciicli a

of the Incarnation which Mrs. Stewart had erected as a memorial to her husband, but the widow and Judge Hilton never took any one into their confidence as to this, and whether the body was ever recovered still remains a deep mystery.

all on account of that bold rover of the seas, Sir Francis Drake, that they got mislaid. When he caiue sweeping do°vn "[•on Santo Domingo, in whose cathedral they lay, the archbishop of that city ordered that all of the tombs be covered with earth. Those were days of ease and indolence and no one troubled himself about uncovering Columbus' tomb until after the last one who knew the secret of its location had sought his own final resting place. Small Vault Opened. So the remains of the discoverer were forgotten until Spain ceded Santo Domingo to France. Then the Duke of Yeragua, a descendant of Columbus, j sent to the cathedral for his illustrious ancestor's ashes. After considerable searching about among musty tombs, a small "vault was opened and some pieces of bone and dust found inside were placed in a ease of gold and lead. A High Mass wafi said over them and they were transferred to the Cathedral of Havana that they might still repose on Spanish soil. No one doubted that these transplanted remains were those"£ of Columbus until 18/7, when, in the course of repairs back at their former resting place, the old Santo Domingo Cathedraf, a vault was opened in the space adjoining that from which they had been taken by the Spaniards 81 years before. The new archbishop, poking his arm into the dark, mouldy hole and finding there a well-preserved leaden case summoned the President and Cabinet of Santo Domingo, as well as all of the other local dignitaries and foreign consuls. In thair presence he had the leaden casket removed and inside were discovered dust, human bones and a bullet of lead, while upon the casket were found eertain letters, interpreted as abbreviations arranged to denote that Christopher Columbus and no other lay within. So it was immediatelv announced that the remains taken to Havana in 1/95 had not been those of Christopher, but of Diego-Columbus, and that the great admiral's bones had. after all, remained in Santo Domingo, in conformity with his death-bed request. International Hubbub. There immediately arose an international hubbub, the Spaniards accusing the archbishop and other dignitaries of the Santo Domingo Cathedral of being the "authors and accomplices of [ a pious fraud" and the archbishop reply- I ing with great heat that he could prove his claims. Tourists through the West Indies saw two separate tombs of Columbus, one in Ha\ ana and one in Santo Domingo, until the evacuation of Havana, in 189S when U.S. authorities allowed the Spaniards to take their alleged bones of the discoverer to Seville. So pilgrims must 'now go to both Seville and Santo Domingo before being sure that thev have visited the hallowed spot where lies buried the discoverer of America.