WOMAN WHO LOST HER SON

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 133, 29 February 1936, Page 20

WOMAN WHO LOST HER SON

The Casket in His Home Theodore King left his .home ,at Smallfield, Siirrey, on the morning of August 22, 1931, to motor-cycle the few miles to Horley. He was killed in an accident on the way. He was twentyone. The shock almost killed his mother, who was devoted to him. After the inquest the body was embalmed, laid in a mahogany casket with a plate-glass top and taken to the Kings’ home. It has remained there ever since. The casket lies in an upstairs bedroom which ivits once'the boy’s nursery. Later he used it as a study. Now it is hung with purple velvet curtains and in the middle of the room is a dais on which the casket rests. The body is dressed only in pyjamas. '■ In the graveyard of the Ebenezer Strict Baptist Chapel at Smallfield, stands a mausoleum of red granite with a white marble roof and door of bronze, built by the boy’s father, a builder and undertaker. On the wall is inscribed:— “In loving memory of Theodore Henry King, who died August 22, 1931, aged twenty-one years. “The soul, of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him with his own soul.” Fir bushes grow around, the path has been kept weeded, but no one visits this strange, empty mausoleum. Mrs. King has resolutely refused to allow the body to be taken out of her home. “She still regards him as living” a relative said. “Each morning and night she goes into the room. Nobody but Mr. and Mi's. King ever enters. Since the boy died Mrs. King has never left the house." A Home Office official said: “There is no law to compel burial so long as there is no danger to human life by keeping the body. The matter is one for the Ministry of Health, but if a body has been properly embalmed and is kept under proper conditions I do • not know under what regulations burial could be compelled.