FREEMAN'S MEMORIAL, STONE.

Northern Advocate, 13 February 1912, Page 4

FREEMAN'S MEMORIAL, STONE.

ON THE WRONG GRAVE,

A SCANDALOUS CEMETERY.

Mr C. W. Mirfin, local manager for Messrs Par'smson and Co., monumental masons, notified the Borough Council last evening that the memorial stone to John Freeman, who was murdered at Puhipuhi and buried at Kioreroa cemetery, had been, according to the undertaker, Mr Keyte, placed on the wrong grave. Mr Mirfin had purchased the ground before erecting the memorial and had been given the number of the grave as 49c, block IV. As there were no pegs at the cemetery to guide him, he had applied to Mr Keyte, who had told him that Freeman's was the nearest grave lo the fe,nce and that it was covered with sticks, The stone was consequently erected on the grave answering that description, but the .sticks had apparently been removed. Matters at the cemetery were in a most unsatisfactory state, and Mr Keyte had written to the Borough Council on July 1, making a suggestion that a sexton should be appointed to the charge of the cemetery, and the existing state of not knowing where graves were located could in that manner have been done away with. The Council had ignored those saggestions and consequently Mr Mirfin looked to the controlling body to bear the cost of the removal of the monument to the correct site. The Mayor contended that there were pegs at the cemetery, but the clerk and Cr. Weaver pointed out that the state of the cemetery was a deplorable one, tmfl that the correct locntion of graves in many instances was purely a "matter of memory. Originally there had been totara pegs to mark the numbers of the plots, but they had been Li rnert and replaced by iron ones, which only marked blocks. The matter was consequently referred to the Cemetery Committee- which will discuss it at a meeting on Thursday.