The Northern Advocate THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1912. KIOREROA CEMETERY SCANDAL

Northern Advocate, 15 February 1912, Page 4

The Northern Advocate THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1912. KIOREROA CEMETERY SCANDAL

UNLESS the Whangarei Borough Council is altogether foreign to human sympathy and reverence for the dead it will lose no moment to remove the awful reproach of the Kidreroa cemetery scandal. How the Council can go on year after year in the knowledge that it is responsible for the continuance of such a disgraceful state of affairs, and do nothing to bring about a reform, passes all understanding. Where there are no obstacles to improvement that cimnot be readily surmounted, the stoical attitude of Council after Council in this matter is either a display of callous indifference or gross lack of perception. The revelations 'made in the cne instance of a headstone being placed over the wrong grave is illustrative of the total disorder into which affairs at the cemetery have been allowed to deterioratei As things are now, relatives and friends of deceased persons can never be sure after a. time where the departed have been interred, and may be led into an error similar to that of the Freeman case by placing monuments over the remains of people whom they never knew or with whom they had not the slightest family connection. Only the Meartlessness of those who have not known the pangs of bereavement would suggest that it did not matter and sneer at the sacred ties which bind the living with the memory of the dead, yet that is the conclusion v/hich the Borough Council's torpid unconcern forces one to take of the members of that body. Even in the direction named the disgrace has not ended. No winter ever passes but we have revolting occasions where grief-stricken mourners must witness the interment ot those they held dear in graves three parts full of slushy water, with the floating coffins held in position while the last sad rites are performed. Kow much longer is the Borough Council going to carry the opprobrium of this dreadful thing? When the abattoir site business was passing through the process of bitter discussion, the chief plea of the objectors to Kioreroa was that soakage from the graves percolated into places where cattle ate and drank. If triere was anything in their contention, it was surely discreditable to the authorities to permit a cemetery to be started in such a position where graves could be perpetually flooded, and far more discreditable to allow further use of the burying-ground when once this defect was realised. Not the abattoir site, but the cemetery's position was at fault, and the latter place should be closed at the earliest instant. There are plenty of other sites obtainable, and some time ago the Borough Council set up a committee to furnish a report on such, but apparently that is all that has been heard of it. A few days ago a Borough Councillor, who had read an article in the "Advocate" urging a certain reform in the public behest, remarked to a representative of this paper: "You can say what you like and write what you like; it's all so much water on a duck's back." The writer of that article had never imagined that tho appeal would penetrate the conscience oi" that particular Councillor, since the age of miracles has long gone by; but if the remark made indicates the spirit of the whole Council the public may as well give up the hope of seeing abuses like the Kioreroa cemetery amended, jind yield its neck to the Council's trampling.