HERMIT HOT MYSTERY

Northern Advocate, 22 April 1929, Page 5

HERMIT HOT MYSTERY

PRIEST’S LONELY PASSING A GRUESOME RELIC. MUMMIFIED BABY, (Australian Press Association.) (Received 0 a.m.) i LONDON, April 20. In a lonely one-roonied hut, perched nt the top of the rugged Kincardine cliffs, the Rev Alexander Thomas Bell died a -week ago. Police yesterday, in turning over an odd collection of rubbish piled on the floor, were amazed' to find concealed an ornate coffin containing an inner sealed shell, in which there was the almost.perfectly mummified body of a baby boy, who apparently died soon after birth. The coffin must have lain there for years. There was nothing on the nameplate to suggest identity. It contained only the inscription: “There’s a home for little children.”

Mr Bell was formerly in the Scottish Episcopal Church, but turned Roman Catholic at the end of the war. He had preached before King Edward and King- George at All Saints> West London.

He lived a hermit's life in his hut for a quarter of a century. . The police despair of fathoming the mystery. The 'body was dressed in a hand-embroidered frock.

The inference is that the gruesome relic shared Mr Bell's 20 years’ lonely existence, and is believed in some way to have been bound up in the life of the hermit.