Mangonui Cemetery.

Northland Age, Volume V, Issue 16, 7 December 1908, Page 5

Mangonui Cemetery.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —In your last is«ue “A Living Pauper ” made some remarks on the consecration of the new cemetery. The writer seems to be under a great misrehension. There is no necessity for new cemetery to be consecrated as there are a few plots of ground yet vacant in the St. Andrew’s Church Cemetery and those whose friends can afford to pay may still hare an opportunity of being buried in consecrated ground. "A Living Pauper” should not interfere in matters that do not ooocern him because if he dies a pauper he wont worry very much how or where he is buried; and he can rely on it that Uw Charitable Aid Board will put him in a hole unceremoniously and without useless consideration of sentiment or anything else except that of prompt riddance of the body. A living pauper may be permitted to growl but a dead pauper can only emit offensive smell and it doesn’t matter a hang to anyone whew, how or when, the sniffiness is deposited so that it be done cheaply. As for a dead pauper being buried m. unconsecrated ground you may be quite sore that this is of no consequence. So long as the wealthy dead have a strip of ground wherein to be buried sanctimoniously and in all the holinesses of the Church to which they belonged why should anyone worry about the consecration of the outcast's burial place P As for the bleakness of Mangonui’s new cemetery “A Living Pauper” need not repine. It may be bleak and uncomfortable to look at but the new cemetery will be the resting place of many of the best of us and there is no call to trouble about its consecration as the paupers gathered there may find it more pleasant to be among their fellows at the finish than if they were compelled to rub shoulder* (in the grave) with the richer crowd in St Andrew’s. Consecration indeed, Mr. Living Pauper; the dead don’t worry about that sort of thing.—l am, etc., ANOTHER STONE BROKE. [The Anglican and Roman Catholic Chnrchee are the only two which, so far as we know, consecrate their burial grounds. In the case of the Anglican Church it is usual for a Bishop, no dignitary beneath this degree, to perform the ceremony and as the Bishop of Auckland may be in Mangonui next June or July it ia possible that a part of the new cemetery may then be consecrated, if the people express the wish for this. Only a part of the new cemetery can be consecrated by the Anglican Church as there are likely to be deaths (and burials in this cemeterv) of those of other sects before this burial place will be filled. In regard to the St. Andrew’s cemetery wa have been informed that residents of Mangonui or relations of any of those buried there may be interred there at death but that as the cemetery is nearly full interment of Btrangers and nonresidents has been forbidden. There is no intention to make distinction of any kind but it is felt that the residents of Mangonui should have right of final resting place in the Church cemetery in preference to strangers.—Ed.]