A GRIM OCCUPATION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 6966, 15 March 1884, Page 10 (Supplement)

A GRIM OCCUPATION.

A few days ago a moat remarkable man died in the ward of a New York hospital. His name was Borke. He was a morgue-keeper, and grimly boaated tbat he had handled more dead bodies and assisted at mora post mortems than any man in the world. In certain select circles he was highly respected, and he is said to have cue a quaint figure as chairman of those convivial meetings of which undertakers, coffin-makers gravediggers, bier-carriers, mutes, and dealers in the dead used to be honoured i members. Grim Borke was a quiet creature enough, aud facetious persons sometimes'ventured to throw doubt on his statistics. ! He disliked quizzing, and repudiated the claims of fashionable physicians and other rivals in his'line of business. "Fifty thousand bodies I have had the handling of in my career—men, women, and children." After a., social evening with his select friends (when in a: pathetic and communicative frame/:of mind),; he used to declare with tears in his eyes that, he could furnish plots for the novelists of half-a-dozen generations. "Ah !":he used to add (although in his early years he had never followed any other occupation a than, brick-making, he was a man with literary tastes), " if I had but kept a record of all those bodies, some stabbed, some shot, 1 some dripping with water, all with a story to .tell, what an autobiography I could—have written !'* Their faces did haunt him .sometimes by night, though he was, fortunately, not a man of tender susceptibilities,-and /is reported to have had a weakness.for/rum. Borke's career began in IS7O, whell hc; was brought to the Bellevue Hospital as a patient;/ He nflver fully recovered, and was. allowed to remain in charge of the morgue:; Unfortunately he was unpatriotic enough to hate' interviewers. A Nemesis overtook bim. He has gone to his grave obscure and. unknown. —Pall Mall Gazette.