HOUSE OF DAVID,

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18898, 26 June 1923, Page 8

HOUSE OF DAVID,

A COFFIN MYSTERY. Mr Benjamin Purnell, the long-haired, beared “king” of the House of David—a religious colony established 20 years ago at Benton Harbour, Michigan—was adjudged "a gigantic fraud” by the New York District Court on April 30. An action for damages which resulted in this finding was brought against the king by Mr John W. Hansel, formerly a farmer of Nashville, Tennessee, who with his wife and children joined the colony in 1912 and laboured in it without wages until the monarch ejected them last autumn on charges of inciting disaffection among their cobelievers. The court awarded Mr Hansel £3OOO. Evidence was given of the practice of “group marriages’’ among the young men and women of the colony. Brides drew husbands by lottery. But a more sinister aspect of the trial relates to the burial of colonists who died. Colonists were taught that if they obeyed the injunctions of their king they would achieve immortality. When death occurred it was ascribed to the fact that “our brother has sinned," and the death chamber was immediately abandoned to the undertaker, and on the authority of a certificate signed by an aged colonist, who has a doctor’s degree, the corpse was placed in a box and thrown into a pit without ceremony or witnesses.

A gravedigger confessed to the authorities that in the summer of 1921 he buried a coffin supposed to contain the body of a woman of 68. As he pushed it into the grave its top was shattered and he saw the body of a girl of 16, who appeared to have been strangled. An order for the exhumation of this body was issued. Mr Purnell has been missing since Christmas.

The House of David owns extensive properties in Michigan. It has conducted a large business in agricultural produce, and its baseball team and brass band are known throughout _ the State. Mrs Margaret rsryson, a native of Scotland, was one of the chief witnesses. She said that she joined the religious colony at its English headquarters In Romford road, London, in 1905. She was visited in Scotland by an emissary of the House of David, who warned her that he was the last of the messengers sent by God to gather in the elect. He exhorted her immediately to dome to London, which she did. There she was informed that Rendon would be destroyed by a flood in 60 days, and that the only way to save her life was to take refuge in the “Ark,” which was at Benton Harbour, in Michigan and she at once went to this ark. Mrs Bryson stated that all the married couples at the House of David were forbidden to have children.