PARIS WORKMEN’S FIND

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20291, 27 December 1927, Page 9

PARIS WORKMEN’S FIND

EMBALMED BODY OF PRIEST. RE-INTERM EjSiT IN ENGLAND. (Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright.) PARIS, December 2A. (Received Dec. 25, at 5.5 p.m.) The embalmed body of a Roman Catholic priest, John Southwotth, who was hanged at Tyburn in 1654, has been entrained at Lille for England. It appears that workmen digging at Douai. an the site of an old convent which was recently demolished, felt a pick strum an unusual object, which proved to be a lead coffin On being opened it was found to contain an embalmed body, with both hands cut off and the vertebrae at the top of the spinal column broken. Investigations among the church authorities in France and England resulted in identification of the remains as those of John Southworth, the story of whose career and martyrdom is chronicled. It was not unusual for the bodies of executed Roman Catholics to be secretly embalmed and removed from the country. English Roman Catholic authorities are convinced that this is Southworth’s body, which was taken to Douai after execution. The mummy has been re-embalmed at Lille and handed over to Father Purcie, of St. Edmund’s College at Ware. It is expected that the remains will b“ reinterred at Ware.—A. and N.Z. Cable