CLAIM FOR A WIFE’S BODY.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXII, Issue 8860, 10 July 1907, Page 1

CLAIM FOR A WIFE’S BODY.

Dr. Ohalmars Prenti ;o, of Chicago, is siring tho North Grcmau Lloyd Shipping Oombauy ; for £SO j 000 damages for burying his wife at sea, despite the protests of the daughter and friends of tho deceased lady. Mrs Prentice died on April 37 on board the Koenigiu Lnise on the voyage from Naples to New York. Tlie surgeon was about to embalm the body and place it in a hermetically-sealed coffin when the Italian commissario interfered, and insisted on immediate burial at sea. In such matters tne commissario is mightier even than the captain of the vessel. He owes his authority to a contract which every shipping lino is forced to conclude with the Italian Government as soon as it engages in Italian steerage traffic. The contract provides that there must be on board one Italian commissario to every 700 emigrants. The commissario ranks superior to the ship’s commander in every question affecting tho health and sanitation of 'the vessel. Mrs Prentice was a firstclass passenger, and therefore far removed from tho steerage. Her death was not due to an infectious disease. Yet the Italian officer, deaf to tho remonstrances of tho ship’s captain and tho tears of the daughter of the deceased, declared that the health of the emigrants imperatively demanded that the body should be flung into the waves. The captain yielded to the tyrannical demand, fearing that if ho refused tho company’s ships would bo barred in future from Italian ports. It is pointed out that Mrs Prentice’s fate may any day overtake men of the highest eminence who have the misfortune to die on a vessel where an Italian commissario reigns supreme.