SEXTON CHARGED

Stratford Evening Post, Volume II, Issue 226, 22 April 1933, Page 2

SEXTON CHARGED

Alleged Interference with

Graves

HUMAN REMAINS FOUND

Press Association. —Copyright

Dunedin, April 21. —The sequel to the discovery some weekn ago by a relief worker of human remains and portions of a coffin or coffins on a clay bank in the Northern Cemetery was heard in the City Police Court today when John Hcllyar Allan, sexton of the cemetery, pleaded guilty to a charge of having unlawfully interfered with human remains. He was committed for sentence.

Albert Wigg, labourer, said that while working in Northern Cemetery in August he noticed two coffins had been uncovered by Allan while he was digging a grave. Acting under instruct ions from Allan, Wigg took a skull and some bones away and buried them in a clay bank so that they would be out of sight. The bank was where surplus soil from the graves was emptied and could not in any sense be termed a rubbish tip. Allan was committed to the Supreme Court for sentence, bail being allowed on his own recognisance of £2;"i.