PRIEST AND MARTYR

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 237, 27 December 1927, Page 11

PRIEST AND MARTYR

EMBALMED BODY FOUSD WORKMAN’S DISCOVERY By Cable. —Press Association. — Copyright . LONDON, Sunday. The embalmed body of the Roman Catholic priest and martyr, John Southworth. who was hanged at Tyburn, in 1654, has arrived at Ware, Herefordshire, after being disinterred at Douai, France, on the site of an old convent, which was afterwards occupied as a barracks. The barracks were being demolished when a workman felt his pick strike an unusual object, wJiich he discovered to be a lead coffin. When opened the coffin was found to contain an embalmed body, with both hands cut off and the vertebrae of the top of the spinal column broken. Investigations by the Church authorities in France and England resulted in the identification of the remains as those of John Southworth. It was not unusual for the bodies of Roman Catholics who were executed to be secretly embalmed and removed from England, and the English Roman Catholic authorities believe that John Southworth's body was taken to Douai after the execution. The mummy was re-embalmed, at Lille and handed over by the authorities of the Palace of Fine Arts to Father Purdie, of Saint Edmund’s College, Ware. It is expected the remains will be reinterred at Ware. —A. and N.Z.