A CORPORATION HEARSE.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 3625, 22 August 1901, Page 4

A CORPORATION HEARSE.

The " Lyttelton Times " of Tuesday told a funny story of one of the white elephants of the" Christchurch City Council. Some J where between 1882 and" 1885 a new cemetery was laid out at Linwood, and'jas p tramway ran past it a Councillor of :fh>-ie days, Councillor Bowman, persuaded the City Council to have a hearse built to run on the tramline, at a cost of £250, and a branch line was laid into the cemetery at a further cost of £l5O. It was stipulated that the hearse should have accommodation for carrying at least six bodies in case of emergency, so that if an epidemic arose the one car might be capable of coping with it. The hearse was delivered in 1885, and has never once been used. For six years it stood in a shed in the Corporation yard, an object of ridicule, and the subject of frequent questions in the papers and at Council meetings. It was then sent down to the cemetery, and put in a building erected for the purpose, and there it has remained ever since, not entirely useless, as it has been used occasionally as a fowlhouse. The Council have just sold the thing for. £3 to a quarryman, who will probably convert the under-caTriage into a trolly for broken metal. The "Lyttelton Times"' says that counting interest at"s per cent.; the city has lost £717 over the thing, plus the cost of insurance, as it has been insured all the time. . The builders state that the plate glass in the windows cost about £2O, and that in the wheels and under-carriage there were fully four tons of metal, which is worth at least £3 per ton as old iron, while in addition there is the wood, which - could all have been worked up again in carriage building, so that it .certainly appears as if the hearse had been sold at an unnecessarily low price.