AUCKLAND LETTER.

Thames Star, Volume LVII, Issue 15127, 18 February 1922, Page 5

AUCKLAND LETTER.

THE NEW ZEALAND RAFFLES. (From Our Correspondent.) < AUCKLAND, Feb. 17,, m

Charles Campbell Dawkins,-, thej .self-confessed amateur burglar* 'FF known in Auckland as well as in the' three other great centres of the Dominion. What induced this educated and cultured young fellow to adopt the calling of a “cracksman?” Ail impression is prevalent here that E. W. Horning, the novelist, was really responsible for Dawkins’ departure from the paths of virtue, and that it was the exploits of the fascinating but unprincipled Raffles, as described in the story and depicted on the screen at the cinema theatres, that led Dawkins to embark on a life of crime. Raffles was certainly a most engaging person, and the way in which he contrived to defy the police every time and make them look foolish was enough to make every member of the force blush. Raffles, if I remember aright, was never caught “for keeps,” as the Americans say, but Ms New Zealand imitator was less fortunate. He “fell in” after a comparatively brief career. Really our popular novelists ought to he careful. They may do a great deal of mischief without in the least intending to. It is chronicled tbat after the publication of Harrison Ainsworth’s once popular, but now wellnight forgotten romance of “Jack Shepherd,” numbers of London ’prentices took to “the road,” and scoured Hampstead Heath mounted on donkeys and armed with pistols. Thus equipped they boldly “stuck up” pedestrians with “your money or your life!” They were all ignominiously run in by the hobbies. CHEMISTS IN CONFERENCE. I understand that the fourth annual conference of the New Zealand Pharmaceutical Society will open in this city on the 20th inst., and that the Auckland division will introduce a remit to the effect, that an extra dispensing fee to be charged on Sunday. If this proposal is carried I do not fancy the new departure will meet with much favour at the hands of the general public. Chemists’ charges are already high for many drugs in every-day use, and it seems unreasonable to expect the public to pay still higher.prices for medicines supplied on Sundays. | CREMATION., At no .distant date Auckland will possess a crematorium, our city fa-* thers having at, last authorised the erection of the latter. I don’t know how many years those who favour cremation have been battling to get the system adopted here, but there has been a society in existence in Auckland for a very long time, whose one aim and object has been to get this reform introduced in this city. One of the chief advantages of cremation, as a correspondent of a local paper recently pointed out, is its cheapness as compared with earth burial although, of course, the establishment of our crematorium at such a distance from the city as* Waikumite must add considerably to the cost of this method of dealing with the dead. Surely it would have been better for us 'to have adopted the practice pursued in some of the American cities where crematoria are found in the main thoroughfares thus enabling cremations to he conducted at a minimum cost to those concerned. The Wellington crematorium is situate at Karori, and although the cremation fees are very moderate it seems that bereaved persons are charged about £ls for a coffin which latter is not burned but becomes the perquisite of the undertaker and may he used over and over again. Of course no expensive ’ coffin is required at all. All that is needed is a light, thin shell of wickerwork or something like that, which can be consumed with the body. This is the sensible plan adopted in England, on the Continent and in America, and it is to he hoped that it will be adopted in Auckland. Some day a crematorium will he found in every city the world over, and the disgusting and insanitary practice of confeigning the bodies of the dead to the earth will cease. And then we shall get rid of our cemeteries, sooner or later. Even now, before, cremation is at all generally adopted, cemeteries will disappear. In London old St Pancras cemetery, after being in existence for generations, has long since gone, and its site is now a playground for children, and where mouldering graves and tumble-down tombstones once were are now trees, and flowers and broad expanses of green turf. A happy change!