KEMMLER'S BURIAL.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6970, 26 September 1890, Page 4

KEMMLER'S BURIAL.

A GRUESOME SCENE IN THE GEi ;'ETAED. The mystery standing the burial of William Kemmler >• us ou ly second to the mystery surrounding the preparations for his death. Ifc will be remembered that he was tortured to death by electricity early on the morning of August 6, and that a few hours later the knives of the surgeons were busy cutting the body to pieces. There was some doubt concerning the section of law relating to the burial of the body, and when the watchers about the prison on tho night following the execution saw no sign of any funeral, it was generally believed that the body had been covered with quicklime and buried beneath one of the flagstones in the prison yard. Late in the afternoon of the next day the gravedigger in charge of the convict burying ground received orders to have a grave ready for a body at ten o'clock that night. The grave was dug, and when ten o'clock came without bringing the expected body, the grave-digger turned the light down low in the sitting-room of his cottage, and went to sleep in his working clothes. His wife lay on a bed in front of a window keeping watch on the street, so that she might wake her husband when the body arrived. Meantime men in charge of what was left of the dead murderer's body had placed it in an express waggon at half-past nine o'clock, and had driven out of the prison gate. There was a knot of men on the side-walk who immediately showed signs of excitement when the waggon appeared. It was instantly decided that these men were reporters, and the driver, of the waggon, in accordance evidently with the orders of Warden Durston to elude the newspaper men, drove around the block and then back into the prison yard. No other attempt was made to dispose of the body until eleven o'clock, when the express waggon again came rattling out, but again there were men on the side-walk who seemed interested in its movements, and once again the waggon was driven back into the yard, and the big gates closed on it. No other effort was made to bury the body until midnight, when the waggon came dashing out as though the driver was bound to get rid of his burden at all hazards. He drove rapidly up the street, the waggon swaying to and fro and rattling horribly. The grave-digger led the way into the gloomy cemetery by the dim light of a lantern. Arriving at the grave he Bet the lantern at one end of it, and seizing the remains of the murderer pulled ' them out of the waggon. It didn't take long to fill up the grave, for the only object to accomplish was to get the body out of sight and stamp the dirt on it.