BAYLY INQUIRY.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20363, 21 July 1934, Page 11

BAYLY INQUIRY.

Police Check Up Late Information. MINISTER’S STATEMENT. Per Press Association. WELLINGTON, July 21. The essential features of the late information concerning the Bayly case which was received on Thursday evening were explained by the Minister of Justice (the Hon J. G. Cobbe). “At 11.35 a.m. on July 19.” said Mr Cobbe, “ I received from Bayly’s family solicitors at Auckland by telegram a brief precis of a statement purporting to have been made to solicitor on July 15 and apparently forwarded to Bayly’s solicitors the same day. “To whatever cause the delay of four days in advising the authorities of this statement may be attributed, it was found possible in the brief period available to have the principal parties referred to in the statement interviewed and to have sufficient inquiry made by the police to establish clearly that nothing in the statement warranted any change in the decision of the Executive not to intervene in the sentence of the Court being given effect to. “ The statement referred to contained nothing more than a man’s recollection of a conversation between a group of workmen on the East Coast railway construction works said to have taken place between four and five years ago and regarded at the time by at least one of the party as a joke. “ By one o’clock in the morning the result of the police inquiries was available to the Executive and the latter decided that no reason justifying intervention had 'been established.” Body Cremated. AUCKLAND, July 20. In the afternoon the body was claimed on behalf of the relatives, and was cremated at Waikumete cemetery. The funeral ceremony, at which the Rev G. E. Moreton officiated, was at- I tended by relations and friends. After the cremation the ashes were scattered in the cemetery, in accordance with the wishes of the relatives.

AFTER CREMATION. Not Unusual to Scatter the Ashes. The scattering of the ashes of a body in the cemetery after . cremation, as was done in the case of the executed murderer, Bayly, is not unusual in New Zealand, though it is more customary for the ashes to be retained in an urn. Urns are provided at each crematorium for this purpose. The scattering of the ashes, however, seems to appeal to a lot of people, and there have been cases in New Zealand where ashes have been scattered from an aeroplane, and where they have been scattered on hills and over the sea. The regulations are silent on the subject of the disposal of the ashes, the matter being left to the discretion of those interested Cremation consumes the body so completely that the amount of ash left is very small, seldom exceeding about two pounds in weight,