Wilmington journal., 1873-07-18
4 Scene at the Memphis MOrgue
Durisg the Cholera season.

We have a county court, constituted
of thirty-eight country pumpkins call
ed ''sGuires." These good old fellows,
while ''indigenous cholera" ragged,
could hardly be convened. They had
a..county sexton, jolly, dram-drinking
Patlander, of the classic name McCool.
Pat, authorized to buy potter's field
for the county, secured a valueless
spot Immediately on the banks of Wolf
river just above the Holly Water-works
This potter's field is said to be the
foulest place of foulest stenches on the
Continent. Pats Irish cartman told
me that it stunk SO iutolerably that he
saw the man in the moon holding his
nose when careening above this fearful
graveyard. Pat slows away corpses
in very hurried manner. It happens
now and then that as many as three or
four people, when the daily mortality
was great, were chucked into the same
grave. Rain-storms came, and the loose
earth was swept away, and there lay
the grlnnlng cOrpses, negroes and
whites in the same shallow and uncov-
cred grave, and when the hot sunbeams
fell upon the rotting corpses and water
became vapor, stencil went abroad
which begat asphyxia at distance of
half mile. Each rain-storm that came
on each successive day fortunately
cleansed the unhallowed spot and ad-
ded to the stream that gives drink to
70, 900 people of Memphis. Here wa
tiers of life are pumped from rivers
of death. 1t costs the county treasury
quite 81 for each trip made by the sex
ton S wagon to the potter's field, and
to reduce the costs of these public
burials Pat never drives out without a
full load. Corpses are therefore suf
fered to accumulate, often through
several days; and the bodies of the
dead, heaped up in the large empty shop
covered with lime constitute hideous,
ghastly, and morgue-hke exhibition
Despite all precautionary measures,
the place is by no means delightful on
a hot, sultry Summer afternoon. Peo-
pie dwelling in the vicinity often COM
plain of strange sights, and vigorous,
unseemly, insufferable odors supposed
to arise from this shop. On Sunday
last, it so happened that the sexton, by
the merest accident, had slowed away
living man with the dead. The liv-
ing body was at the bottom of heap
of dead bodies to be boxed and
shipped next morning to Pats ceme-
tary. The poor fellow had been mar
cotized by a quack, who administered
some patent drug to reverse the
process of ''collapsing."
The patient slept the sleep of death.
In the same apartment wherein the
narcotic was administered lay another
negro corpse, and the county sexton
carted both bodies away to his depos-
itory 1t was ten o'clock when the
resurrection: occurred. The negro, hor-
rified at finding himself beneath a
heap of dead men, howled like a hip
popotamus. The sexton was aroused,
and crying 'fthief, thief" hurried in
with lantern. Our iving-dead hero,
thinking himself in another world, i'm
agined the frightened sexton in his
night-clothes beneath the lanterns
ftful glare to be the devil himself, and
then there went up fearful howl of
agonized despair, and the "resurreeted"
negro swooned in terror. The fire
bells were ringing, the neighbors
came in, the northern end of the city
was in an uproar, the sexton fed, the
condition of his depository for corpses
was discovered, and the sexton and
county court and city government
each has been indicted by the Grim
inal court. Correspondent
of the NelO York World.