Cheyenne transporter. [volume] (Darlington, Indian Terr.) 1879-1886, 1885-11-30
CITY OF UNkNOW DEAD.
The Potter's Field of New York-One Hun
dred and Fifty Bodies In One Grave

In 1868 the commissioners of char
ties and correction found it necessary
to find burial-place for the poor, and
so the large plot on the east side of
Harts island, up the sound some twen-
ty miles or more from the CITY, was
secured. During the war the island
had been used as a camping-Cround
for union soldiers, and also as a place
of Imprisonment for rebel soldiers, and
the first burial of the dead there were
union soldiers. A neat little union
cemetery where sleep hundreds of
those who where enlisted in the cause
of the union now graces the island,
and a beautiful soldiers monument
and scores of lesser marble tombstones
mark the resting-places of those who
died while encamped on the island.
Since 1868 something over IL 900 of
the city's poor, friendless, and un-
known dead have been buried in the
city cemetery, which adjoins that in
which are buried the remains of the
soldiers. On Mondays and Thursdays
OF each week the burials take place.
When a person dies in a hospital,
workhouse, penltentiary or other pub
lie institution, unless the body is claim
ed by friends or charltable-disp
persons and given Christian burial, it
is placed in a cheap 50-cent pine coffin,
removed to the morgue for day or so,
and thence transferred on one of the
city's steamers to Hart's island and
buried by gang of workhouse en-
plOyes who are detailed to bury the
dead. When a person dies in a public
institution, his or her nearest friends
or relatives are informed, and if the
latter are able the city will take meas
ures to compel them to bury the body.
But the duty is often shirked. 1t is
nothing new to hear of husband who
IS able refusing to bury wife, or of a
wife refusing to bury husband, or of
father or mother refusing to give a
son or daughter proper burial, or of
the latter doing as much for their
parents. But there are those who,
even if as poor as the mythical church
mouse, will even beg for the means to
secure coffin an burial plot else
where for some deceased loved one.
Some of the poorest of the poor have
been known to deny themselves the
very necessaries of life, to 90 thinlv
clad and hungry, rather than one of
their kith and kin should be placed in
pauper grave. And yet there are in
potter's field hundreds of the dead
whose kindred are known to be we'll
to-do. There sleep in some of the pits
side by side the poorest outcast and
the once retted child of fortune. II
would sell the dress off my back rather
than that my son should be buried in
the pauper- field" said poor tene-
ment-house woman at one of the hos
pitals Yesterday. Said another: I'D
scrub the flesh off my bones before I'd
not give me poor husband Christian
burial" There are many, yea, thou
sands, who think it n sin and dis
grace to allow their kindred to be
buried at the expense of the city in
potter's field. Yet there are those
whose hearts are hardened, and who
do not change even when the cold
earth shuts out from their sight for
ever some loved one. The other day
an educated German, young man OF
good family, died IN hospital. His
relatives were informed, but they paid
no attention to the matter, and his
wife, who had money, refused to bury
her husband. Certainly the burial
which the dead receive in the potter
field is not Christian one. No tears
are shed there; there are neither
mourners, priests, nor prayers. No
tender hands lift the coffin; no tender
hands place the shroud upon the occu-
pant. A gang OF twenty men, more
or less, is engaged six days in the week
digging the pits in which the dead are
TO be buried. One hundred and fifty
bodies are placed in each pit, and the
collins are packed as closly together
hnN