The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1888-03-25
RUIN AMONG THE T0MBS.
DISSERTATION OF THE VAULTS IN
THE OLD CEMETERY.

The South Broad Street Wall Broken
Down and the Sacred Field Made a
Romping Ground for Boys - The
Graves and Tombs Broken Open and
the Bores of the Dead Pelted With
Sticks and Stones-Searching the
Collins for Plumber.
There seems to be a crying necessity
for the city to protect the old
South Broad Street Cemetery from des-
ecration. The MORNING NEWS noted last
month that breach had been made in the
wall on the South Broad street side. 1t
was thought at the time that the breach
would be repaired. but no attention has been
paid TO it. The opening is nearly opposite
No q South Broad and was made in the
night, evidently with a sledge and crowbar.
An attache of the MORNING NEWS going
east on Liberty street at 3 o'clock one
morning heard the blows, which the Jewelers.
made in their unholy work.
Since that time the dissertation in the
burying ground has been systematic and
painful to naTrate Evidently the most
reprehensible part of the work has been
done from motives of plumber, as family
vaults have been opened and metallic cas-
kets torn apart, the ghouls bent on rihing
the caskets of whatever jewelry may have
been consigned to them when the bodies
were inferred. In the work of destruction
the tablets have been crushed by the fall
ing walls, and in some instances the entire
front OF some of the newer vaults of Phila-
delphia pressed brick have been demolished
without making an opening into them.
RO3pINCS OVER THE GRAVES
The lesser dissertation is the work of
thoughtless boys, who have free access to
the cemetery, and consists in throwing
sticks, bats and miscellaneous debris into
the vaults, in many cases breaking the
skulls and crushing the yellow bones which
protrude from the collins,
Both ends of the second vault to the right
upon entering the South Broad street gates
have been pulled out, and the grinning skull
of an infant looks out at the beholder. In
the second vault to the left there are human
bones broken and disjointed by the debris
which the boys have cast in through the
opening. The Hunter tomb has been very
recently visited and the front knocked
down.
A vault, from which the tablet has been
removed, just south of the Johnston vault,
has very lately been broken into. Here
the metallic caskets have been violently
the grave cloths, or lining OF the caskets,
have not yet decayed. Fire has been ap-
piled to them, but they were too damp to
burn, as their charred condition shows. The
exposed skeletons have been pelted with
Sticks, stones and bats, and the sight is
painful to contemplate.
Through the breach in the George
Schicks' vault can be seen the bones almost
concealed by the rocks and broken bricks
wi ba hcafa ilad
THE VAULTS BROKEN OPEN.
The John Moore vault, the second to the
right of the breach in the cemetery wall
has been broken into. Bones have been
dragged from the casket. An infants me-
talic casllet has been broken open and frag-
ments of the skull have dropped out and
lie on the coffin beneath. On one of the
larger collins in this vault are fragments of
human bones. Here the boys have thrown
in whatever missiles that they could find
lying about.
A MORNING NEWS reporter paid two
visits to the cemetery, on different after
Moons, last week and on neither day was
there any surveillance of the cemetery
Boys of all ages, white and black, rollicked
with the utmost freedom in the old burying
ground. In more than one instance they
We're dissuaded from their thoughtless mis-
chief by opportune words In other in
stances a severe reprimand was necessary.
In one of the inclosed places half dozen
boys had penned up a herd of goats and
were tormenting the animals which in their
frantic endeavor to get out, would run against
the railing, and crash through the shrub
berry which, from its condition, seemed to
still have attention from a kindly hand.
AT THE MERCY OF vANDALS.
So far as can be learned no effort has
been made to track down the parties who
made the breach III the wall, no care has
been exercised to protect the vaults and
tombs from dissertation, not step instituted
to ferret out the miscreants who have torn
open the collins, leaving the skeletons bare
for further Dissertation, and not move
ment has been made to repair the damaged
wall to keep out the young and thoughtless
who are day after day continuing the work
of piling debris on the exposed bones in the
ghoul-invaded vaults.
The law makes it the duty of the City
Council 20 take care of the cemetery. 1t is
a revolving fact that pending the judicial
settlement of title, the vaults are permitted
to be broken into, the collins rihed and the
skulls and bones subjected to such indig-
mites as are of almost every day occurrence.