The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1892-08-16
A SlCKENING SCENE
The Cremation of the Body of
Percy Rockwell at Fresh Pond.
AN UNUSUAL ACCIDENT OCCURS
Which Presents Horrible Sight to the
Relatives and Friends Who
Are Watching the Cremation.

Especial to THE HERALD-Examiner Dispatch.1
NEW YORK, Aug. ia revolving and
most unusual accident occurred yesterday
afternoon during the cremation of the
body of Percy Rockwell at Fresh Pond.
1t was something that those who saw it
will never forget, and something they will
never be able to recall without a shudder
of horror. The funeral services were held
at the Hotel Metropole at IL O'Clock, the
Episcopal services being read. From the
Hotel Metropole the body was carried to
the crematory at Fresh Pond TIE aged
mother of Mr.. Rockwell was unable to
leave the hotel. The funeral party. in
Guiding few relatives and forry-five or
fifty friends, arrived at the crematory Just
before o'clock. The smoke issuing from
the chimney told that the furnaces wers
ready. The hearse was driven TO the rear
door, where the coffin was lifted out and
carried into the crenatory. Along with il
went COMMITTEES of the pall- Dearers IL
the audience room the relatives and other
friends were seated The room was per-
fectly ventilated, bot the heat from the
Two ovens made the room sitting. Between
the ovens and the rear room was a brick
wall. The oven ends were covered with
hinged iron doors. Communication be-
tween the two rooms was had by two
doors, one on either side OF the ovens in
the rear room the body had been lifted
from the coffin, placed in q shallow iron
cradle and wrapped In a shroud of alum
soaked white clOtn. Then the cradle con-
tanning the corpse was hoisted with block
and tackle TO its position on nigh iabl. ,
calculated 10 be just the height OF the Owe
floor, an attendant rushed into the auci-
ence room then and unbolted the door OF
one oven. a second isIer it was de cided TO
use the other oven, as the first ha0 par
across u about ten inches from the floor.
under which the body of Mr. Rockwell was
TOO large TO pass. The door Of the second
oven was left loosely in posi-
ton ready to be thrown open,
then the high table, upon which
was the iron cradle and IN that the
close-wrapped body of the dead man was
wheeled into the audience room and into
position in front of the oven door. Two
men on either side OF the superintendent
and his trained assistant and two unexper-
fenced men furnished by the undertaken
made ready to roll the cradle into the oven
with the body head foremost. The door Of
the oven was thrown open and
THE CRADLE PUSHED IN.
There was a hitch. One of the new men,
afraid of the terrible heat had hesitated
The cradle had sIOughed sideways and the
DOCy was not wholly INSIDE the oven, the
feet still resting upon the table outside.
The oven was glowing like one huge,
white-hOt ember. Long. thin, hungry
flames were playing wildly, moving ike
red tongues of angry gerpents, kissing
about their prey. For a second the
alum soaked cloth protected she body
long enough for the door to
have been closed upon the sight had
there been no accident and then 1t ignited-
There was q vision that IS the black burial
garments as shrouds shrivelled away, a
sight of the white face and hands folded
over the breast with the flames playing
wildly ABOUT tho face and body. Women
screamed and sobbed uncontrollabIy and
strong men gazed, aWe-struck and shud-
dering with horror. 1t was spectacle
hideous beyond description. There was
another lunge, then the naming body passed
wholly into the oven. keep backn
shouted one man, ''It's all right now" a
dozen men were about to press forward,
moved by what they mad seen. They had
been bewildered st first and then in
srinctively started toward the body. Any
interference by the delay of so much as
the tenth of a second would have been
calamitous. The iron door closed with an
abrupt clash, end
THE AGONY WAS OVER.
The women were then led out hysterical,
and it was several minutes before the ex-
citemenr subsidized. The superintend ent IN
his desperate anxiety to get the body into
the oven had burned one hand and blistered
one side of his face.
To an inexperienced observer some OF
the after details are CHASTITY enough. An
attendant with one blow of an axe crashes
the plate glass in The coffin ill., With
dexterous show of strength he wrenches
the lid loose, breaks it in pieces with his
axe and losses it through the
trap door to the vault-like cellar
underneath. Then picking up the
axe again, he breaks and bends the
silver side bars, cuts through the satin and
wood anu velvet, leaving the coffin
wreck, and losses the wreck through the
trap door, The flowers go next-whole
carriages full of the rarest and costliest,
crushed and mu5ilsted, All this, SO much
RUBBISH, is burned as common fuel.
| Through little iron disc slide in the rear
of the oven, the curious minded may view
I the seatninQ interior The body cannot be