The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-04-21


 At last 1t Is done. The unknown man lies buried in Potters field.
 With the going down of the sun the dead wagon passed on top of Red Noun tain. The blacKened corpse no longer stood upright In the glass case, with yell lo- eyellds dropping before the gaze of the curious. The time had come when those who had done what they could were unable to do any more
 The doo- had been opened, and without any weeping or sorrow, without any ser vices, stripped of the gawky suit of clothes which had hung so ungainly on hiJ stiff form, naked and friendless, he was laid in an old pine box wrapped in a sheet, and the top nailed down.
 ]: was growing late, and with haste the wagon jolted over mound and through dltc.i. carelessly. There was no one to shocked. The horses logged on.
 But as the wagon reached the top of R. Mountain, they were drawn up to rest, and for the last time the hunter fG. someone to own him, hung over the yer edge of Birmingham. Perhaps be- loys there were hundreds who should have known him. It might be that his own mother walked those streets, or his wife was still anxously awaiting for him ill tn, little home.
 Wore than likely the foul murderer who, with his colleagues, had waylaid and killed him, vas and is yet in Birmingham, still about his criminal business, un- harmed and glorying in his work. In fact, could those dead eyes have seen, and that mouth spoken at sometime dur ing the past months they would have pointed out the very perpetrator of the de,d as he went to the undertaking shop to witness the victim of his hand.
 And so the body passed on over the hill, and out of the minds of men. Down the slope it went to the other side, and a few miles further to the Potter's field a forsaken place. grown up in weeds, and spotted here and there with little mounds. Some of them were caving in, as the pine boxes rotted away.
 The grave had been dug, mere shall low ditch, and in moment tl.e box was jerked out and dropped in. A few shovels- ful of dirt and the ceremony was over.
 Thus the body of one more human goes unhonored to the grave. Two months' search through the whole south by some of the best detectives of course turned up many theories, but last week the last one was disproved, and now all that is Ipn te hot tl,a February 13 the body was picked up on Powell avenue and Eighteenth street, pockets turned wrong side out, watch char broken, and the marks of blunt instrument on the head.
 Officer George Hamilton called for an ambulance and sent the fellow to the hospital, where he died three days later. An, since that time every stone in Ala bama, and many other states has been turned in search of someone to own him.
 light times have persons sworn that they formerly knew him. Six of them We men in whom the coroner placed lch confidence, but investigation proved their statements false. The opinion of the authorities now is that most of the identifications were matched schemes, wnile others were innocently mistaken.
 The woman who thought him to have been her husband, later admitted that she did not mean what she said. All that IS now left of his is a ghastly picture, printed several times in The Age-Herald, that can now hardly do, any good. One of the most mysterious cases in Birmng- hams records is now matter os history.