LOCAL NOTES
The Howff.- The question of the advisability or propriety of continuing burials in the Howff to the same extent as they have been of late still continue to be agitated; and the consideration of the petition, which was presented to Sheriff Logan in 1858, with the view of its being closed, and which has been delayed till this time, is set down for hearing on the Sheriff's roll of causes in his sitting today. In corroboration of the statements formerly published in the Advertiser on this question, the following is given in that paper of yesterday:- "It was but three weeks ago that one of the people employed in a house in Reform Street, went himself in the Howff, and with a barrowful of earth covered up for decency's sake, a quantity of human remains, which the officials had left exposed to view in a position offensively conspicuous. Nor can the sexton be blamed. He cannot do impossibilities. He may be ingenious, but it is not in his power to make two solid bodies occupy the same space at the same moment. Since the grave-stones were shifted, the real position of those buried in the Howff is almost as difficult to ascertain as that of the fishes at the bottom of the sea. The inscriptions that say, "Here lies" so-and-so, only prove where the epitaphs, and not where the dead 'lie.' The sexton, after a few cuts of his spade downwards, often stumbles on the shoulder, or middle, or foot part of some coffin lying unexpectedly athwart his way, and nothing remains for him but to break up the impediment, or desist from his task. In many instances the headstones are, under the existing arrangement, placed across the legs, and in others across the shoulders of the dead, so that the legs are frequently broken through, and where heads come in the way, they also have to be separated from the body and put aside. The object of the removal of tomb-stones was to gain ground, and it is worthy of remark, that such was the excitement caused by the removal of these memorials, that one old man spent at that time, three whole days in watching his wife's grave, and then went home and died after the work was completed. We have neither the space nor the disposition to give the sickening story of Mr Dron's alterations, as narrated to us by one who was employed in the Howff on that occasion. Suffice it to say, that on some occasions the men were overpowered by the bad odours of the disturbed graves, and were compelled to run, as if for their lives, from the places where the effluvium was strongest."
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