1914.07.08: BOMBMAKERS ARE CREMATED DESPITE PROTEST OF ‘REDS’


July 8, 1914

BOMBMAKERS ARE CREMATED DESPITE PROTEST OF ‘REDS’


Berkman and Friends Follow Bomb Victims—Declare Meeting Will Be Held.




The bodies of Arthur Caron, Carl Berg and Charles Hanson, victims of the premature explosion of their own bomb in the tenement at No. 1626 Lexington avenue Saturday, were cremated this afternoon at Fresh Pond, L.I. They were saved from potter’s field, where Health Commissioner Goldwater was ready to order them, by the submission of Alexander Berkman and his fellow Anarchists to the mandate of the authorities that there could be no public funeral and demonstration over the bodies next Saturday in Union Square.



But Berkman insisted that a demonstration would be held and that the ashes of the dead would be substituted for the bodies, despite objections of Mayor Mitchel and Police Commissioner Woods. His plans include speeches by himself, Charles Plunkett, Pietro Allegra, Arthur Sullivan, Carlo Tresco and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Berkman notified members of the Anti-Militarist League of a meeting tonight in the Ferrer School to raise money for this demonstration and for the funerals.



The removal of the bodies from the Bellevue morgue ended a situation which was becoming embarrassing to the authorities, who did not wish to appear to discriminate against the “reds,” it was accomplished, however only after a final protest from Berkman, who contended that he was not sure of the identification of Berg and Hanson, only parts of whose bodies were found, and a violent objection by Becky Edelson, who got Commissioner Goldwater on the phone from the morgue and demanded that the bodies be held till the missing parts had been found.



DECLARES PRECEDENT WAS ESTABLISHED IN TRIANGLE FIRE.



“Your department established a precedent in the Triangle fire,” declared the young woman, apparently in answer to Mr. Goldwater’s objection that he didn’t care to establish a precedent for the retention of bodies beyond the legal ninety-six hours.



“Those bodies were kept for two weeks and you are discriminating agains us because we are the sort of people you don’t like. If you are allowing your department to be bulldozed by other officials I am sorry for you.”



But Mr. Goldwater was firm, although he had already granted an extension from 10 o’clock until noon

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DEAD ARE CREMATED DESPITE PROTESTS OF THE ANARCHISTS




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At the request of the undertaker, who declared he could not make the bodies ready, so it was a few minutes before 12 o’clock when the band of a score of Reds marched into the morgue and passed around Caron’s coffin.



Leonard Abbott and Berkman were there. Becky Edelson supported Louise Berger, in whose flat the explosion occurred and who collapsed when she found her half-brother’s body must be buried “piecemeal,” as she expressed it. Isidor Wisotsky, Charles Plunkitt [sic], Rose and Marie Yuster and little Lillian Rubel, in short skirts, were in line.



Each wore a mourning band of black, four inches wide, on which was sewn an inch and a half strip of red, and each carried a red carnation, which was dropped on the coffin as the line passed. Then the mourners lined up ten abreast in front of the morgue and followed the two hearses bearing the bodies to the Thirty-fourth street ferry.



OPERATORS HIRED BY BERKMAN CLICKED THEIR CAMERAS.



Moving picture cameras clicked as the procession advanced and dozens of policemen lined the streets, for large crowds gathered on every curbstone, but there was no disorder and the parade, being a funeral procession, was not interfered with.



There were no services when the crematory was reached, except the playing of the “Marseillaise” on the pipe organ and a short speech by Berkman, in which he repeated that there would be public memorial services in Union Square at 2 o’clock Saturday, to which the urns of ashes would be brought from the office of Mother Earth, No. 74 West One Hundred and Nineteenth street, by a band of paraders.



Then two big doors in the chapel were thrown open and the plain pine coffins were disclosed on the movable platform which was to carry them into the cremating furnaces. The platform began to move, the doors of the furnace swung open and the coffins disappeared behind them. Louise Berger, already faint with grief and excitement, nearly collapsed.



There was another spectacle in store, however for Berkman invited all who would—and nearly every one accepted—to a plate glass window in the rear of the furnaces, where the gas flames were seen playing about the coffins until they were concealed by the fire. Then sliding doors shut off this view and Berkman and the others returned to Manhattan.



Mrs. Marie Chavez, an innocent victim of the explosion, was not buried today. Her husband, Pastor Chaves, a Cuban cigarmaker, arrived from his home in Tampa Fla., and said he would take charge of the body, although he had been separated from his wife for several years.






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