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
(Continued on Second Page)
DEAD ARE CREMATED DESPITE PROTESTS OF THE ANARCHISTS
(Continued from First Page)
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.
