AtoZ Challenge - B: The Burial Scandal at Haverfordwest #AtoZChallenge

The Blogging from A to Z April Challenge is for bloggers who wish to participate, by publishing a blog post every day in April except for Sundays. Each blog post will focus on a letter of the alphabet. For example April 1 will be A, April 2 will be B, April 3 will be C, and on it goes. By the end of April, a blog post for every letter of the alphabet will have been published. Blog posts are usually on a theme, or you can choose to post each day with no theme at all. My theme for 2024 is “Haverfordwest in the News”. Haverfordwest is a town in the county of Pembrokeshire, Wales.

#AtoZChallenge 2024 letter B

From: South Wales Daily News, Thursday 04 December 1884, Page 3

THE BURIAL SCANDAL AT HAVERFORDWEST.
LETTER FROM THF JUDGE-ADVOCATE GENERAL
It will be in the memory of our readers that we published a report of a burials question, which recently occurred at Haverfordwest, arising from the alleged refusal by the Rev. C. F. Harrison, the vicar of St. Mary’s, to allow a Nonconformist funeral to take place in St. Mary’s cemetery on a Sunday, and on which occasion the vicar justified the course he adopted, by representing that he acted in accordance with the provisions of the Burials Act. The matter, having been laid before Mr. Osborne Morgan, the Judge Advocate General, he has addressed the following letter to Mr. W. Mevier Thomas, the Wesleyan lay preacher who officiated at the funeral in question.

59 Grace Street,
Grosvenor Square
November 29, 1884
Dear Sir – I am much obliged, to you for your letter and the enclosure. It appears to me, upon the facts therein stated, that Mr. Harrison has been wrong from beginning to end. In the first place, the right, of the incumbent to alter the hour of burial, specified in the notice, only rises (I quote the words of the 3rd section of the Burials Act) “in case the time so stated be inconvenient on account of some other service having been, previously to the receipt of such notice, appointed to take place in such churchyard or graveyard, or the church or chapel, or on account of any by-laws or regulations lawfully in force, run any graveyard, limiting the times at which burials may take place. It is not suggested that any such reason existed in the present case, and therefore the incumbent had no right to alter the time by his counter notice.

Secondly, – As regards the burial taking place on Sunday, Mr. Harrison is clearly wrong in saying that “no non-conformist minister could bury (under the Act) On Sunday.” What the Act provides is, that no burial under it, shall take place in any churchyard on Sunday, Good Friday, or Christmas Day, if any such day being proposed by the notice shall be objected to in writing for a reason assigned by the person receiving the notice.’ ln this case the vicar gave a reason which in the face of it was invalid, and therefore in the eye of the case is no reason at all. I may point out that the latter proviso (in the Act) does not apply in the case of a cemetery properly so called, but only in that of a “churchyard.”
– I am, yours truly,
G. OSBORNE MORGAN
Mr. William Meyler Thomas

Supported by the opinion of the Judge Advocate General, the matter, it is said will now be brought before the notice of the bishop of the diocese, and will be followed by legal proceedings, but it is to be hoped that more moderate counsels will prevail.