1939-12-05 — Page 15

THE CHINA MAIL, DECEMBER 5, 1939 TO-DAY'S STRANGE STORY OF REAL PEOPLE

THE STOLEN BODY OF ALEXANDER T. STEWART

By VINCENT TOWNE

In 1823 there landed in New York an Irish youth of twenty who in the Emerald Isle had studied for the mini- stry, but had decided that he was not fitted for the cloth,

His name was Alexander Turney Stewart. He become a teacher in a select school. Reaching his majority, he returned to Ireland for his share of a small fortune his father had left. Then he returned to New

York, opened a Broadway store for which he paid $250 a year rent. His capital amounted to $3,000. He slept in the rear of his shop, which proved to be the nucleus of the greatest dry-goods establishment in the world. During the early years of the Civil War he built a store costing $2,750,000 and employing 2,000 persons. He was by this time the owner also of numerous mills and factories. His income was now $2,000,000 a year.

He spent vast sums in philanthropy, sent a whole shipload of provisions to relieve the great Irish famine and dispatched another vessel laden with flour to feed the destitute of France after that country's defeat by the Germans.

His marble Fifth Avenue mansion was regarded at the time as the finest private house in the world and con- tained an art galler; that ranked among the most valuable in the coun- try. In this house he entertained the Emperor of Brazil and other person- ages of world renoun.

'Just at the time when Mr. Stewart was interested in building a million- dollar home for working girls on Fourth Avenue and while he was erecting the village of Garden City. L.I., as a model settlement for his many employees, he died on April 10, 1876. He left a fortune of $40,000,000. He was survived by a widow but no children. In fact, he had no blood relations. Many legacies were left to his employees and he made provision for various public charities.

Soon after her husband's death, Mrs. Stewart erected in St. Mark's Churchyard a handsome mausoleum in which his body was entombed.

In November, 1878,

.

about two

years and a half after Mr. Stewart's entombment, Judge Henry Hilton, his executor, rushed into the New York Police Department with the sensa- tional intelligence that ghouls had broken into the Stewart mausoleum. Upon inquiry, the police learned that Judge Hilton had previously dis- covered that the mausoleum had been tampered with and that he had caused a large slab resting above the coffin to be removed to another place inside the structure. This false tomb had been inscribed "A. T. Stewart Family Vault," in the hope that it would deceive those who for some mysterious purpose appeared eager to carry away the bones of the dead merchant prince. Only four persons were supposed to have shared know- ledge of this stratagem, but later developments proved that the slab's! removal had been witnessed by the conspirators,

As soon as the alarm was given the police investigated the real and unmarked grave of Mr. Stewart und discovered that ghouls had there made excavations with Д mathematical precision that proved their absolute knowledge of its location.

The multimillionaire's corpse had been encased in a casket covered with black cloth, fringed with gold braid. This coffin had been placed in a leaden case enclosed by a heavy wooden box. The lid of the outer box had been unscrewed, the leaden casket cut open and the inner coffin robbed of. Its gruesome contents. The famous merchant was seventy-three years old when he died and his body was so emaciated by his fatal illness that it weighed only eighty pounds, and hence it would have been an easy matter to have carried the body away in a sack.

The night before this act of van- dalism had been dark and rainy. The conditions for such a crime were ideal. The only possible clues to the vandals' identity were an iron shovel, a small bull's-eye lantern and a newspaper that they had left behind.

polis failed to catch any one willing to state that he had seen or heard any suspicious persortages or actions' that might lead to the solution of the mystery. The police failed to dis- cover that any anonymaus demands for ransom were ever received -by anyone interested in the case.

Comment was aroused by Judge Hilton's stubborn refusal to make overtures that might tempt the ghouls to return the corpse. Most emphati- cally the executor announced that he .would not subject the Stewart estate to blackmail, and finally, when per- suaded to offer $25,000 reward for the body, he added the condition that the sum would not be paid unless he was given information leading to the apprehension of the guilty persons.

There was a story that the body had been recovered and reintombed in the Cathedral of the Incarnatio which Mrs. Stewart had erected as a memorial to her husband; but, if this Ghouls Watched the Tomb.

was true, the widow and Judge Hil- Peeping from nearby, the ghouls had visited by the widow or by workmen. confidence in the matter, and whe- ton never took anyone into their evidently made a careful check on A carefully devised the tomb at times when it had been mediately stretched about the metro- remains a mystery.

police net im- ther the body was ever recovered still

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