PARK AND CEMETERY 
75 
services on that day. Health-officer Allen of that city says 
that between seventy-five and one hundred people die in 
Louisville every week and heretofore twenty-five or thirty 
of these have been buried on Sunday. Now more are interred 
on Monday than on the Sabbath. The undertakers are sup- 
porting the movement and call attention to the difficulty of 
obtaining carriages on Sunday. * * * Ministers of Bev- 
erly, Mass., have also protested against the Sunday funeral. 
A funeral on Sunday, they say, necessitates the labor of from 
five to twenty-five men, including the minister, church ushers, 
choir members, coachmen and cemetery employes. This de- 
prives them of a day which should be one of rest, and causes 
the Ministers’ Association to “express the hope that, as far 
as possible, funerals will be held on some other day in the 
week than Sunday.” 
LEGAL NOTES, 
A bill has been passed by the New Jersey Legislature, 
but not yet signed by the governor, providing that the Boards 
of Chosen Freeholders shall be permitted to grant permis- 
sion to corporations or private parties to establish cemeteries, 
taking away from the State Board of Health a power which 
it now has. The bill is said to have been introduced through 
the influence of the Tuscan Club of Newark, which has a 
tract of ioo acres in South Orange township, which it de- 
sires to convert into a cemetery. The tract is flanked by 
desirable residential sections of the township, and people of 
the locality are opposed to the cemetery. An attempt was 
made to convert the tract into a cemetery about a year ago, 
but permission was refused by both the local and state Boards 
of Health. 
* * * 
A formal suit has been instituted in the Circuit Court of 
Frederick county at Winchester, Va., to determine the own- 
ership of the old Catholic Cemetery, one of the historic places 
in Winchester and the first Catholic burial ground in the 
Shenandoah Valley. The cemetery is in charge of the Sacred 
Heart Catholic Church, but a recent act of the legislature 
and the condemning of the property on sanitary grounds by 
the local authorities made the suit necessary in order that 
it might be sold. All of the bodies will be removed to the 
new Catholic Cemetery. 
* * * 
The bill introduced into the New York Legislature by 
Senator Henry Marshall of Kings County providing that no 
public driveway can be laid through any cemetery in the 
State without the consent of two-thirds of the lot owners of 
the cemetery so affected, has been passed and signed by the 
Governor. 
* * * 
A curious case has developed in San Francisco, says the 
Embalmers’ Monthly. Jeanie W. Higgins, daughter of the 
late A. H. Washburn, has begun an action against the Cypress 
Lawn Cemetery Association and her father’s brothers. The 
remains of her father are interred in the cemetery. The 
daughter now seeks to have the body disinterred and cre- 
mated so that the ashes may be placed by the side of those 
of her mother, as was directed by her father. The brothers 
and the cemetery directors refuse. The daughter has brought 
suit for $25,000 damages. 
* * * 
The Court of Appeals at St. Louis recently held that to 
walk over a cemetery lot containing graves is a form of 
desecration, and when injuries are sustained in so doing, 
the injured person can not recover damages. This decision 
was in the case of Kate Barry, who sued the Calvary 
Cemetery Co. for an injury sustained by falling in a hole on 
a lot containing graves. She got a judgment in the lower 
court, but the Appellate Court reverses this, Judge Bland 
holding that the lots are private property and that the plaintiff 
had no right to leave the roadway. 
* * * 
St. Lawrence Cemetery, near New Haven, Conn., claims 
that a new law passed by the state in 1902 makes illegal a 
fee of 25 cents for each burial permit which the Registrar 
of New Haven has formerly charged for interments outside 
the town of New Haven. This rule has also applied to Oak 
Grove, Westville, Whitneyville and East Haven cemeteries. 
The section of the statutes on which the cemetery bases its 
opinion is as follows : “When any cemetery association or 
ecclesiastical society owns or manages a cemetery or ceme- 
teries in two adjoining towns, or in the town next adjoin- 
ing the town in which such association or society is located, 
a certificate of the registrar of that one of such towns in 
which any person dies shall be sufficient to enable such de- 
ceased person or society to bury such deceased person in any 
of the cemeteries owned or managed by it as aforesaid.” 
The Corporation Counsel is expected to render an opinion 
as to the legality of the fee. 
LIABILITIES OF STOCKHOLDERS IN CEMETERY 
CORPORATIONS ON THEIR SUBSCRIPTIONS. 
The supreme court of Michigan says that such a proposi- 
tion is shocking to the moral sense of every honest man as 
that a corporation for cemetery purposes may buy land, issue 
its obligation to the purchaser, due at a future time, and 
may contract for buildings, fences, etc. ; but, when these 
creditors ask for payment, the corporation may, through its 
directors and stockholders, say to them: “We have no tan- 
gible property which you can reach upon execution. We 
have not paid for our subscriptions, and you cannot compel 
us to, because the statute prohibits it.” The court says (C. 
H. Little Co. vs. Woodward Avenue Cemetery Association, 
97 Northwestern Reporter, 682) that it is not reasonable to 
suppose that the legislature intended the statute to relieve 
stockholders in these corporations from all liability for 1 ’ pay- 
ment of their stock. Courts will not so construe the stat- 
ute if any other construction is reasonably possible. The 
statute, upon its face, is not susceptible of this construction. 
It contemplates' that the capital stock of the corporation 
shall be paid into its treasury to meet its legal obligations. 
It expressly provides that 20 per cent shall be paid in, as a 
prerequisite to the filing of its articles of association. Until 
this amount is paid, it is doubtful whether there is any legal 
incorporation. The stockholders of the corporation are not 
the proprietors of a cemetery. The corporation is the pro- 
prietor. It is the common-law duty of a creditor to proceed 
first against the property of the corporation, to ascertain if 
any can be found to satisfy his debt, before proceeding 
against the stockholders. The proceeding against the stock- 
holders would be entirely unnecessary if there were tangible 
assets' subject to the payment of creditors. The provision 
of section 9,780 of the compiled laws of Michigan that the 
provisions of that chapter relating to proceedings against 
corporations in chancery shall not extend to the proprietors 
of any burying ground incorporated under the laws of Mich- 
igan does not exempt stockholders from proceedings to com- 
pel the payment of their subscriptions. It will not be doubted 
that the directors might make an assessment and sue the 
stockholders for the purpose of paying the debts of the cor- 
poration, and that it would be their duty, both morally and 
legally, to do so. What they have the power to do, and 
what, in good conscience and law, they ought to- do, courts 
of equity have the jurisdiction to compel them to do. 
