Appendix VI
The Rev. W. Hykes on Burial Fees and the Paco Cemetery Outside Manila
The following is a sample of the Rev. Mr. Hyke’s report:—
“The burial fees demanded by the priests during an epidemic of smallpox were something enormous. As many were unable to pay, the dead were lying in the churches and in private houses in such numbers as to become a serious menace to the public health. The thing was so scandalous that the Governor-General interfered, and issued orders for all the corpses to be buried at once. The priests disregarded it and telegraphed to the Government at Madrid, who reversed the order.
“I heard such a revolting story about the Paco Cemetery (Paco is a suburb of Manila) that I decided to visit the place and ascertain the facts for myself. In the centre of a plot of ground, containing about two acres, is a mortuary chapel. Around this in concentric circles, and with a space of about twenty feet between, are three or four walls. These walls are from five to seven feet wide, about ten feet high, and contain three tiers of vaults, one above the other, and of sufficient size to admit a coffin. The Filipino in charge told me that there were 1,278 vaults for adults and 504 for children. The fees are collected five-yearly in advance, and are $33 for an adult and $16 for a child. I said to the attendant: ‘Suppose that at the end of any period of five years the friends of the deceased are unable to pay, what do you do?’ ‘We remove the coffin, take out the remains and throw them on the bone-pile.’ ‘Will you show me the bone-pile?’ ‘Certainly.’ He conducted me to the rear of the cemetery, up a flight of stone steps to the top of the wall. The receptacle for the bones was a space between two parallel walls, about thirty feet long by four wide by eight deep, and it was nearly full. Near by were two metallic coffins which had evidently just been opened, and on top of the bone-pile were two complete skeletons. A dog was munching the bones. You can imagine how such a system would work with an ignorant, superstitious people like the natives. All of the vaults except three were occupied. The fees amount to more than $50,000 every five years. The fees of a church near to the hotel at which I was stopping amounted to $100,000 per annum.
“It is not surprising that the great religious corporations are enormously wealthy, and that they have a power consonant with that wealth. I was shocked at the stories I was told by men, whose word I could not doubt, of the flagrant immorality of the Spanish Friars. The men who gave me these statements said they were prepared to give names, dates, and places.”
We sent a cutting containing this part of the report to the ex-Philippine missionary, residing at present in Rome, to whom we have already referred.
To these lying statements the missionary gives an unqualified contradiction. He himself was a parish priest during the cholera of 1882–83, when 20,000 people died in six months. In his own parish alone 1,829 died and were buried, and yet he did not get a penny for burial fees. He adds that the other parish priests acted like himself.
The revolting description of the treatment of the dead in the Paco cemetery is a foolish fabric, built on the simple fact that bodies are removed from certain niches, after five years, to make room for others. Mr. Hykes indirectly imputes the extortion of enormous burial fees in this cemetery to the clergy. Whether the fees are enormous or not, they do not go to the Church; for the missionary Father reveals the fact wilfully kept back by Mr. Hykes—that the cemetery belongs to the Manila municipality, which gets all the fees. This cemetery story, told with such apparent honest indignation, is alone sufficient to discredit all Mr. Hyke’s report, and is a proof that he knows how to color and misrepresent facts to suit his purpose.
In conclusion, we are anxious to know if Mr. Hykes examined the spiritual condition of the Protestants in the Philippines. “To our shame be it said,” observed a British officer, in 1859, “there is no Protestant place of worship on the island; and even the burial-ground is in an unseemly position and condition, and, I believe, unconsecrated.”1
Notes
1 “Hongkong to Manila,” by H. T. Ellis, R.N.