THE AKENHAM BURIAL CASE.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR,"] Sm,—The writer of a paragraph on the Akenham burial case, in your summary last week, made a mistake of considerable importance. He spoke of Mr. Drury "excluding the Inde- pendent minister who was willing to read the Burial Service, from, the churchyard," and said that "it is not at all unnatural that the Independent minister, who, after the conflict in the church- yard, wrote the article in the East Anglian Daily Times, should have been angry." The reason why Mr. Drury's conduct pro- voked, perhaps, excessive wrath on the part of the Independent minister, was because, after refusing, as in duty bound, to read the Burial Service over an unbaptised child, he interrupted a service held by the Independent minister in a meadow outside the churchyard. There was ample evidence that the service was proceeding in the meadow in perfect quiet, until Mr. Drury broke in upon it. As usual, where hard words are employed, some of the phrases used in the report of the scene could not be legally justified, bid the jury showed their sense of Mr.Drury's
interruption of the funeral by awarding him only 40s. damages. —I am, Sir, Acc.,
Ipswich, March 20th. ONE OF THE WITNESSES. [We regret the mistake, which is, of course, of some importance in relation to the provocation given.—En. Spectator.]
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