Nightly Drinking Parties Amid Gravestones
NORWOOD, Sept 17—Norwood’s Old Cemetery, this town’s last surviving landmark of Colonial days, is being profaned by nightly drinking and petting parties and its beauty is being destroyed by careless and ruthless youngsters, according to charges made public today by Supt of Cemeteries George A. Smith.
Speaking to a committee appointed by the Norwood Historical Society to save the cemetery from destruction, Smith said that the isolated and beautiful graveyard at the northern entrance to this town has become a regular rendezvous for mixed parties and that drunken brawls are quite common there.
Boys have been using certain parts of the cemetery for rifle ranges and have knocked over or mutilated many elaborate markers. School children, seeking a short cut, have worn paths across a number of graves.
Smith recommended that a high fence be erected around the cemetery. The committee will cooperate with the police in a rigid investigation and its findings will be reported at a town meeting in the near future.
Fri, Sep 17, 1937 – 14 · The Boston Globe (Boston, Massachusetts)
Must Pet Elsewhere.
Norwood. Mass.. Sept. 16. —(AP) —Use of the old Colonial burying ground as a “petters paradise” today drew official attention of the Norwood Historical Society, which voted to fence the ancient spot where the the remains of first settlers and of Revolutionary War soldiers.