To My Dearest... A Letter from Corporal Preston Perry Morrow, Havana Cuba, Jan 17 1899
- Lex Knowlton
- 12 hours ago
- 9 min read
The following is a transcribed (so yes, it will contain strange spelling and grammar) letter written by Corporal Preston Perry Morrow to his father, Captain Joseph C S Morrow. Cpl. Preston Morrow penned this letter while stationed in Havana, Cuba, during the US occupation period that followed the Spanish-American War. It offers a glimpse into a very different time and a soldier’s morbid adventure through the Casa del Muerte (House of the Dead) in the Colon Cemetery.
Person/s mentioned:
Joseph Clay Stiles Morrow (1839-1925)
Preston Perry Morrow (1875-1917)
Trigger warning: images of human skeletons.
HAVANA’S HUMAN BONEYARD
DISINTERRED BODIES TAKEN FROM
TENANT GRAVES, THROWN IN
A PIT AND PILED HIGH.
PRIMITIVE MODE OF CREMATION
Description of a Trip Through the
Dead House – One of the Greatest
Health Menaces.
Houston, Tex., Jan. 23. – The following interesting letter from Preston Morrow of the First Texas regiment to his father here tells of camp life changes, a Cuban cemetery, a death house and the graves of the Maine victims:
Havana, Cuba, Jan. 17. – Captain J. C. S. Morrow, Houston, Tex. – My Dear Father:
In pursuance of the promise contained in my last letter to yourself to write to you again at the first opportunity which presented itself, I take up the pen again this evening to give you a little further insight into the daily life of a First Texas infantryman in Cuba.
Since our arrival here we have had no drilling and precious little work to do. We hear the once hated words, “Fall in!” only three times per day now, and that is for the roll call at reveille, retreat and tattoo. Formerly it was the most frequent command heard in camp, and the poor, harassed soldier boys grew to hate the sound with all the venom engendered by a long and disagreeable acquaintanceship with it. Now, however, all is changed, and “Fall in” has become almost a pleasant sound to our ears, for it is a welcome punctuation to the soldiers daily existence, where formerly it was the prelude to a long, tiresome drill in the field movements or an equally unwelcome dress parade.
The principal object of life now is to kill time from reveille until tape, and with this laudable purpose animating him, you may find the soldier boy sprawling himself beneath the grateful shade of some banana, orange or palm tree convenient to camp, with either a Spanish vocabulary or some writing materials in his hand, and thus dull time wearlly drags its length along.
Saturday morning inspection of arms, equipment etc., come as a not unwelcome interruption to such an existence of idyllic idleness. Once in a while the boys vary the monotony by taking a tramp of exploration to points of interest within a convenient distance of camp, such as nearby villages, cemeteries and old Spanish fortifications. A short description of one of these places which I visited the other day in a spirit of idle curiosity may interest you a little, and at the same time, give you an idea of some of the queer places down here that an ennuied man in search of fresh experiences may bump up against occasionally.
One day last week several of we Emmets concluded it would be too tame an dcommonplace to spend the day in camp, so after a short consultation regarding the place where we had best go we decided to visit the Colon cemetery, on the outskirts of Havana, wherein we had previously learned were interred the remains of those who had perished when the Maine was blown up here last Ferbruary. After a fatiguing tramp of about four miles across creeks and meadows, through thickets and hedges rich in briars and brambles, and up and down the grassy slopes of numerous hills, we at length reached the famous old cemetery which was named in honor of the world’s most famous navigator – Christopher Columbus, or Cristobal Colon, as these people call him.
It is a queer institution, this old burying ground of centuries, about a mile in length and by three-quarters of a mile in width, inclosed with a wall or fence about fourteen feet in height, with alternate panels, probably forty feet in length, of thick sculptured stone and heavy ornamental iron grating. The gates were locked, but that did not deter us in the slightest, for we soon found a loose iron bar in the wall and each of us succeeded in squeezing through. Then we started upon our tour of observation, and it is needless for me to add that we made a very thorough one before returning to camp late in the afternoon.
Not very far from the place in the wall through which we had gained admission to the cemetery we found a large pile of skeletons stacked up beneath a tree, and close to it were a number of workmen engaged in the pleasant and cheerful occupation of disinterring others and adding to the collection underneath the tree. Nearby a fire composed of the rotten coffins, burned sullenly and polluted the atmosphere with the fumes of its sickening smoke. We silently stood by and watched the workmen labor at their grewsome task until their shovels brought up to view the livid and distorted features of a badly decomposed corpse, then we sloped, for American stomachs can not stand everything with impunity, and we had seen enough of the exhuming process to satisfy our curiosity, anyway.
We met a citizen before we had gone very far from the trench and fire and pile of bones, and in reply to questions he stated that burial lots in the cemetery were so dear that only the wealthy could afford to purchase them outright; that when a poor man died his friends rented a grave for him at so much per annum, and that when the rent was left unpaid for a certain length of time the remains were disinterrered and thrown upon the bone pile mentioned above and the grave leased to another occupant.
It seems to me to be a most cruel and monstrous custom to dig up a dead man’s bones and stock them up under a tree just because his friends are too poverty stricken to pay the rent on a pitiful two by six plot of ground.
As I muse thus the thought occurs to me that man is the only animal who will willingly and intentionally disturb the dead of his own kind, and that despite his thin veneering of culture and civilization he is every bit as much a brute at heart as any other member of God’s animal kingdom.
Near the middle of the cemetery we located the two humble mounds beneath which repose in their last sleep the bodies of those who went down with the Maine. You would not know the graves unless some one kindly pointed them out to you, as was done in our case. A cheap wooden cross, with a simple inscription in Spanish painted upon it, is all that has been done to indicate the place. It is not even protected by a fence. No tablet of bronze or shaft of sculptural marble marks the sacred spot where heroes sleep. No flowers have been placed upon it by loving hands to impress upon the wandering stranger its sanctity. Only the rich tropical grass, in seeming atonement for man’s neglect, is sending its green tendrils over the mounds in an effort to conceal from view the unsightly clods of rough brown earth beneath their tender caress.
Just across the driveway from the Maine’s plot stands its direct antithesis in point of beauty – the monument erected at a cost of $250,000 by Havana citizens to commemorate the death of thirty local firemen who lost their lives in an explosion here in 1890. It is a magnificent specimen of the sculptor’s skill. Chiselled in Paris of purest Italian marble it is indeed a beautiful creation of art. The top of the monument, which is about forty feet in height, is surmounted by a statuary of a heroic size, representing an angel bearing heavenward in her arms the body of a dead fireman. On the four corners of the pedestal recline life-sized figures of different angels. The sides of the pedestal are ornamented with bas-relief busts of the dead firemen with their names over each. Midway of the shaft are carved the municipal arms of Havana, the arms of Cuba Español, the insignia of a soldier and the apparatus pertaining to an engine company. The base of the monument is covered with the appropriate inscriptions eulogizing the dead and setting forth the incidents connected with the disaster. Altogether the monument is the most beautiful one many of we boys have ever seen.
After leaving the monument we decided to visit the casa del muerte, or dead house, connected with the cemetery, before returning to camp. This is located at the southern gate. Our curiosity prompted us to learn the manner in which Havana disposes of its pauper dead, which in recent years have been very numerous. An obliging cemetery employe whom we met at the gate, in reply to our questions concerning the dead house, kindly volunteered to pilot us to and through it. Through a long, low, rambling stone building filled with a numerous assortment of rooms – for the house is inhabited by the many cemetery employes as well as by Havana;s dead paupers – some of the rooms were used as kitchens, dining rooms, bed rooms, parlors, offices, storage rooms for the effects of the unknown dead or coffins for the reception of the wealthy and more aristocratic who die in their own beds, stables for horses, granaries, buggy and hearse rooms, the entire heterogeneous collection massed beneath a common roof.
Our guide led us to the grated door of the casa del muerta and politely motioned us to enter. We did so, and in awed manner looked around upon the scene of death. Along the center of a low room, twenty feet wide by fifty long, were standing a row of heavy tables, with two or three long, shallow, narrow, cove?lea? Okaen bozes resting upon each, and in these boxes lay the remains of human beings like ourselves, whose breasts were once sentient with the throbbings of health and hope.
Although as naked as when they came into the world, you could see nothing of the dead save their head, hands and feet; all other portions of the frame were concealed beneath thick little heaps of quicklime, for this is the local mode of practising cremation. The casas del muerte is both a morgue and a crematory, and the reason why the faces of the dead are left uncovered by the chemical so long is because the authorities hope that someone will come forward to identify the remains of the unknown before the final process is adopted, and also because the head and feet yield more quickly to the corrosive effect of the chemical than any other portion of the frame.
If no one claims the corpse within a certain length of time quicklime is heaped upon the head, feet and hands, and after its disintegrating work has been completed the skeleton is then removed from the house and thrown into a deep pit close by in the cemetery to keep company with thousands of others which have preceded it. Some of the cadavers were almost destroyed, in others the process was only half completed, while others still were evidently new arrivals, for the quicklime heaped upon them was pure and white, as though it had just been placed there, as was evidently the case.
Lying in one corner of the room in all positions, where they had been unceremoniously dumped out of a dead wagon a few minutes previous to our arrival, were the remains of five or six paupers found around the city that morning. They were still covered by the rags in which they had died, and were awaiting the process of cremation.
When our eyes had taken in all the room and its lugubrious details, we decided to return to camp, for we had seen enough horrors for the time being. In years to come even the sight of an innocent lime barrel will be sufficient to conjure up to our minds the vision of the horrors we witnessed during our visit to the casa del muerte of Colon cemetery.
Uncle Sam has a stupendous task before him in regenerating the government of this island, for besides indoctrinating these people with the principles of political economy and local self-government, he must also teach them a regard for the laws of sanitation and hygiene. I do not wonder that Havana is the birthplace of plagues and pestilences, for as long as Colon cemetery with its pit, its bone-pile, its sullen fire built of rotten coffins, its exhumed corpses and its dead-house, with the primitive mode of cremation practised therein, just so long will the health of the city be under dire menace.
In my next letter I shall try and tell you of some of the fortifications around here and of the labyrinth of passages which exists beneath old Fort Principe near the city. Several of us intend visiting it within the next few days.
Well, I must close for the time being, but will write again soon.
If I can obtain some plates for my Kodak down in the city I will send you some photos of Cuban sights and scenes in my next letter.
With best regards to all my friends in Houston I remain, affectionately,
PRESTON MORROW.
Transcribed from the letter published in The Galveston Daily News, May 2nd 1899.
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