True Kindness Knows no Bounds

Everyone is ‘Somebody’s Darling’....

 It was February 1865, on the bank of the river Cluth at Horseshoe Bend which is situated outside the now Napier City, at Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand and at that time was the centre of a local ‘Gold Rush’.

When William Rigney found a barely alive shivering wet dog on the riverbank he searched around and discovered the dead body of a stranger nearby.   The body was taken to the local town where an inquest revealed that he had drowned in the local river.   

Again, when no one claimed the unidentified body, William took it upon himself to see that the dead man received a proper burial.   At the graveside, he erected a handmade headstone sign which merely said, with the words burned into the wood, ‘Somebody’s Darling Lies Buried Here’.

It was truly an act of kindness but did not finish there.    William erected a wicket fence around the grave and tended it for the next 47 years until his own death in 1912.

His kindness even continued after death for the story does not end there.   

William, in his will, asked that he be buried next to the stranger and that his own tombstone be inscribed with the words ‘Here lies William Rigney, the man who buried Somebody’s Darling’.

When I first read this remarkable story I was a little surprised.   Looking into it further, as an Irishman I should not have been so amazed.   You see, William Rigney would have left his native Ireland at, or just after, the Great Famine of the 1840’s.   He would have known only too well of the fate that befell the hundreds of thousands of Irish men, women and children who had died when the blight struck the staple diet of the poor, namely the potato crop.

When the poor were dispossessed of their homes by their landlords for non-payment of rent they were obliged to take to the road.   Many managed to make their way to the ports where they could emigrate.   Tens of thousands died on the road and were unceremoniously buried by the wayside with no one to mourn their passing.

William most likely made his way to Liverpool where he possibly heard the news of the gold rush in New Zealand and like thousands of other Irishmen, begged, borrowed or stole the money to pay the fare to that distant land.

In the midst of his search for his fortune he still had the compassion to look after someone, albeit that the person was dead, yet was less fortunate that himself........

True kindness knows no bounds....................

 I pray they both Rest in Peace.......for with people like William Rigney turning up every now and again, it certainly gives one hope.........

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