Rumsey Wing to Señor Francisco Javier Leon, August 20, 1873

Mr. Wing to Señor Leon.

Sir: I had the honor to receive your excellency’s note of yesterday last evening.

I am indebted for the efforts which your excellency’s government is making to ascertain the perpetrators of the outrage upon the grave of Mr. Doval.

I am likewise fully persuaded that your excellency’s government regards such acts of sacrilege with indignation and regret.

May I request, if any further evidence is taken in the premises, that I be furnished with copies thereof also?

I trust that the search for the culprits will be rigidly prosecuted, and that the beautiful marble tombstone stolen from the grave of Colonel Staunton will be found.

In conclusion, your excellency will pardon me for referring to certain circumstances which will, I am confident, recall to your excellency’s memory the fact that your excellency has previously heard of similar outrages.

On reference to the archives of this legation, I find that in the first part of the month of September, 1870, (while I was making preparations for the disinterment of the body of my predecessor, Mr. Coggeshall,) I was informed that previous to my arrival at this capital the grave of Colonel Phineas E. Staunton had been violated, and that his body had been reinterred by certain of the police authorities, and that Mr. Coggeshall’s grave had also been opened.

I was in the very act of addressing an official note to your excellency on the subject when your excellency did me the honor to pay me a visit at the office of my legation, in reference to the arrangements for the transmission of Mr. Coggeshall’s body to Guayaquil. I then and there verbally made known to your excellency, through the agency of a distinguished gentleman now in Quito, what I had learned in regard to the profanation of the graves of Mr. Coggeshall and Colonel Staunton. Your excellency immediately promised to give stringent orders to the police authorities to do all in their power to ferret out the perpetrators thereof.

I was afterward the recipient of a note from your excellency of date September 10, 1870, in which I was informed that your excellency had hastened to put a knowledge of the outrage before the superintendent of police, in order that he might take the proper steps in relation thereto.

Subsequently, I informed your excellency, that upon the disinterment of the body of Mr. Coggeshall, it was ascertained that his wooden coffin had likewise been broken open, and that a portion of the interior metal coffin had been cut off and taken away, whilst the remains of the coffins, with the body inclosed, had been carelessly thrown hack into the grave, without any regard to position whatever.

In this matter I spoke advisedly, as I, in common with the English minister and a number of other foreign gentlemen, was present on the occasion.

Feeling assured that your excellency upon reflection will recall these facts, and regretting that I am compelled to refer to matters so unpleasant of themselves,

I have, &c.,