The Grave of Thomas Breakwell

Thomas Breakwell's grave was leased for five years, after which time, as no surviving members of his family kept up the payments on the plot, his bones were disinterred, cleaned, bundled and numbered, and as is the custom, placed in the cemetery's charnel house. The section where Breakwell's bones are stacked has long since been sealed and other sections built against it, which in turn have been filled. Since the time when Thomas's bones were removed, two other people had been buried in this grave. When it became known to the Bahá’ís in Paris that the gravesite was once again vacant, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of France applied for permission to erect a permanent monument to Thomas on the site. A competition was announced, and a number of Bahá’í architects submitted a variety of designs. Cemetery officials were reluctant to give approval for an elaborate monument, and the National Assembly had to settle for a simple but dignified stone. Now that stone is in place, and has already become a focal point of pilgrimage. The Universal House of Justice has encouraged the French Bahá’í community to continue its efforts to retrieve Thomas's remains from the charnel house and have them returned to their original grave.

Source: Rajwantee Lakshiman-Lepain, The Life of Thomas Breakwell (London: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1998), pp. 47–48.

Collected from bahaistories.com.

Various. *bahaistories.com archive*. https://bahaistories.com/subject/breakwell