WARWICK – Thomas Francis Hackett had been sick for several days. Shaken with chills and drowning in fatigue, the 22-year-old man lay suffering from stomach pains and a headache as his temperature rose. Finally, he was diagnosed with typhoid fever, an infection caused by salmonella bacteria spread through close contact with an affected person or through consuming contaminated food or water. After 27 days of painful distress, Thomas died on Dec. 5, 1889.

Thomas’s widow, 25-year-old Araletta (Dingwell) Hackett, was a Protestant. Thomas’s parents were Roman Catholic. In Rhode Island, like the majority of states, decision-making power was allotted to males. Should a woman die, her husband legally had the final word on where her body was to be buried. Should a man die, his wife had no say about where he would be entombed if the man’s father or adult son had alternative ideas. Araletta had assumed that she would one day lay beside her husband for eternity. That plan was seemingly terminated when Thomas’s father took charge of the body and had it buried at St. Mary’s Cemetery in Warwick.

Araletta soon realized she had given in too easily. She approached the Warwick Town Council for permission to exhume her husband’s body and have it relocated to Riverside Cemetery in Pawtucket. Permission was granted and she purchased a burial plot and arranged for Thomas’s body to be moved approximately six months after his original interment.

Thomas’s father was livid when he discovered what had been done. He first attempted to sue Riverside Cemetery for allowing the body to be removed there. When the court declined to become involved in the matter, Thomas’s father decided to sue Araletta. On Jan. 21, 1893, a filing with the Supreme Court of Rhode Island announced, “This is a bill in equity to compel the respondent to return the body of her late husband to the grave where it was buried and from which she removed it without consent of the father and next of kin.”

Araletta responded to the bill by testifying that Thomas had asked her to refrain from permitting him to be buried in St. Mary’s Cemetery upon his death, and that a grave instead be obtained within a Protestant cemetery. Thomas’s father argued that his son owned the plot he had originally been buried in, one of a family grouping. He also asserted that Araletta had agreed to the burial at St. Mary’s Cemetery.

Araletta argued that she did not agree, she merely offered no resistance to the Hackett family’s alleged demands and threats to take forcible possession of the body if they were given no other option. Araletta explained that, at the time burial arrangements were being made, she was prostrated by grief and overwhelmed with the physical fatigue caused by taking care of Thomas upon his sickbed for four weeks. She claimed that she offered no resistance to the plan of her in-laws as she did not want any strife over her husband’s remains. After hearing testimony, the court’s focus was now on whether or not Araletta consented to the original burial, and whether such consent was borne as a reaction to threats. A hearing on the matter of consent was ordered.

No further legal documents have been located regarding the removal of Thomas Hackett to Riverside Cemetery.

Araletta never remarried. She moved into a home with her sister, on Main Street in Pawtucket, where they ran a boarding house for decades, renting out rooms to employees of the webbing mill where her late husband had once been a foreman. For many years, one of those boarders was John M. Haggerty, a spooler foreman at the webbing mill. On Nov. 4, 1927, John disappeared. He was found on Dec. 8, hanging from a tree limb on the grounds of Butler Hospital, the victim of an apparent suicide.

Araletta held John’s funeral at her home and floral tributes from John’s friends were directed to the 63-year-old boarding house owner. Fourteen years later, Araletta died on Dec. 22, 1941. She was laid beneath a large stone marker in Riverside Cemetery. To the left side of the stone, is carved with the name of Thomas Hackett. Above the name are carved the words “Beloved Husband.” The center of the stone’s face bears Araletta’s name. To the far right, is the name of John Haggerty with the words “Beloved Friend” hovering above it. An arm reaches across the gravestone from the right side and another reaches out from the left. On each arm is a hand holding the side of a chain which stretches over Araletta’s name. The word “Reunited” is etched there.